[ TT ] The world is an infinite flat plane . The furthest known points of this realm take days to contact by telegraph . Slowly communication ceases from the far west , and slowly the silence pushes closer and closer to home ...

It's been three years since the border towns went silent. Slowly, within that time, the silence, the absolute lack of any signs of life, has moved closer and closer to the central kingdoms. As the eclipses have come and gone, as the Great Engine of Creation has begun to slow and stutter, as the mists themselves have begun to thicken, the Silence has moved eastwards. 
 
 The first scouts sent to the Silence never returned. The second wave of scouts vanished in the eclipse. I, Trevor Finnson, am of the third wave of scouts. We set off from Shepherd's Rest 13 months ago, a party of 200 riding in buggies and towing caravans of supplies. With each town and city we pass, word it sent to the central kingdoms on our progress. With each bastion of life we pass, the telegraphed messages take to reach the center grows longer. 
 
 Three months ago, we entered the Planes of Infinity. The flat expanse of sand, unbroken by dunes or scrub, allowed us the first glimpse of the curvature of the mists, which now sweep around and form a ring of vision that measures 14 miles in diameter. Each eclipse, the mists seem to encroach ever so slightly, obscuring our view of the infinite ever so slightly. The sunbelt is dim here, unnaturally so. The few scientists we've brought along seem to believe that it's something to do with the mists, that they're beginning to reach up to the heavens this far from civilization. 
 
 Two days ago, we should have reached the Far Enlightenment Temple. Our course was true, the navigators are baffled by it's apparent lack of existence. Our survival hinged on reaching the temple, as our supplies are running low. 
 
 Some of the men have begun to whisper that the Planes of Infinity swallowed the temple, or that the mists swallowed them, or that we've passed into the Silence. Yesterday, before the eclipse of night, a scientist decided to stay out and observe the night mists. This morning, as the Moon-belt moved out of the path of the sun and the eclipse ended, the scientist was found pacing the camp, raving about the Silence and the nothing that followed. 
 
 He sounded like a preacher of Doom, screaming and crying about something in the sky, about another Engine. He claims that the other Engine is one of unmaking, that it rests on the opposite side of the world, that we have passed into death and beyond the Great Engine's protection. 
 
 This night, I plan to wait for the eclipse and to see if he is right. I pray to the Engine that he is not, that some lurking insanity in his brain finally broke forth and engulfed his mind. But, if he is right, then we are all doomed.
