"There is no hell crueler than the one crafted by your own regrets."— Unknown
One second Elias was flying through the sky, wind in his hair, fire in his blood
Trying to piece together the puzzle of the world and his place in it.
He'd just cracked it. Just started understanding.
And then
Darkness.
Not "lights off" darkness.
The kind you hear.
The kind that presses in, like the inside of your own eyelids trying to crush your skull.
Like someone transferred him somewhere... else.
No weight.
No time.
No direction.
Just the feeling that something ancient had finally found you again.
And it was smiling.
"…Hello?"
His voice barely echoed.
It was like shouting underwater.
Or worse, shouting inside your own grave.
He reached for his power.
Nothing.
No dimension-stepping.
No sound-bending.
Just Elias.
Alone.
Then, a breath.
Not his.
It wasn't even air.
It was like the void itself exhaled.
And a shape began to take form ahead of him,
Not walking toward him.
Just... appearing closer.
Every time he blinked, it was closer.
Until it was right in front of him.
A being.
He looked exactly like the one who tried to make Elias remember something when Elias and his crew were trying to escape from the initiatives.
But not like before.
It just stood there, human-shaped around 50 feet tall, made of solid black.
Like a hole in the fabric of reality.
"Who the hell are you?"
Elias asked.
A little shakily.
Trying to stay cool.
It didn't respond.
Just raised its hand.
And pointed behind Elias.
He turned.
And the world around him ripped open like paper.
He was standing in a living room now.
A familiar one.
Carpeted.
Dim yellow lights.
A fan spinning slowly above.
TV crackling static in the background.
"This is…"
He blinked.
His home.
He walked forward,
Or maybe his soul walked forward, because he wasn't sure his body even existed in this place.
The moment he stepped onto the rug-
CRACK.
His left leg snapped backward at the knee like someone kicked it with a sledgehammer.
He screamed
Real. Raw. Loud.
No teeth-gritting resolve.
Just a boy screaming in pain.
He fell to the floor.
And the second his face touched the carpet
Death began.
It started small.
With the feeling of something crawling under his skin.
A tingle.
Like ants.
Then needles.
Then blades.
He looked at his hands,
Swollen.
Skin bulging outward.
Something was inside him.
Moving.
"NO—NO NO NO—"
He scratched at his forearm.
And the second his nail dug into the skin-
His entire arm split open like rotten fruit.
Inside?
Not muscle.
Not veins.
Worms.
Thousands.
No, millions.
Wriggling.
Alive.
"GET OUT—GET OUT GET FUCKING OUT OF ME—"
He was sobbing now.
Screaming through snot and spit and agony.
He tore at his chest.
Worms.
He clawed at his face.
Worms.
His tongue?
Slithered out on its own.
Not his.
Never was.
"I'M NOT—THIS—THIS ISN'T REAL—"
And then came the worst part.
The TV turned on behind him.
And on it?
Him.
Sitting in that same living room.
But smiling.
Normal.
Happy.
Safe.
He turned around.
And the being was there.
Watching.
And it finally spoke-
"Let's begin."
And the worms?
Started biting.
From the inside.
He didn't die fast.
He died slow.
Choking on his own screams.
Biting down on nothing, as his own bones tried to climb out through his throat.
And when it ended-
There was no fade to black.
Just a whisper.
"Again."
When Elias opened his eyes again,
He was still screaming.
There was no reset.
No "wake up in a cold sweat" moment.
No slow crawl back to sanity.
Just the sound of his voice. Already hoarse.
Already breaking.
And the moment he coughed up his own spit-
It came out red.
He touched his mouth.
No worms.
No teeth.
Just… silence.
He was kneeling now.
Barefoot, in a narrow white corridor.
Clean. Sterile.
A hallway made of mirrors.
Everything around him reflected his own shape.
His broken posture. His raw face. His terror.
But none of them matched his movements.
Each reflection twitched differently.
One smiled.
One bled from the ears.
One's face had no eyes.
Elias stood up slow, knees buckling, arms shaking.
"No... no, I already—"
But then the light changed.
A door opened at the end of the corridor.
No handle. No sound.
Just the slow, slithering slide of something being welcomed in.
From that doorway came-
The Knives.
It didn't walk in.
It grew in.
Metal began blooming out of the ground like flowers.
Or tumors.
Jagged, glassy blade-bones piercing up through the tile like hungry mouths.
Elias stepped back
And the hallway closed behind him.
"You gotta be kidding me—"
The door was gone.
Just him.
And the hallway.
And the thing at the end, which wasn't a thing—
It was a room made of intelligence.
An idea made flesh.
He started running.
Too late.
The floor vanished.
He fell again—but only five feet.
Right onto a cold slab of marble.
Straps locked around his wrists.
His ankles.
He didn't fight.
There was no time.
A voice inside the mirrors whispered:
"Let's remove the layers."
And the blades began to move.
Not fast.
Not like guillotines.
They rotated.
Like windchimes made of razors.
Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.
And they hovered closer.
