There was no falling.
No rising either.
Stone existed in a place without direction, suspended in something that could not decide whether it was space or absence. It had no edges, no sound, no temperature. Not dark exactly—dark implied depth. This was thinner than that. Emptier.
He tried to breathe. The instinct remained, but the need did not. His chest did not rise. His lungs did not burn. His body felt distant, like a memory that no longer belonged to him.
Then the memories came.
Not in order. Not gently.
They arrived the way glass breaks—sudden, sharp, impossible to stop.
His mother's hands first. Always her hands. Dusty with flour, warm against his cheek when she thought he was asleep. The faint scent of soap that clung to her skin no matter how hard the days were. Rain tapping against the tin roof while she hummed, soft and steady. A lullaby he pretended to hate, even as he leaned closer every time.
The memory shifted.
Sunlight on the river. Mud between his toes. Ben laughing beside him, loud and careless, the kind of laugh that made you believe the world was simple. They ran barefoot down dirt paths, boots abandoned somewhere behind them. Cuts on their palms, pressed together without hesitation. Blood shared. A promise made too young to understand, but sacred all the same.
Brothers.
Then the memories fractured.
Wood splintering under force. The cold certainty of steel biting into flesh. Ben's face above him—familiar, but wrong. The smile didn't reach his eyes. It never had. He just hadn't known how to see it yet.
The push.
The fall.
Water swallowed him whole.
Cold and heavy, pressing into his chest, forcing its way into places air was supposed to be. He tried to scream. The sound never made it past his throat. His hands reached out instinctively, searching for something solid, for Ben's arm, for anything.
There was nothing.
His lungs burned. His vision blurred. The world narrowed to pressure and silence.
That silence followed him now.
In the void, something began to move.
Not anger at first. Not hatred. Something smaller. A tight, crawling thing that started at the edges of his thoughts and worked its way inward. It whispered. It reminded. It replayed the moment over and over, sharpening it each time.
The pressure in his chest returned, but it was no longer water.
It was fire.
His jaw clenched. His hands curled, though he could not see them. The emptiness around him seemed to respond, faintly trembling, as if listening.
"Ben."
The word scraped its way out of him, raw and unfinished.
He said it again, louder this time. The sound tore through the void, leaving ripples that quickly collapsed back into nothing.
No grief remained. Not the kind that made you fold inward.
This was different. This was pointed. Focused.
"If I have to crawl through hell to get to you," he said, the words steady despite the tremor beneath them.
"If I have to burn everything that stands in my way…"
His fists tightened, nails biting into palms he could no longer feel.
"I will find you," he continued.
The vow settled into him, heavy and irreversible.
"...and I'll kill you."
The void grew colder.
Something shifted.
The emptiness thickened, pressing down on him with a weight that had nothing to do with gravity. It was attention. Awareness. The feeling of being observed by something that had been waiting long before he arrived.
From the dark, it emerged.
Tall. Still. Wrapped in shadow so dense it seemed to consume itself. There was no face, no shape that could be properly described, only the certainty of its presence. And its eyes—if they could be called that—were deep, endless wells that tugged at something beneath Stone's skin.
The voice did not speak aloud.
It resonated inside him, low and absolute.
Choose.
Two hands extended.
One was pale, soft, almost warm. It carried the promise of quiet. Of rest. Of an ending without pain.
The other was darker. Uneven. It pulsed faintly, alive with something sharp and dangerous. Power, yes—but also consequence. Continuation. Suffering with purpose.
Stone did not hesitate.
He reached for the second.
The moment his fingers closed around it, pain exploded through him. Not the pain of injury, but of change. It tore through him from the inside, rewriting something fundamental. His chest convulsed as air rushed back into lungs that suddenly remembered how to exist. Cold. Bitter. Real.
The presence leaned closer.
A whisper brushed against his thoughts, almost amused.
"Hope you don't regret what you'll become."
Then—
Stone's eyes snapped open.
Vermilion light flared in the darkness, cutting through it like a wound that refused to close.
He drew in a sharp breath.
Alive.
Cold.
And very, very hungry.
Something had returned with him.
Something else had claimed him.
This was not salvation.
It was a last chance...
One he wasn't going to waste.