Ren was falling.
But there was no wind. No gravity. No floor below him. Just empty space that never ended.
He didn't feel his body. His arms, his chest, his legs—gone. Or maybe still there, just… not real anymore. Everything that once gave him shape was missing. He couldn't breathe, but still felt the old instinct—lungs clenching, heart racing.
None of it worked. But the memory of pain remained.
And he was still burning.
Not just inside his thoughts. It was real to him, the feeling of fire crawling across his skin, licking at muscle, digging into bone. He couldn't scream, but the pain didn't care. It just kept going.
Then something changed. The space around him rippled.
He fell into something that looked like water. It wasn't. It moved like it, pulled like it, but it was thicker. Heavier. Alive.
And full of people.
No not people. Souls.
They floated in the dark fluid. Dozens at first. Then hundreds. Some still looked like human shapes. Others didn't. A head drifted past, eyes wide open, mouth stretched in a soundless scream. A ribcage twisted like a birdcage floated nearby, pulsing faintly. A woman's face passed by without a body. Then just the face broke into two and sank beneath the surface.
Ren tried to pull away, but he didn't have muscles. Didn't have limbs. He was just… awareness. Trapped inside something formless. But the pain was still there. Still hot. Still digging in like nails under the skin.
And the ocean pressed in.
It had no color, but the shadows inside moved. They whispered, not in any language, but in noise—low, broken murmurs that scratched at the edge of thought. A thousand whispers, layered on top of one another. Like he was underwater at the edge of a nightmare.
He tried to speak. Nothing came out.
He tried to move. Nothing responded.
Only the current pulled.
And it pulled hard.
Ren saw another soul beside him. It had no face anymore. Just smooth flesh where eyes and a mouth should have been. It didn't look at him. Just drifted, slowly, as if waiting to forget everything.
He could feel something watching. Not a creature. Not a god. Just the ocean itself. Like it was waiting for him to break.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been falling.
But he knew something was deeply wrong.
This wasn't death.
It was something worse.
And it wasn't over.
The Soul Ocean was not still.
It moved with weight. Not like water but like pressure, like judgment. It wrapped around Ren from every side, not crushing him, but pushing. Testing. Waiting for him to let go.
It didn't rage. It didn't roar. It didn't need to. It simply leaned in—heavy, constant, alive.
And it wanted him to forget.
He felt it in how the current pulled his mind sideways. How his thoughts slipped loose like threads unraveling from old cloth. He would think of something his name, a face and feel it slide out of reach. Not stolen. Just… gone.
He saw what happened to those who let it happen.
The souls around him floated in strange shapes. Some had no heads. Others had mouths where eyes should have been—stitched closed, but still twitching, like they wanted to scream. One drifted by with a baby's torso sewn onto a large adult head, its limbs flapping uselessly as it sank deeper into the dark. Another was nothing but a spine, teeth embedded along each vertebrae, whispering as it moved like a fish.
These weren't hallucinations.
They were what the soul became when stripped of memory and shape.
Ren watched one dissolve in front of him. A man, maybe, with hollow eyes and hands like bird claws. It floated for a while, then cracked at the edges. Its body crumbled like dry leaves, flaking into pieces and then into dust. A moment later, it was just another ripple in the Ocean.
They weren't fighting it.
They wanted it.
The pain was too much, and forgetting was a kind of mercy.
Ren felt that pull too. Not just around his shape, but inside it. His memories stuttered. He remembered the hallway. Then it was gone. He remembered Callie's voice. Then he forgot the sound. He remembered his own name—Ren Ashvale. But even that flickered.
He was slipping.
And the Ocean welcomed it.
Forget, it seemed to whisper. It's easier. Just drift. Let go.
But something pushed back. Something quiet and stubborn.
No.
The pain had taken everything else, but not that.
Not yet.
He remembered.
Not all of it. Just enough.
His name. Ren. His clinic. The flower shop downstairs. The faint smell of jasmine. Callie's note on his desk, her voice in the breakroom, teasing him. The lighter. The fire. The sound of the door that wouldn't open.
That memory came back sharp.
Too sharp.
And the moment he remembered it, he was back inside it.
He was burning.
He wasn't in the Ocean anymore. He was on the clinic floor. The carpet melting under his knees. His hand on the doorknob. Callie screaming from behind it.
It played like a film reel stuck on repeat.
The lighter clicked.
The bottle smashed.
The fire rose.
He ran.
The door wouldn't open.
He burned.
And again.
And again.
Each time it changed.
