Elliot's POV

"Even in nonsense, a fool can find meaning."

—Elliot Starfall

My sweat cools the fever, but my head still burns. My veins feel clogged, my pulse relentless, like my body is waging war against itself. I think like this every night, every blistering afternoon. Now, the golden moon spills its glow through the cracks, and I press my palm to my forehead.

My breath is shallow, and I turn to my right—too quickly—and the lack of balance betrays me. I collapse straight into the puddle of vomit I brought up minutes earlier.

It steams faintly under the cold of the night. Maggots crawl through it, dancing like it's some celebration. A feast. And why not? My stomach is giving them all it has. What I cough up now is mostly black.

Between the muck, there's blood, and even more maggots. I don't know if they came from me; maybe they did. Maybe they live in me. I remember some documentary about parasites—ones that burrow in the gut and eat their way through. That thought alone sends a shiver racing down my spine.

But maybe it's the blood that disturbs me more. Why did these zombies—back then—have maggots pouring from their mouths?

My chest collapses against the floor, my body twitching, breath barely slipping into my bloodstream. My vision blurs, but I can still see the crawling things inching toward my cheek. I don't move. I can't, I'm too weak for that, and I hate it.

I fucking hate being this weak; my goddamn arm, everything—the pain, the sickness, the helplessness—because of this missing arm, because of those monsters.

Seconds pass like dragged-out minutes, but eventually, I force myself to stand. My legs tremble, each movement like walking on a planet with triple Earth's gravity. Maybe this damned world works like that, but maybe gravity here punishes the weak harder, or it's all because of my current condition. Nothing makes sense to me anymore.

I manage to lean my back against the wall while pressing my heavy body with all my might with one arm. The room is dark, locked away from civilization. Curtains shut, door bolted, and I—once again—trapped in a room of the dead.

"Cham and Gene are really taking their time with the meds..." I mutter, breath rancid, and eyes flicking toward the boy we saved from the bar—the one with the terrified eyes and quiet mouth. Paul. That's what his name was.

He shouldn't have to see this. No one should.

Not the corpses, not the blood. Not the blue-blooded twins beside me, their fused heads leaning like rotting fruits. The rest of their body is normal, but their blood isn't. They're not like Paul. They're not like me, or like any of my kind.

To my right lie the bodies of the parents and an older woman—probably the grandmother—dressed neatly; Victorian elegance like the rest of this godforsaken city. I stay quiet, and continue not to speak much to Paul. I don't want to talk, and he barely understands my English anyway. I keep my eyes away from the faces—smashed, misshapen, and lifeless. I don't want to see them. I just want light, I just want Ren.

My legs begin to move again, shaky, disjointed, and the world tilts. It spins like some broken carousel from childhood nightmares. Then, I drop forward. My chin—or maybe teeth—smash the ground. I'm not even sure what hits first. All I know is, Paul's voice sounds like it's underwater—distant, echoing through the blackness that comes rushing in again.

…

My eyes snap open, and as expected, I'm somewhere else. Not the room, not with Paul. Not with the rotting dead or Cham and Gene, who promised medicine.

No antibiotics. No corpses. Just me. Again, alone in the Void.

That's what I've named it. There are no walls, no floor, no sky. Just the vast and dark territory of an abyss. Nothingness—but not true nothing, because after all, even nothing is still something. I float, suspended in this quiet hell. No up, no down. No time. The first time I was here, it felt like hours had passed, but when I returned, barely a minute had gone by.

Time isn't real here.

I've accepted that. Maybe I've accepted too much, maybe I've gone insane. No. I'm far past insane. I've already lost the light, I'm something else now. Something that lives in the in-between.

And just when I start to think—Take me somewhere, just somewhere—the light hits. Red, bright, searing crimson. It burns my eyes, but I see through it. A gateway of scarlet fire, a holy inferno, like the mouth of a god. But beyond that brightness—again—nothingness. Only this time, the black is gone. Now it's the color of rotten blood.

I'm not floating anymore; I'm standing, looking through the bright room with puzzled eyes. My brow twitches, and my feet touch thick and sticky liquid, all crimson red. Blood.

I walk slowly, trembling. The world doesn't spin this time like a carousel—it folds, as if my skull is spinning, dragging the world with it. One heartbeat becomes a full day.

Then I hear it again. "Golden Reaper."

The voice slams through my head. Twisted, crooked. Too real.

