Silence.
Total.
No light.
No sky.
No breath of wind, no whisper of presence.
Only that deep, velvet black — the kind of black that isn't color, but memory, absence, unspoken thought. It wrapped around Kylo like an ocean with no bottom. A place that felt like drowning without the courtesy of water.
His limbs hovered in the dark. Or sank.
He couldn't tell.
He couldn't even be sure if he still had a body.
It felt like falling into the part of yourself you keep buried — a place beneath thought, beneath fear. The space where forgotten prayers rot.
"No. No. No. I have to wake up."
But the words never left his mouth.
There was no mouth.
Only thought, folding inward.
Then —
Click.
A mechanical sound. Familiar.
The sound of a hammer being drawn back.
A revolver.
But not his.
And just beside him — not seen, but felt —
Breathing.
Close. Heavy. Intentional.
And then—
BANG.
The shot didn't echo — it cracked. Like a fault line splitting in his skull.
Glass without glass.
Sound without space.
And in the aftermath…
Light.
Faint. Blurred. As if the void had blinked.
Kylo's body returned. He could feel again — back pressed against leather, warmth blooming under his spine. The smell of something faintly synthetic. A hum.
His eyes opened, slow. Sluggish.
He was inside a car.
Outside the windows, figures moved through a pale, unyielding fog. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Not people. Souls. Cloaked in black. Featureless. They drifted like mourners through fog that didn't lift — umbrellas held tight despite the absence of rain.
Around him, a long line of cars stretched endlessly along the bridge — their metal shells dulled by time and shadow, headlights long extinguished, windows dark and vacant. The bridge itself arched above an abyss swallowed in mist, its steel bones groaning faintly beneath the weight of silence. The souls moved silently between the stalled vehicles like an endless funeral procession, their footsteps absorbed by the thick fog that swallowed sound and light alike.
And the sky?
"What the…"
He whispered it — because he had to.
Above him, an eclipse bloomed.
But not just one.
Two suns, devouring each other — slow, brutal, deliberate.
And far beyond, two moons drifted apart like estranged lovers, pulling the sky in opposite directions.
It wasn't darkness.
It was bruised light.
The color of a sky that didn't know what it was mourning.
He sat up, heart hammering in his chest.
Passenger seat.
Then — knock.
The side window.
Something was there.
A face — or something pretending to be one — pressed against the glass. A shifting mass of ash and smoke. Skin like torn celluloid. It didn't move like the others. It watched.
It saw him.
Kylo's hand reached for the familiar weight at his side.
The revolver was there — holstered, waiting, like it had never left.
He drew it, slow.
Cock.
Aim.
But before he could fire —
The thing turned.
Not out of fear.
It was looking at something.
Kylo followed its gaze.
Her.
A figure stood atop the long line of unmoving cars like a judge presiding over a war crime. Tall. Composed. Her black suit flared in the wind like it was stitched from shadows.
In her hands: a weapon — a sword, or some ancient idea of one. Not forged from steel, but from glitching cubes of obsidian code.
The blade moved.
So did she.
With inhuman grace, she leapt between vehicles, carving through souls like chalk, her blade humming with low, digitized screams. Ash fell like snow. The dead became dust.
Then — she paused.
She looked at him.
Blue eyes — piercing, electric, human.
A mirror.
A witness.
And then —
She jumped.
Off the bridge.
"Wait… Did she just—"
She was gone. But hope remained — coiled in his throat like a scream he hadn't earned.
"She saw me… She's like me."
Not dead. Not a soul.
Alive.
He moved.
Pulled the door handle —
Locked.
Slammed his fist —
Nothing.
Frustration rose in him like static. Shooting the window crossed his mind — but so did the noise. So did the souls.
He climbed into the driver's seat.
Breathing harder now.
He opened the glovebox.
Inside —
Two dice.
One black. One white.
Not plastic. Not carved.
Heavy. Ancient.
Marked by dim, indented eyes — like something had watched through them once and fallen asleep.
He held them.
And outside —
The eclipse shifted again.
The two suns began to merge.
The moons unraveled, vanishing into nothing.
And the souls —
They had stopped walking.
They were watching.
"Shit… what do these dice do?"
And then —
They jumped.
Not thrown.
They moved.
Leapt from his hand to the passenger seat. Began to spin wildly.
White: six.
Black: four.
Then a voice.
It filled the space. Not with sound, but with weight. Like ancient stone pressed behind his eyes.
"The wager is accepted. Let the Dice cast fate upon the vessel."
Pain exploded in his head.
Not migraine —
Rewriting.
Like something was inserting thoughts into a space that didn't fit them.
And then —
Nothing.
Silence again.
His vision cleared.
He looked up.
The eclipse had ended.
The two suns had merged into one.
The moons — gone.
And the souls?
They were walking toward him.
Slow.
In sync.
Unified.
"Fucking dice wasted my time."
He reached for the revolver.
A bell tolled.
One sharp, singular note — ancient and hollow — like the echo of a cathedral long forsaken, its god silent and absent.
Then—
Stillness.
Time folded into itself.
The wind stilled, light froze midair, and breath hung suspended like a secret held too long.
And then—
Hands.
Too many hands.
Pale as moonlight. Cold as forgotten graves.
Ten fingers became twenty, then countless more, crawling up his chest, around his neck, clutching at the edges of his skull.
Not gripping. Pulling. Dragging him into the unseen.
And then—
He was torn from the car.
Not through the door.
Not through the window.
Through the very fabric of steel, glass, atoms themselves.
His body spiraled, weightless and undone.
Time imploded inward.
And then—
He gasped.
Air rushed back like baptism.
Light shattered the darkness.
Gravity pulled him home.
Kylo slammed onto the asphalt.
Knees cracking against cold concrete.
His hands scrambled for purchase—one splayed against the road, the other clutching his chest as if anchoring a newfound heartbeat.
Alive.
Breathing.
Eyes blinking.
Once.
Twice.
The fog thinned—just enough.
And there, looming like a corpse risen from dream's abyss—
A mall.
Monolithic. Watching.
Its name flickered, pale neon bleeding into the gloom:
RUEL.