A/N: From now on, chapters are going to switch between Alex's Point of View and a third person point of view. I'll make sure to clarify which one is which when the time comes.
Alex's POV
What does it feel like to die?
What does it actually mean to die?
Is it silence? Emptiness? Or is it something else entirely—a doorway, maybe, or just the end of a hallway with no more doors? I keep asking myself this, like there's an answer tucked away behind some thought I haven't fully formed. People talk about death like it's a moment—one second you're here, and the next you're not. But what happens in between? Is there even an in-between?
Do you feel it when your heart gives out, when your brain shuts down, when your body lets go of you? Or is it peaceful, like slipping into sleep, the kind where you forget you were ever awake in the first place?
And what about what's left behind? The memories people have of you—do those count as a kind of afterlife? If no one remembers you, did you even matter? Is death just the absence of breath, or the absence of meaning?
Maybe death isn't just about stopping. Maybe it's about fading, being forgotten, like a dream dissolving in the morning light. Or maybe it's none of that. Maybe it's just... nothing.
But if it's nothing, why does it scare everyone? Why does it scare me? So many questions popped up in my head in the second that passed between me falling off the bridge and me landing in the water. Unfortunately, I never did get the answer to those questions because I never died.
***
"Is he awake?"
"He just suddenly collapsed in the hallway."
"Are you sure he didn't get poisoned?"
"I hope not. If he did get poisoned, we're going to follow him to the afterlife."
Darkness. That was all I saw.
It surrounded me, wrapped me in a cold embrace. I felt it against my skin—not like wind or water, but something thicker, heavier, like a living thing pressing in on all sides. It slid across my arms like oil, clinging, suffocating. I tried to breathe, but the air was still, unmoving, like the world itself had stopped. No sound, no light, no shape. Just that crushing dark.
Was this death? Not a fiery descent or a heavenly ascent, not even the clichéd tunnel of light. Just this—stillness, weight, silence. A void that didn't echo, didn't answer. My thoughts drifted like dust in the black, slow and pointless. Time didn't feel real here. Seconds could've been hours. Or maybe they never passed at all.
I wasn't sure where I ended and the darkness began. Maybe there was no line anymore. Maybe I was the darkness now. And if I was… what did that mean? Was I meant to feel this, to linger? Or had I slipped into something deeper than death, something worse? Something forgotten?
No. I wasn't dead. The voices that sounded around me made me sure of that much. But I really couldn't call myself alive either. I was in limbo. I was stuck in between life and death, in a place where life couldn't reach and in a place that was far enough from death.
I didn't know how long I floated there. Minutes? Days? It felt like centuries. With nothing to see, hear, or touch, my mind wandered. I relived memories I thought I'd forgotten—faces, names, fragments of laughter, the smell of burning toast, the sound of rain hitting the windows on a lonely night. They didn't come in order, and they didn't stay long. They just... flickered. Like fireflies in a jar I couldn't open.
My thoughts turned to regrets, then. Always regrets. Things I said, things I didn't say. The way I used to stare at my foster parents' closed door, wondering if this was the night they'd finally kill each other or me. The nights I curled up on the floor, hugging my knees, praying for something—anything—to change. And then that last night. That final choice. The blood. The silence afterward. The bridge.
What if I'd waited one more day?
What if someone had reached out first?
What if I'd written a different ending?
But regret is a useless thing when there's no one left to hear your apology. When there's no going back, no second draft.
I started talking to myself just to hear something—to fill the void with a voice. Even my own. I muttered nonsense, old song lyrics, stupid jokes, lines from books I once read and barely remembered. Anything to remind myself that I existed. That I was still something.
And while I was passing time in the darkness, days, weeks, months after I was trapped in the darkness... it came. It was just a flicker at first, something very small. A pinprick. A fracture. A thread of light so faint I thought it was a trick of my imagination.
But it wasn't. It grew. Slowly at first, then faster. It tore at the darkness that surrounded me, pulling me out of it. The void hissed as it fought back, clinging to me, but the light kept growing. It wrapped around me, not like warmth, not like salvation, but like exposure—raw and real. Like stepping outside after being buried alive.
And then it was blinding. So much that I couldn't even see. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the light was inside my eyelids, too. It burned away the shadows I'd gotten used to. It ripped apart the silence. It was everything the darkness wasn't.
And then I could see.
Blurred shapes at first. A ceiling. A room. Walls that weren't familiar. Voices—clearer now, no longer muffled by distance or sleep.
"I think he's waking up."
"About time."
"He's been unconscious for weeks"
Eyes. Watching me. The air felt different. Heavy with something I couldn't name. I sat up slowly, every muscle stiff, like I hadn't moved in years. My fingers twitched. My heart stuttered in my chest.
And as I looked around for the first time in eternity, taking in my surroundings—the strange room, the unfamiliar faces, the bizarre clothing, the air that smelled like rain and fire and something not of Earth—only one thought remained in my mind.
Where the fuck am I?