In one loop, the fire came from his mouth.
In another, he stood in the hallway and watched it happen, frozen.
Then there was a loop where he held the lighter himself. Smiling.
Then one where Callie lit it. And said, "Happy birthday."
Then one where he wasn't alone. Dozens of people stood in the clinic, watching him burn. Applauding.
It kept going. Loop after loop after loop. Like a punishment. Or a test.
And something inside him began to crack.
He lost track of how many times he died.
He lost track of time entirely.
And then he started to forget again.
It wasn't fast. It was subtle. He'd watch the fire burn and then forget why it scared him. He'd hear Callie's scream and forget her face. The pain was always there, but the meaning started to slip.
The Ocean didn't stop him.
It waited.
It let him burn, again and again, until the fire didn't even hurt anymore until it felt normal.
Until it almost made sense.
Until he didn't remember who started it.
Then, something broke. Not him. Something else.
A voice echoed in his head.
Not someone else's. His own.
"Pain is a place. You don't live there. You pass through."
He had said that to someone once. A patient, maybe. Or maybe to himself.
It felt real.
He repeated it. Out loud. Or in his mind. It was hard to tell the difference here.
"Pain is a place. You don't live there. You pass through."
The loops paused.
The fire froze mid-air.
The screaming stopped.
And the Ocean rippled.
The Ocean didn't like being denied.
Ren could feel it shift.
Not violently. Not with anger.
It simply changed its approach.
The fire vanished. The loops ended. The pain didn't stop but it took a step back, like it was watching now. Waiting.
Then came the visions.
They weren't memories. Not exactly. They were wrong. Off by just enough to be unsettling. Like someone had tried to recreate his life from a blurred photo and a bad guess.
He stood in his clinic, but the walls were made of skin. Veins pulsed across the ceiling. The carpet twitched underfoot. The windows weren't glass—they were mouths. Dozens of them. Whispering. Smiling. Crying.
He turned. His chair was there. But sitting in it was a version of himself—clean suit, calm posture, eyes empty.
The double spoke without moving its lips.
"You're not real.""You're just the echo that burned last.""There's nothing left to fix."
Ren blinked—and the vision shifted.
He stood at the base of a staircase made of fingers. They curled under his feet as he climbed. They twitched. Clawed at him. Tried to pull him down.
He climbed anyway.
At the top was a door.
Callie stood behind it. Smiling. Her head was tilted at the wrong angle. Her hair moved, but there was no wind. Her eyes were wide and dry and glassy.
"You're late," she said. "It's your turn."
"My turn for what?" he asked.
"To burn again," she said.
Then she pulled off her face.
It didn't fall like skin.
It folded open, like paper soaked in oil.
Underneath was something else. Not a skull. Not a monster. Just light. Blinding and silent.
Ren stumbled back.
Another shift.
Now he was in his childhood home.
His mother stood on the ceiling. Her dress hung downward like wet cloth. Her limbs were too long. Her eyes were all black.
She sang a lullaby he hadn't heard since he was five.
But the words were wrong.
Not misspoken just… wrong. They dripped from her mouth like oil. The song slowed, then reversed, playing backward in long, syrupy tones.
Ren tried to speak.
His throat was full of ash.
He coughed. Nothing came out.
He fell to his knees.
And then
The clinic again.
This time, everything was normal.
His desk. The files. The soft hum of the air conditioner.
He sat across from a patient.
Martha Wynn.
She looked normal too.
Not burning. Not smiling.
Just sitting.
"You didn't help me" she said calmly.
"I tried"
"You saw the signs. You ignored them"
"I was careful"
"You were proud"
Ren opened his mouth, but no words came.
"You always wanted to be the one who could save people" she said.
She stood, walked over, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Her fingers felt real. Warm.
She leaned close.
"I'm still burning, Doctor Ashvale"
He looked down.
His skin was on fire again. Quietly. Like it had never stopped.
She stepped back. The flames grew.
The ceiling peeled open. The walls turned inside out.
And the vision collapsed.
But Ren stayed still.
He didn't scream. He didn't run. He didn't plead.
He just whispered,
"This isn't real"
The hallucinations twisted again.
They flickered, faded.
The priest with no mouth appeared once more, standing beside a bell made of braided hair. But this time, he didn't ring it. He bowed his head and walked past.
His mother didn't speak. She sat beside him and hummed softly.
The clinic melted into something else a library.
Endless shelves, packed with books that bled black ink into the air.
"This isn't Fucking real!!!"
The illusions fade