You stand.
You fall.
Your feet seek purchase in shifting sands. Sands so brilliantly white, it burns your eyes, searing each grain onto your retinas.
You fall.
You stand.
Your feet seek purchase in shifting sands. Sands inexplicably marked with the deepest of blacks that must be shadows, can only be shadows. Shadows so starkly dark they seem to swallow your hallow gaze.
You stand.
You take a step forward. The shifting sands beneath your heel crumbles away as reality distorts (again).
You stand.
Something in the light screams. It screams and screams, pure wordless agony of a life too long.
You fall.
Something whispers in the dark. It begs. It begs and begs to be alive again, to be more than memory given form.
You stand. Your feet seeking purchase in shifting sands. You fail. You begin to fall. You reach for the hand cannon at your hip, find its grip, and you hold it tight. Your eyes shut close as your gravity shifts, an insipid vertigo pull from behind your navel, you're tumbling back and...
...the broken pawn clatters to the floor of the Derelict. Your hand aches, clenched until cramped over the stock of the handcannon at your hip. Drifter bends a knee to pick up the chess piece. He pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, pausing before rising to peer up at you. You are still reeling, falling for an eternity in your mind, tumbling interstellar, that pull behind your naval feeling more real with every passing second. He looks up at you. Knowingly.
"Something's out there, Hero. It's throwing rocks at our window."