Next thing that appears was more lights.
They started as tiny pinpricks, flickering like dying stars against the infinite white expanse around him. The moment they appeared, the voices amplified tenfold in excitements, rising to a volume that made his ears ache and his jaw clench.
The sound wasn't just heard—it was felt, reverberating through his bones and making his very soul tremble.
The lights danced erratically, appearing and disappearing in rapid succession. Each flicker brought a new wave of sound, a new layer to the overwhelming symphony of voices. Some lights lasted mere seconds before fading into nothingness, while others pulsed steadily like ethereal heartbeats.
But there was a one light that appeared differently.
It materialized directly beside him, close enough that he could feel its warmth against his skin. Unlike the others, this light didn't flicker or fade. Instead, it grew brighter and brighter, more solid, taking on substance and form. Aryan watched in fascination and growing unease as the light began to form itself into a recognizable shape.
First it was only outline—tall and slender, distinctly human. Then the details emerged with startling clarity. Long, raven-black hair that moved and swayed despite the absence of any wind. The strands seemed to have a life of their own, flowing like liquid silk in slow, hypnotic waves. A white dress materialized next, its fabric appearing to be woven from moonlight itself, gleaming with an inner radiance that made it seem almost alive.
The figure was undeniably that of a girl, standing close enough that Aryan could have reached out and touched her. Yet her face remained hidden from him, turned away as if she were looking toward something he couldn't see. Despite this, an overwhelming sense of emotion radiated from her presence—a profound sadness that seemed to seep into his very being, accompanied by a coldness that had nothing to do with temperature.
The sorrow was so intense it made his chest tighten and his breath catch. It was the kind of grief that spoke of loss beyond measure, of hopes shattered and dreams turned to ash. The coldness was different—not the absence of warmth, but the presence of something far more unsettling. It was the coldness of isolation, of being utterly and completely alone in existence.
Next moment, the earth beneath his feet began to tremble.
The vibration started as a gentle tremor, barely noticeable through the soles of his feet. But it quickly intensified, becoming a violent shaking that threatened to knock him off balance. The perfect white tiles began to crack and shift, their geometric precision dissolving into chaos.
From the encompassing darkness at the edge of his vision, new lights appeared—but these were not lights at all. They were pairs of eyes, glowing with an eerie green luminescence that seemed to pulse with malevolent intent. Eight pairs of eyes, suspended in the darkness like ethereal sentinels, positioned themselves around Aryan and the mysterious girl, creating a boundary that felt both protective and imprisoning.
But there was something else in the darkness, something that made his blood freeze in his veins. Above the ground, suspended in the air like death itself, was a dark shadow—formless yet unmistakably present. The shadow seemed to absorb what little light reached it, creating a void within the void. And within that terrible darkness, a pair of glowing white eyes stared directly at him, unblinking, filled with an ancient malice that made his soul recoil in terror.
The green glow cast strange shadows across the white floor, transforming the pristine marble into something sinister and alien. The girl's white dress took on an otherworldly shimmer in the green light, making her appear even more ethereal and distant.
Without warning the girl began to flee and the direction she was going make Aryan's heart cramped.
With no sound, she ran directly toward one of the pairs of glowing green eyes in the darkness. Her white dress billowed behind her like wings, and her black hair streamed in her wake. She moved with a fluid grace that seemed to defy the laws of physics, her feet barely touching the cracking tiles as she raced toward the mysterious entities that watched from the void.
"Wait!" Aryan called out, though his voice sounded strange and distant in the chaotic din. But she didn't stop, didn't even slow down. She continued her desperate flight toward the impenetrable darkness, growing smaller and smaller until she was nothing more than a white speck against the void.
The voices behind him transformed into something far worse—screaming. The sound was deafening, filled with terror and anguish that made his blood run cold. It was as if a thousand souls were crying out in unison, their voices joining together in a harmony of despair that threatened to drive him mad.
Aryan spun around to face the source of the screaming, but what he saw made his heart stop. The white floor was disintegrating, the perfect tiles crumbling away to reveal an abyss of absolute darkness beneath. The void was rising, consuming everything in its path with hungry determination.
The destruction spread outward like spider's web from where he had been standing, moving toward him with impossible speed. Chunks of marble tumbled into the darkness and disappeared without a sound, as if they had never existed at all. The green lights flickered frantically, their glow growing dimmer as the darkness approached.
Aryan tried to run, tried to follow the girl's path toward the distant edge of his vision, but his legs felt heavy and unresponsive.
The screaming grew louder, more desperate, and he realized with growing horror that some of the voices were calling his name.
The darkness was almost upon him now, the floor beneath his feet beginning to crack and sag. He could feel the void pulling at him, trying to drag him down into its depths. The cold emanating from the abyss was absolute, a complete absence of warmth, light, and hope.
In that final moment, as the last of the white tiles crumbled away and he began to fall into the consuming darkness, Aryan's eyes snapped open.
The first sensation that reached him was warmth. a gentle, flickering heat that danced across his face and arms. His eyes, still heavy with the lingering traces of that terrible dream, slowly focused on the source.
A small ugly fire pit crackling just a few feet away from where he lay. The flames cast dancing shadows in the growing darkness, their orange glow a stark contrast to the cold white light of his nightmare.
Aryan found himself propped against the rough bark of a large tree trunk, his body aching in ways that made every small movement a conscious effort. The night had arrived while he'd been unconscious, but traces of twilight still clung to the western sky, painting the world in deep purples and grays.
He could hear the distant murmur of water—not the thunderous roar of the waterfall, but the gentler sound of a river flowing somewhere beyond the trees.
It seems he was some distance from shore, sitting in what appeared to be a small clearing surrounded by dense forest. The air was cool and carried the scent of wood smoke, damp earth, and something else—something that reminded him of rain and growing things.
As consciousness fully returned to him, the memories began to piece themselves together like fragments of a fractured mirror. The confrontation with Ranjir. The sickening moment when Ranjir's feet had connected with his chest, sending him tumbling backward off the rocky ledge.
The waterfall. He remembered the waterfall now—the way time had seemed to stretch as he fell, the world spinning around him in a chaos of sky and stone and rushing water. He remembered hitting the surface, the brutal impact that had driven the breath from his lungs, and then the current had taken him. The river had swallowed him whole, dragging him down into its churning depths where light couldn't reach and the only sound was the roar of water filling his ears, his nose, his mouth.
Darkness had followed. Not the supernatural darkness of his dream, but the simple, terrifying darkness of drowning.
The memory made him shiver despite the fire's warmth, and he pulled his arms closer to his chest, only then realizing that his clothes were dry. Someone had built this fire. Someone had pulled him from the water, brought him to this place, tended to him while he lay unconscious.
As he shifted against the tree trunk, a sharp pain shot through his right shoulder, and he looked down to discover it had been carefully bandaged. The makeshift dressing was fashioned from what appeared to be torn strips of his own shirt sleeve—the fabric was unmistakably the same deep blue cotton he'd been wearing.
The bandaging was expertly done, tight enough to provide support but not so tight as to cut off circulation. Whoever had tended to his wounds knew what they were doing.
Then his eyes caught the movement on the other side of the fire pit.
Someone was there.