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It was a typical Sunday night. The sort of night when the specter of the upcoming school week oppresses you, smothering even the smallest joys. I was tidying my school things, half-my-brain somewhere else, when my mom's voice echoed up from downstairs.
"Hey, Adrian! Come on down, dinner's on!"
"Coming, Mom," I complained automatically, more from habit than thought.
I slung my bag over my shoulder and started making my way down the stairs. That was when bitter reality hit me—two hours had gone by since I had eaten. The house was quiet; my family would have been sleeping. I had slept late once more, idly browsing social media, chasing the little bits of freedom night would offer.
But I just kept walking. Maybe it was just a chore that she wanted me to do. That had to be it.
"Cut the kidding around," I grumbled to myself, trying to sound mean. "Just tell me straight out if you need me to do something, Mom. I'm seventeen—I'm not a kid anymore."
But by the time I reached the kitchen, my words were caught in my throat.
A silhouette loomed in the shadows. Towering—well over two meters—dressed in a black suit that seemed to devour the faint light. His features hidden, concealed in shadow, with a hat that seemed. wrong, somehow otherworldly. Every instinct in me screamed that this was no man. He shifted, reaching toward me with his hand, moving slowly, deliberating.
Panic galled at my ribs. My lungs burned as I fought to scream, but the voice was trapped.
"Helpppp!"
Just as the scream could not even fully emerge, the world went away.
I was falling. Not through space, but through nothing—an eternal, suffocating void. No sound, no light, no smell—only an infinite black that pressed against my brain, hollow and strangling.
I shut my eyes, falling further, thoughts racking into desperation.
Is this it? I did think. After so useless, shameful a life… is this all that I am granted? A gradual, lonely death with no possibility of redemption?
Then, out in the distance, a noise pierced the desolation. A voice—gentle, distant, almost humming with an intangible strength. And with it, a light on the horizon intensified, cutting into the darkness like a blade.
Somewhere, beyond the emptiness, there was something for me. Something that was horrifying and… inevitable.