"He has long been dead. As I am." It bores into my skull, shattering any sense of balance I have left. "Your vengeance has driven you mad. You've fallen so far from morality that there's no difference between you and the 'other bloods' you despise."

My temples ache. I press both hands to my head, stumble forward, skin sliding through the thick red water. I catch a glimpse of my reflection—bare knees, naked feet, ribs jutting out like broken blades. The vision distorts again. Fog. Crimson fog and darkness.

Then that smile. That cruel, fucking smile. "Golden Reaper, Elliot—Farewell."

My heart collapses, my entire world crumbles at once. Falling with my face first, I hit the ground, blood splashing all over my body. Or maybe just my soul does, and still, I remain here. Trapped in this prison, not black anymore but red.

My body lies motionless, face down. Minutes? Hours? I don't know. I make no sound. It makes no sense to me anymore. Nothing makes sense, ever did. Not this place. Not the voice. Not the visions.

I slam my fist into the ground and freeze. I feel it.

My arm. My right arm. It's back! My lost arm. I slam it into the blood-red ground, and it hurts. More than metal would. But I hit again, and again. And again, with no break in between. Then my forehead.

"This voice! This voice! This goddamn voice!"

I scream it three times, louder each time. My voice shatters the silence, and I punch until I should be bleeding. But there's nothing; no wounds, no blood, no bruises. Only this cursed red ground splattering into my face. It looks like blood, but it's dry. Dead.

Standing up, I feel no shaking from within. No trembling. My body feels… solid. But heavy, like I'm carrying mountains.

"Whoever's here—come!" I roar. My voice burns in my lungs. "You goddamn fucker! Come the hell out, or I'll fuck the shit out of you!" I scream louder than what a human throat should manage, my words not being thought twice about before spreading them into nothingness.

Silence.

The only sound that follows is the echo of my steps, hollow and repetitive against the emptiness I walk through. One, two, three steps—then I stop. What else did I expect? God showing up and saying sorry? The devil, maybe? Or some other being who accidentally burdened me with these banal visions? That this was all a cruel prank and I'd wake up in that shitty room years ago, beside Ren? How incredibly stupid. How naïve. How utterly pointless these thoughts are.

And then, as if to mock me further, a sudden burst of wind—no, a full shockwave—hits me from behind, forcing my body into four shaky, unwilling steps forward. My torso jerks. My limbs drag, and as I spin toward the direction the blast came from, my eyes meet nothing but a thick storm of red dust, swirling like a Martian sandstorm.

I raise my arms too late. Two seconds late. Dust floods into my eyes and mouth, and I double over, coughing violently. My hair whips back, my ears pop with a hiss, and my knees bend beneath me. Six seconds. That's all it takes to recover. I've been shoved at least two feet forward, planted into a new position like some useless pawn.

As the dust settles—vision still distorted—something unnatural becomes visible through the haze. My eyes squint, then widen. I'm kneeling. More crawling, then walking, and my breath hitches when I see it.

A long table. Chairs. Everything rising from the void of redness, existing without logic or reason; eleven seats, five on each side, one at the head; thrones more than chairs. The largest of them all commands the space, its design far more elaborate, two massive wings, lighter in red than the void around us, curling from back to front to serve as armrests.

It draws me in. I don't think, I just speak. "Eos."

The name leaves my lips like a memory I never made.

"Eos," I whisper again. That feeling when something lingers on the tip of your tongue, so close you taste it, yet it slips away the second you try to grasp it.

I step forward, the dust falling faster, my body compelled again to move forward. But not like before. Not like when I was inside Aston's body; be it in the bar or as a hanged corpse, his guilt-ridden face, his missing eye. His pathetic, drooling sobs, as all he believed had crumbled into dust.

This time, I walk willingly. My shoulders tense, spine stiff, but the motion is mine. Just one step from the table now, maybe thirty feet long in total. I press my hand against the surface.

Red.

Suddenly, my body erupts in color. Not flames nor pain, just a transformation. It begins at my fingernails; tiny spike-like points crawling over my skin. Not beasts, not parasites. Just the color red.

My nails vanish and veins fade. My hair is gone, and wrinkles erased, as if my body is being painted over with layers of scarlet. Thick, solid, and dry.

I run my hands over my arms. No wetness, just smooth, red flesh. I look down, noticing the scarless body, the featureless skin. My nipples, my navel. Gone. All gone. Just red, dawn-red. Scarlet.