Their edges whispering.
The first blade sliced across his thigh.
He laughed.
Not because it was funny.
But because it barely hurt.
He still had his wit.
Still had his mind.
Then the second blade hit.
And didn't stop.
It was like a needle that kept threading into his muscle—
Pulling the skin apart.
Lifting it.
Folding it.
Like origami.
Elias began screaming again.
"STOP—PLEASE, STOP—"
He couldn't see who he was begging.
Maybe God.
who were now watching gleefully.
The third blade came down on his shoulder,
And didn't slice.
It peeled.
Like a can opener.
It opened his back muscle in a spiral.
Until his ribs poked through.
And from within the ribs—
More blades bloomed.
They weren't stabbing him.
They were growing out of him.
Like his body was a garden of knives.
His veins?
Slit and hung like garlands.
His eyes?
Not gouged.
Boiled.
Until they burst with a quiet pop, and bled down his cheeks like hot wax.
And all he could do was scream.
Scream and scream until his throat flayed itself raw against his own voice.
And that's when the mirrors began to laugh.
The walls broke.
And his reflections came to life.
One climbed on top of him, holding a saw.
It didn't hesitate.
It pushed the saw into his jaw.
Horizontally.
Like it wanted to see what sound his scream would make if it came out sideways.
It didn't kill him.
It just... watched.
Until another reflection took a hammer—
And began tapping each of his teeth into the back of his throat.
"K I L L M E"
He croaked it through shattered cartilage.
"I'M NOT—I'M NOT REAL I'M NOT REAL I'M NOT—"
The voice returned.
Not a whisper.
A thought.
"You are more real than you've ever been."
And then came the final blade.
Long.
Straight.
Unassuming.
It didn't stab.
It pressed down on his forehead—
And split him from crown to pelvis.
Cleanly.
Softly.
Lovingly.
And again...
No fade to black.
Just the voice.
"Again."
And the mirrors vanished.
He was standing.
He didn't remember how—
or why—
or when.
There was just a spotlight.
A single white circle in a black infinity,
casting his shadow in every direction like roots.
He couldn't move his feet.
"What is this now..."
The voice didn't come out.
It just stayed inside his skull, ricocheting like a marble in a box.
And then—
The floor moved.
No, not the floor.
The ground beneath his skin moved.
Like the earth under him had lungs.
And it was breathing.
And then—
He heard them.
Not from behind.
Not from the dark.
From under his skin.
A voice. His own.
"Help me—"
From inside his elbow.
Another one—
"Why didn't you stop it?"
—from his tongue.
Then—
The lights flickered.
And he was no longer standing in a spotlight.
He was standing in a theater.
The audience?
Hundreds of people.
Sewn together.
Skin to skin.
Faces warped into each other, screaming as one.
Eyes stitched open.
Mouths sewn closed—except one.
The one in the middle.
A choir of skin.
And they began to sing.
The sound wasn't music.
It wasn't even noise.
It was remorse.
It was the exact frequency of guilt,
played across the vocal cords of every version of himself.
Elias clutched his ears.
Now they were all inside him.
A sound built behind his eyes.
Not pain.
Rejection.
His body was trying to vomit itself out of his own brain.
As if every memory—every timeline—was rejecting being remembered.
The choir began again.
"EVERY. SINGLE. VERSION. OF YOU. IS A COWARD."
The stitched faces began to pull apart.
The thread snapped.
And the skin fell open like petals.
Each one revealing a face.
A real one.
People he knew.
People he hurt.
People he loved.
Reis — face burned beyond recognition, whispering "you caused this."
Seraph — crying blood, chained in silence.
And in the center—
Sienna.
Eyes wide.
Hands extended.
But her fingers weren't reaching out.
They were pointing.
At him.
And then,
the stage fell apart.
The seats crumbled.
The choir collapsed into a pile of flesh and blame,
oozing toward him like a sentient flood of guilt.
It touched his ankle.
And he screamed.
Not in pain.
In recognition.
Because the moment it touched him—
He felt every regret he ever tried to forget,
All of them… replayed.
In real time.
He tried to run.
No legs.
He tried to beg.
No throat.
He tried to close his eyes.
They'd been peeled off.
He felt a thousand hands crawl into his mouth.
Fingers crawling down his throat.
Claws dragging out words he never meant to say.
"You're weak."
"You're not worth saving."
"They all died because of you."
And finally—
The faces melted.
All of them.
Dripping down into a pool of black tar.
And from the center rose a mirror.
Just one.
And in the reflection.
Was not Elias.
But a throne made of corpses.
And a version of him smiling on top.
Wearing every timeline like a crown.
Then the being's voice came again.
Not angry.
Cold.
"You think power makes you special."
"You think pain makes you worthy."
"You haven't even scratched the surface of what it means to be remembered."
The mirror shattered.
The screams stopped.
Elias dropped to the floor.
And this time.
He didn't even cry.
He just laid there.
Breathing.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
Like a broken radio stuck on repeat.
Alive.
Somehow.