Chapter 84
DEATH
Ravings…
Shapeless thoughts that echoed from some origin.
They whispered to the darkness, voices cosmic and fractured, trembling with ancient truths. They were voices not meant to be understood.
The darkness listened. But it did not answer.
It was unmoved.
So the ravings continued—circling endlessly, repeating their madness to the abyss.
Time passed.
Or maybe it didn't.
The ravings stopped.
The darkness remained silent.
It merely was.
My eyes snapped open.
A gasp. It was shaky and guttural.
I choked on nothing, my breath rattling from my throat like absence.
A scream sat frozen in my lungs, unable to claw its way out.
I felt fear. Not the kind that rises from the unknown. No, this was older.
This was deeper.
It was almost primordial.
My skin trembled. My breath came in fragments. I could feel sweat coating my body, cold and sour, as if even my pores remembered something I didn't.
I lay there, frozen beneath the weight of a terror I couldn't name.
A whimper broke free from my throat, soft, broken and animal-like.
It gripped me. Not fear—terror. The primal, ancient kind that crept from the corners of forgotten nightmares. It curled its fingers into my spine and held me. It made my skin crawl, my muscles twitch. It made my heart race until the pain of its pounding nearly split my ribs open.
It passed—but it didn't leave.
Instead, it settled. And hardened.
Became something dense and immovable inside my chest. A stone forged of the indescribable and unimaginable.
A weight rooted in my chest. It became part of me.
Only then did I begin to notice my surroundings.
I felt it. Cold flesh, pressed against me from every angle. Soft and silent and yielding.
Claustrophobia bloomed in my chest like a scream. A raw panic itched beneath my skin, scraping at my ribs with invisible claws.
The press of it. The stillness.
I had to get out.
Now.
I began to dig. Slowly. Carefully. Upward? Downward? I had no sense of direction. No gravity, no orientation. The corpses pressed in from every side, and I clawed through them—pulling, pushing, crawling through meat and bone and skin.
Limbs tangled like roots in a dying forest.
I didn't dig long.
Suddenly, my head burst through the top.
And what met me wasn't light.
It was silence.
Unforgivable, wailing silence.
It screamed in my ears with its absence. A deafening, endless quiet that scraped against my skull.
It rang like an ancient bell inside my ears. Piercing. Deafening. The kind of silence that could only be born from catastrophe. It howled without sound, and I trembled.
I shook like a frightened animal, knees buckling, mouth dry. The silence carved into me. Hollowed me.
When it finally faded into a scream that never went away, I stopped shaking.
I saw.
And I didn't.
There was only darkness.
True, pure darkness.
Not shadows. Not gloom.
But the absence of all.
So deep and unfathomable, it ceased to be anything at all.
Yet I could see.
Not with eyes. Not with sense.
But I saw.
And it saw me.
I closed my eyes.
I still saw.
Terror gripped me—not because I could see, but because I was being seen.
The darkness watched.
It stretched out forever—unmoving and infinite. A black so pure it erased the concept of color, of distance, of self.
I wait.
And finally got used to being watched.
I looked down.
Flesh.
Mountains of it.
Corpses.
I had clawed out of flesh.
A mountain of corpses. Naked and pale. Limp and silent. They were stacked high, twisted together.
All stripped bare—just like me.
I was naked among the dead.
I looked up—but the peak was lost in shadows. An unrelenting pull tugged at me, beckoning, demanding I ascend.
It beckons...
That I climbed.
So I climbed.
I pressed my hands into flesh, hoisted myself onto limbs and torsos.
Slowly. Deliberately. Using the corpses as steps, their cold flesh my grim foothold.
I didn't feel tired, though my body felt impossibly heavy, weighed down by the mountain's morbid gravity.
Reaching out, my hands grasped a corpse.
But something was wrong.
I squeezed, expecting just cold flesh.
Instead, I felt myself being squeezed back.
A cold shock threw me backward.
I fell into the darkness at the base of the mountain.
There was no earth beneath me—only emptiness.
And the pressing weight of bodies.
I reached out again, grabbing a leg.
It squeezed tightly in return.
Panic flared.
I squeezed harder, desperate.
Pain blossomed through me—sharp and raw.
Pain was me.
I was pain.
Clenching my fists, I pushed upwards, ignoring the agony.
As I grabbed the corpses they grabbed me back, my morbid helpers.
I climbed.
Again and again.
Upward through the suffocating mass.
I stopped.
I see a corpse that I seem to recognise.
Bryan.
But his face was gone.
No eyes.
No mouth.
Just emptiness.
How I knew it was Bryan, I couldn't say.
I tried to speak.
The silence screamed louder.
I had no questions for Bryan.
So I left him.
I climbed.
Higher.
Stopping again.
I see corpse that I seem to recognise.
Another corpse.
Leovico.
Faceless.
Cradling a body.
Jasmine.
They were locked in an eternal embrace.
I had questions.
Why sacrifice yourselves for someone you did not love?
Someone you barely knew?
They do not respond.
I left them and climbed again.
The pressure around me increased, squeezing my body with every movement.
I climbed.
And climbed.
I stopped.
I see a corpse that I seem to recognise.
A face without features.
Kon.
I have questions.
Who was your father?
Why did you promise to protect others?
Did you truly find joy in protecting others?
He does not respond.
I left and climbed.
I stopped.
I see a corpse that I seem to recognise.
Mia.
Faceless.
I had questions.
Why did you save me?
Do you regret it?
Do you hate me?
She does not respond.
I climbed, tasting something vile in my mouth—sour, bitter.
Guilt.
Regret.
A flavor I could neither swallow nor spit out.
So I climbed with the taste on my tongue.
Until it became familiar.
Bitter—but mine.
I stopped.
I see a corpse that I seem to recognise.
Ryan.
Faceless.
I had questions.
Why did you lie to me?
What is your true past?
Why do you hold so much hate?
He does not respond.
I left him and climbed.
I stopped.
Regina and Raj.
Their arms were locked tighter than any others.
Their faces void.
I had questions.
What are your pasts?
How did a husband and wife end up in the Hold?
How did you die?
They do not respond.
I left and I climbed.
I stop.
I see a corpse that I seem to recognise.
Faceless as the rest.
Kepa.
I had questions.
How did you die?
Did you enjoy the time we spent together?
He does not respond.
I climbed.
I stop.
I see a corpse that I seem to recognise.
Althea.
I had questions.
Why did you call me little brother?
What happened to your real brother?
How did you die?
She does not respond.
I left and climbed.
Again and again.
I climbed.
And climbed.
And climbed.
And with every climb, I felt a truth bloom in me.
I might never get the answers.
Ever.
These questions had no mouths to answer them.
The realization choked me.
Hurt me.
I waited.
I let that pain become part of me.
And then I accepted it.
So I climbed.
Climbed.
Climbed.
And then—
I saw it.
The peak.
I climbed faster.
I clawed and scraped.
Until—
I reached it.
And there, waiting, was a corpse.
A corpse that I seem to recognise.
It had a face.
I had questions.
It spoke first.
Am I dead?
No.
His eyes snapped open.
He lay in a hospital bed, machines humming life into his broken body.
He did not move.
He was alive.
How…?
The question died in his throat.
Because the answer came.
Not from the machines.
Not from the world.
But from somewhere inside him.
From deep within his soul.
The answer came.
Not the one he wanted.
But the only one there was.
Everything.
Every fiber of who he was screamed.
Warned.
This is it.
One more death.
And it's over.
Forever.
Nothing.
Just gone.
He let out a quiet, broken laugh.
Dry.
This is my last chance at life, huh?