My thoughts ignite.

"Eos! Goddess of dawn. Of hope. Of blood. Of red!"

But the name only raises more questions. Why the hell do I know this now? I didn't even know it when I told Gene my name was Eos. I hadn't thought about Greek mythology in years, if ever. But here it is. Now, clear as fucking day.

Still, none of this answers anything.

I glance down at my right arm, then mutter, "My goddamn right arm is intact."

And my voice sounds unlike mine. Raw and deep, kind of distorted, as if having a bad connection, even though the words are clear. More questions. No answers.

I begin walking along the table, trailing my hand over its surface. It's smooth and hard. Decorated with symbols—pupilless eyes, embedded in some kind of repeating pattern. A shiver crawls up my spine thinking about it; however, I don't know why.

Then my fingers hit something. A crystal, clear, and polished. It's positioned directly in front of the first throne on the right row.

There are eleven seats in total: five on each side, one at the head embracing itself with wings.

I barely have time to process it before everything shifts again. The already overwhelming red burns brighter, then becomes incandescent. Radiant. Red like light itself, bordering on white. It consumes everything, every particle, and every corner of this place.

Skyred. It blinds me like a sun, but one I have never seen before.

The crystal hums, moreover, pulses like blood in the tact of my heart. Wind bursts from it, blistering hot, licking over my skin like fire. I barely have time to react before I'm thrown again—no, not physically. My body is gone. I'm trapped. Again.

…

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My hands rest motionless. Numb, but they are present and real.

The room is dark, not void-dark, just dim. But my first instinct is panic. Am I back in the void?

No. This is different. I can feel my body, and I can feel emotions.

Anger and fear. Crushing, suffocating fear. Pain rises as this body—not mine—moves its legs. I groan silently, but this body's mouth releases a sound; a whimper, a growl, and finally a choked cry.

Water pours down this face. Tears. Salt on a dry tongue. It's all real and tangible. Grief I've known before, like back on the ships, when I was imprisoned with the others. With my brother.

But I'm not in control. Not unlike that red palace, but like back in Aston's body again.

I am just a presence now, a mere ghost in the shell. Watching through someone else's eyes, hearing through someone else's ears. Feeling everything, but hearing nothing from the mind that owns this body.

Suddenly, my head slumps forward, chin pressed against my own chest. It feels wrong—terrifying—but the strangest part is how quickly I accept it. This place, this body.

I don't even question it as deeply as I should. It takes only ten slow, measured breaths, and I begin to feel… synchronized, as if I belong here. As if I belong to this body, just like I did with Aston, the Hanged Man.

But I know nothing of this body's memories. I don't know who he is, where he is, or why I am here. Still, the light ahead draws my attention. It floods the darkness in front of him—and by extension, me. My pupils shrink violently as a single rectangle of golden brilliance cuts through the shadow, slicing it in half.

A door—a massive door.

And without warning, this body panics.

The heart thunders in the chest that now houses my awareness; muscles tense, the breath shortens. My body remembers something—something I don't—a truth buried beneath flesh and trauma. There's no clear image, no memory, just a wave of dread as suffocating as smoke.

He—I—begin to crawl backward, palms scraping along rough, asphalt-like stone, but the retreat ends quickly, because my back hits the wall.

Trapped.

My vision swims, water brimming in my eyes. The world blurs, and I look left, then right—others are here. Women, men. Dozens of us—maybe more. They tremble, shake, and panic. They feel what I feel. Something is coming.

I know it. Not logically, but instinctively. I don't want to remember, I don't want to see it; however, another part of me—a crueler part—is drawn to the light—compelled by it.

But this body resists like a fish dying on the deck of a boat—wild, jerking, hopeless. The door opens wider, and a figure enters, casting a long, distorted silhouette across the floor. He is massive—at least eight feet tall, maybe more—and he blocks the light with a body like a mountain.

I open my mouth, not in awe, but in raw, visceral fear.

"Go away!" I scream again and again. Louder this time, louder than I ever did in that red, eternal place.

"Go!"

Mucus runs from my nose, and drool from my lips. I don't care, and my voice continues to crack. I feel the grip of a massive hand clamp around my wrist—a vice. I'm yanked forward, scraped along the unforgiving ground, and the skin of my shoulder starts to burn. The side of my face grates against the stone, dry dust pressing into my inner cheek. I want to sneeze.

