Saturday, 6:30 AM
The air was suffocating.
Wretched screams echoed from every direction. Shadowy hands writhed out of the darkness, clawing at him, pulling, dragging. He tried to run, but his legs were heavy, shackled by invisible chains. Fingers like ice wrapped around his ankles.
The sea of hands pulled him under.
Then—
That voice.
A rasping whisper, broken and strange, but undeniably his own:
Wake up.
The phrase repeated, splitting into a chorus of whispers until the whole abyss roared with it. Just before the tide of hands swallowed him whole, Williams jolted awake, drenched in sweat. His chest heaved as if he'd been drowning.
Three nights. Three nights of the same dream. Each more vivid, each more suffocating.
He sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, the early gray light pressing faintly through his curtains. The dream clung to him like damp fog.
Then the pain came.
"Ughh—!" Williams groaned, clutching his skull as a spike of ice seemed to drive straight through his temples. Veins bulged, sweat dripped. A low buzzing filled his ears, like invisible insects crawling behind his eyes.
It lasted three whole minutes. He didn't faint. He didn't scream. By now, the nightmares had dulled the shock. The first night, he had cried. The second, he had panicked. But for now—he endured.
When the pain ebbed, it left something worse: voices.
"Williams…"
"Happy birthday…"
"I like you…"
"Help me!"
Flashes. Faces. Memories that weren't his. Places he'd never seen. People he didn't know.
He sat motionless, breathing hard, listening to the noise inside his skull.
"…So I really am cursed," Williams muttered. His tone was hollow, more tired than fearful.
The fragments pressed into him like puzzle pieces from a different life forced where they didn't belong. He didn't understand them, not fully. Only that there was something else inside him, whispering. Something that woke with the fight in the alley.
It wasn't possession. Not exactly. But he wasn't alone in his own body.
And worse—he'd been changed.
He staggered to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. His reflection looked back, pale and shaken but human. For now.
He avoided the mirror's eyes anyway. Lately, his reflection twitched when he didn't.
Saturday, 7:10 AM
The air outside was cool and damp, laced with dew and the faint aftertaste of rain. Williams pulled up his hoodie, stuffed in earbuds, and forced himself into a jog. His breath fogged the morning air.
Birds chirped. Joggers passed. Normal life, like nothing had happened.
Except—
The entities were there again.
They floated at the edge of vision, translucent shapes that pulsed faintly, vibrating with wrongness. Some drifted above like bloated jellyfish, others stalked the corners of alleyways. Every time he looked directly at them, their shapes shifted, as though refusing to be described.
They had no eyes, no faces. But he knew. They were watching.
No one else reacted. A jogger ran right through one of the shapes, oblivious.
Williams clenched his jaw and ran faster. They hadn't attacked. Not yet. But their silence was almost worse than violence.
He slowed near the alley.
The place where it had happened.
In daylight, the stains were gone. No black blood, no corpse stench, no claw marks. The shadows clung unnaturally thick, but otherwise, it was as though the abomination had never existed.
"Ghosts?" Williams whispered. The word felt childish, even as his pulse quickened. "Or something worse?"
He didn't linger.
Saturday, 7:30 AM
He returned from his jog with sore legs and a clearer head. For a moment, the normal rhythm of exercise almost fooled him into calm.
"Maybe I should… use my old world knowledge, make some money." A half-smile tugged at his lips. "Except I was just a broke geek… comics, games, horror stories. Some help that is."
The laugh that followed was hollow.
A breeze passed. A whisper rode on it—indistinct, low, gone before he could catch the words.
Williams froze.
Across the street, a man waited at a bus stop. He wasn't looking at his phone, or the bus schedule, or the road. He was staring at Williams. Direct. Unblinking.
Williams swallowed hard and looked away.
Tap.
He flinched, spinning around. A cold pressure had brushed his shoulder like a finger.
No one stood behind him. The street was empty.
The skin on his arms prickled. He didn't look back again. He jogged the rest of the way home, every instinct screaming.
Inside, he locked the door and pressed his back against it, chest heaving.
"Calm down," he whispered. "Paranoid. Sleep-deprived. Just paranoid…"
Then he felt it.
Something in his pocket.
His shaking hand reached inside and pulled out a card.
He hadn't put anything there.
It was dark gray, matte, almost metallic. On the front, in silver script:
Silver Cresh
Beneath that, a number. No address. No website.
On the reverse, etched in silver ink:
To step into mystery is to resonate, transform, and ascend.
To follow the Silver Cresh is to bow to the moon and be born into a new world.
The letters shimmered faintly as his eyes traced them.
Then the air in the room vanished.
Silence crushed him. The world fell away, replaced by a cold, endless void.
Behind the veil of his mind, he saw it: a cracked silver moon hanging above an ocean of writhing ink. Tentacles surged from the depths. The moon wept silver tears that hissed as they fell.
A whisper slithered into his skull.
We see you.
His vision shattered into stars. His knees gave way. The card slipped from his fingers as he collapsed.