And then—I'm thrown.

My body spirals uncontrollably through the air, tumbling like a broken doll. Arms flail; chest spinning faster than my thoughts can keep up with. Everything blurs—faces, walls, the darkness entwines with the light.

The world turns to soft static, like a reflection in disturbed water. The calm surface was shattered by stone. Light overwhelms me.

The colors are wrong—too real, too vivid. My eyes struggle to adjust, pupils fluttering. My heart races, and my breath shudders through clenched teeth. Five full rotations—maybe more—before I finally crash, scraping to a halt.

My fingers, trembling and raw, dig into the coarse dust.

"GO DIE, SHAMELESS TONGUE!"

The voice is deep. Too deep, like bark groaning from an ancient tree. I glimpse the creature briefly, just long enough to see its massive form dyed in shades of wood and rot. Then—

Thud!

The door slams shut behind him. Screams erupt. Some of them are cheers, others agonized howls. The crowd outside the arena comes alive.

I brace for calm, but it doesn't come; instead, blood splashes against my face like rain. Not droplets—gouts. Hot and thick. It coats my lips, seeps into my eyes. My own scream is smothered by the scream of this body, which remembers far more than I do.

I crawl backward again, pain lighting up the nerves between my legs. Moving through dust, then sand, then something worse, I feel something wet. It's thick and sludgy.

Looking down, I see it.

A man—no, half a man—ripped open from the waist up. His spine is visible; flesh torn like cloth, blood flowing from his body like milk from a fresh-squeezed udder. So, red. So alive, but at the same time dead.

I stand before I even realize I've moved. Dirt clings to my bloodied hands. My eyes—my eyes—won't look away. I—this body can't even blink anymore.

The body twitches, and shortly after—slam—I'm hit again.

My side crashes into the dirt, and my lungs start to seize up. Breathing is like drowning, but still, I move forward. I roll left, get on my hands and knees. I spit blood, then gasp.

I'm surrounded.

Hundreds of men like me—some armored, some half-naked, most completely bare. All of their skin is slick with sweat, their eyes wide with terror. All of them just as lost.

I look pathetic; back hunched, knees buckling, sweat dripping into dry earth, instantly consumed by the dust. I can't even lift my head properly.

But then they start running. Men, women. All red in blood, all charging toward something. Some run with purpose, others panic blindly. They are a wall of bodies moving as one.

I lift my gaze and see walls towering, endless walls. They are circling us completely. This is no prison. It's a colosseum.

The roars confirm it. Continuous shouts, whistles, and cheers. The sound comes not from us, but from above. Spectators.

Creatures with bark for skin. Giants and monsters, towering shadows looking down from their thrones, then I look closer.

Not at the people, but at the colors; tree trunk skin, dry moss-colored eyes. Their laughter spills like boiling oil.

Then—a voice. It cuts through everything, through the screams, through the madness of agony.

"Damian!" My head snaps toward it.

A man, tall, strong, blonde, though his hair is more stubble than strands. Not a giant. Not a beast. Just... bigger human. At least a head taller than me.

"Frank!" This—my voice trembles. My legs move. Not by choice, but because they must, because this body recognizes him.

"Where's Paula?!" I shout across the distance, ten feet, maybe more.

He doesn't answer. Not yet. My feet ache, and the ground cuts into me, corns of sand grind into open flesh, and I stagger.

Then—a roar. Not human, not anything like a human.

The air vibrates, and small stones lift off the ground, hovering in mid-air as the tremor grows. This body freezes entirely.

From the monstrous spectators... to the sky above. The ceiling of this place is absurdly high, hundreds of meters. Light pours from crystalline structures—green, blue, orange, violet. Every color you could imagine.

But one light flickers. Moreover darkens. Something blots it out; a shadow, no, a creature. It leaps from the far end of the colosseum. It isn't shaped like a human, not even like another blood color.

It's a beast.

It lands with a quake. Its body is feline—too feline. All muscles and murder; claws like sabers and teeth like stakes. It roars again.

"Damian!" Frank calls out to me, his presence is like an anchor on the shore.

He grips my shoulders—hands larger than my head—trembling with something between fury and despair. "Damian!" he shouts, voice cracking halfway through the name as he jerks me back and forth, like a puppet. As if I'm not there, and suddenly I snap out of it, like I've been pulled from a trance.

"Where's Paula!?" he demands now, though I had asked the same damn thing just seconds ago.

"I don't know!" I scream, louder than I mean to.

He doesn't respond immediately. His face is still. But then the tears pour from his eyes, as if the weight of it finally crashes down on him. Yet his grip on me doesn't loosen. Not one bit.

"Get your ass out of here. Wait in the back!" he growls—not harsh, not cruel—just tired. Just worn. I see it in his face, the way it cracks. He loves her. Paula, whoever she is. No I know her. Do I?

But none of this feels real to me. None of this is mine. This emotion, this moment. It's like I've been dumped into a body that moves according to his barked orders, and now I walk, legs obeying while my mind reels. My eyes drift across the flood of humans packed into a loose line, panicked, disorganized, barely holding themselves together as they suppress something primal.

I step backward. My vision fixed ahead, even as Frank yells at someone else. And then it catches my eye. At first, it looks like a massive cat—too big to be true—but no, this isn't just a cat. It's something else. A lion, but not even that.

A beast with a mane the color of dried dirt, paws the size of heads, claws thicker than fingers—four of them, each curved like butcher's blades. And its mouth... it drips with red blood. It hisses, low and sharp. The sound sends a shiver down my spine, and in the end, my hair stands on end. I—no, he pisses himself, but I feel the pain coming from it.

I don't piss myself out of choice, not even out of fear, but out of shock. And shame follows like a shadow, a heartbeat. Two. Three.

Then laughter. A whole damn quarter of the stadium erupts in cruel amusement. At me. This body collapses to the ground, hands slapping against cold, sticky stone. Pathetic.

The creature leaps ten meters, at least, but it doesn't come for me—it goes for Frank. He's twenty meters ahead now. The lion-thing stretches out its tongue, landing with a crash so loud I feel it in my spine. Feeling my insides vibrate, I crawl back like a worm, slipping, scraping.

Why does this feel familiar?

There's something wrong with this body, or maybe with me. The fear is mine, no doubt. Real and raw. But it doesn't feel like it belongs to me. I can't explain it. I just know this body reacts on instinct, and that instinct is always retreat. Always fear. I feel it all, every damn ounce of it, and it disgusts me.

I'm pathetic. Helpless, a bystander in someone's skin.

Frank dodges the creature's slash—barely. He shouts something back, but I'm too far away to hear. The crowd has gone silent, except for the scattered whistles. The screams. Their laughter's gone, replaced by morbid fascination. They're entertained.

One man versus a monster. One human against something not human.

Tears blur my vision. They fall without permission over my naked body.

"I can't do anything," I whisper, voice cracking under the weight.

"I'm too weak!" I try to scream, but it comes out broken, merely a whisper, even to myself.

Blood smears across my limbs as I crawl over pools of it. Not my blood—someone else's. Or maybe multiple people. I stumble against a wall, cold and slick. I don't know how long it's been. Seconds? Minutes?

Frank is still fighting.

When my eyes find him again, it's right as the beast swats him aside like a toy. He flies meters, his body flailing. The lion-thing doesn't wait—it searches for new prey immediately.

The colosseum stretches far, hundreds of meters, maybe more. I can't measure properly, my head is too foggy and numb to concentrate.

Then it charges into the masses. No hesitation, and my kind starts to scream, to scatter, try to flee—but they're too slow. The creature tears through two, then four, then another three. Limbs rip, and blood sprays. Chaos consumes everything.

I glance back at Frank. He's far right now, maybe fifty meters away. He's stirring, and that barely.

The screams won't stop, and it's not the noise that gets me. It's that final scream. The one someone makes right before dying. That's what gets under the skin, that last cry of knowing it's over. That's the sound of horror.

I move, crawl, and stumble toward Frank.

Behind me, the massacre continues, but I don't look back. I can't.

When I reach him, I finally see what the others were doing. Around the edge of the mob, some of the survivors have taken down a smaller version of the beast. A cub, maybe, and they're not mourning. They're not scared.

They're looting it.

Tearing at its flesh, its fur, its teeth. Like scavengers. Some claw for pieces of ear, others for bone or tongue. It's grotesque, but it's what they've become, what they need to do to survive in this place.

A thunderous crack echoes across the colosseum, and I don't flinch, afterall, I'm numb.

I just kneel beside Frank.

His body is wrecked—bruises blooming like ink under his skin. But what hits me hardest is the bite mark on his side. Not deep, but bad enough. Blood spills freely, dripping like a broken faucet.

"Y-your—" I stammer.

He shakes his head. "I'll make it, boy." Then he coughs, hard and wet. Pain etched into every twitch. My hands curl into fists.

"I—"

"I told you," He growls, cutting me off, "I'll make it. Just be quiet for God's sake."

His voice isn't warm, not comforting anymore. It's sharp and commanding. The voice of someone who must survive—who has no space left for pleasantries.

This body lowers his head, and still, I can't help but think how pathetic all of this is.

But what could he have done? What could I have done?

Nothing. Still... pathetic.

Beep!

Suddenly, a trumpet-like sound erupts—sharp, metallic, as if the sky itself is cracking. The cheers in the crowd twist into boos, a wave of contempt crashing over the colosseum. The heavy doors—closed for what felt like minutes, maybe longer—now creak open.

I stand next to Frank, both of us breathing hard. His chest heaves as violently as mine, though where mine is panic, his is something else. It's steady and controlled, despite the sweat soaking every inch of his broad body.

Only now, through the edge of my vision, do I realize his tentacles are gone. Gone. Torn or severed—perhaps he cut them off himself. It's hard not to notice it now, even though this body doesn't let me stare directly at it. I look left, then right, frantic. My body panics more than ever before.

"Get to your chamber, boy!" Frank growls, patting my back hard enough to jolt my ribs.

We move—light jog, half ducked, all desperation. Behind us are other humans being ripped apart, one after the next, by the mud-soaked, red-blood-tainted lion. Screams blend into roaring, then into gurgling silence. My hands swing wildly, no rhythm to match my legs. I stumble twice, as if I were running from something in a nightmare.

Ahead, through the thinning dust and the echoing boos, I see the massive door in the stone-brick wall. The same door we came from. Men and women stand above it, each broad and painted like a tree, booing, spitting. They throw drinks, rocks, whatever they can reach. Some miss our heads by inches, others don't.

Beep!

Another trumpet blast. We duck further, covering our heads with our hands. Something hits my back—hard, deep, a wet thud. I snarl as pain bursts along my spine. My heart races, hammering three, no—four times every third second. My breath comes shallow, rasping through a throat scratched raw from dust. I glance back and scream loudly, my voice raw.

My first real scream in this body, one so loud even Frank hears it. "Fucking run faster!"

Frank glances over his shoulder. His face is pale, jaw clenched. I see it in his eyes—the same pulse of panic rushing through my own. Behind us, the lion runs. It's fast. Faster than anything should move, faster than any faceless or one of their orange orcs. Blood streaks its mane like ribbons of warpaint. Its eyes glow dull and in dark amber, as if the light was banished from its very being. Its maw opens.

Beep!

The loudest trumpet yet—one that pierces the air like a divine command. The stone doors begin to shut, slowly, but far too slowly.

Frank's feet hammer the ground faster than mine, even though he's wounded, torn up, and half-bleeding to death. He shouldn't be able to walk, let alone run—but somehow, he does. He runs like it's the last thing he'll ever do.

Wind and dust fly straight into my eyes. It stings, vision blurring, blinking away the sting with each stride. By the last few steps, my eyes close on their own. Lastly two hot tears break free and trail behind me.

Then—void.

I see nothing. A heartbeat stretches into an entire breath, and the darkness pulls me in.

Beep!

A scream. Mine. This body's.

My eyes snap open, lungs expanding with a gasp that feels like my last. Relief. Blood rushes like fire through my limbs. I feel it, feel it, as if the soul trapped inside this flesh is finally real again. My ears pulse with the rhythm of life, my fingertips sting, and my stomach is soaked from lying flat. My cheek is half-buried in grit.

Landing face first, I turn my head. There, a few feet away, Frank, once towering, now folded in on himself. One arm rests on his knee, the other is limp. He coughs and gives me a crooked grin before collapsing sideways onto the open wound on his ribs.

"Help! We need help!" I shout, voice raw and tearing at the end. My body moves faster than it ever has. I rise, stagger, reach out—and then it's gone.

No. No, not again—but it is. The real me—the me behind this shell—is being pulled back, dragged down. I feel it. See it. Hands—invisible but unmistakably real, translucent—pass through my chest, press against my soul, claw it back into silence.

I fall back into the dark—back into the void I left only moments ago.

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