White.
It stretches forever, swallowing the horizon, swallowing thought.
I wake on my back, gasping, lungs burning like they're filled with static. My chest aches where the blade struck — dark fractures, red glow, heat thrumming in my ribs — and then it's gone, ripped away like a dream I wasn't meant to keep.
I sit up too fast. The whiteness tilts, smearing like wet paint, vertigo tearing the edges of my vision until I want to claw them back into place.
Where am I…?
I try to say it, but the word dies halfway.
Not because I can't speak.
Because sound doesn't exist here.
My breath moves in and out, but there's no echo, no heartbeat pounding in my ears, not even the whisper of fabric when I shift. The surface beneath me isn't smooth, isn't rough — it just… isn't.
The silence isn't quiet.
It's watching.
I push to my feet, legs trembling, spinning in place.
No sky.
No ground.
No shadows.
Just an infinite, blinding expanse… and the gnawing certainty that I shouldn't exist here.
And then I hear it.
"In the Pale… standing still is fading."
I spin, heart pounding, but the voice threads through my skull like it's inside my thoughts.
Male? Female? Human? I can't tell.
"Who said that?!" My voice tears into the silence — or tries to. The sound lands wrong, half-muted, like the air doesn't want to carry it.
No response.
Something moves at the edge of my vision.
I whip my head right — nothing.
Left — nothing.
And then I see it.
A figure. Far ahead. Barely more than a shadow against the white.
Thin. Slow. Drifting. Its movements are wrong — no rhythm, no weight.
Relief sparks anyway. Someone else. I start forward, raising a hand.
"Hey! Do you—"
The figure flickers. Glitches, like bad reception.
Then it stretches, pulled thin like a reflection on cracked glass…
And fades.
One second it's there.
The next… gone.
Not walked away.
Not turned invisible.
Gone.
Like the world erased it.
I stagger back, breath shaking, scanning the nothingness — but there's no trace.
Not a footprint. Not a ripple in the white beneath us.
That's when I hear it again.
"Standing still is fading."
The whisper curls inside my skull, closer this time.
I turn slowly.
Behind me, twenty feet away, another figure stands.
Closer. Watching.
I didn't hear it arrive.
My throat tightens as it tilts its head unnaturally slow.
Its outline is sharp, too sharp, like someone carved it into the world with a razor.
"Who… are you?" I whisper.
The figure steps forward without answering.
One step.
Two.
The whiteness ripples beneath its feet, thin fractures spiderwebbing outward.
"Stay back!" My voice cracks.
It doesn't stop.
Five steps.
Seven.
Static blooms behind my eyes, crawling under my skin. My knees buckle. My palms slap the surface — but there's nothing to feel.
"Don't stop moving."
I don't know if the voice is mine, theirs, or the same whisper from before.
I scramble backward, forcing my body into motion.
The figure halts. Tilts its head again.
Then… it flickers.
Not like the first one. This time it splinters into fragments, each piece peeling apart like a deck of cards shuffled by static. For a second, I see a face where the fragments overlap — pale, hollow-eyed, mouth open in a silent scream — and then the whole thing scatters into a thousand broken shards of light…
And collapses into nothing.
I freeze. My breath comes fast, sharp, ragged.
Standing still is fading.
The voice again. A rule. A warning. A curse.
Something moves behind me.
I spin — ready to run — and nearly collide with him.
A man. Tall. Ragged hoodie. Dark curls matted to his forehead.
One eye is normal hazel; the other glitches, pixels shivering faintly like a cracked screen.
He grins, sharp and sudden.
"Welcome to the Pale," he says. His voice is dry, scraping, threaded with exhaustion and humor all at once. "Rule one: keep walking. Unless you like being erased."
I stare at him, swallowing hard. "Where am I?"
He gestures vaguely at the endless white. "Dead, probably. Or dreaming. Depends on how optimistic you are."
"I'm not dead."
He laughs — quiet, unsteady. "They all say that."
Then he turns and starts walking, casual like this isn't insane. I hesitate, then follow, because the alternative is standing still… and fading.
"Who are you?" I ask.
He glances over his shoulder, glitch-eye buzzing faintly. "Flicker."
"That's not a name."
"It's what's left of one."
We walk for what feels like forever — no landmarks, no change, just the soundless stretch of white — until I realize something: I haven't heard my own footsteps since I woke up.
I glance down.
There are no footprints.
Before I can ask, Flicker speaks without looking back:
"Don't bother leaving marks. The Pale eats them."
A chill slips down my spine.
"Where are we going?" I ask carefully.
"Somewhere less empty," he says, tossing something to me without warning.
I catch it on reflex. It's glass. A shard — smooth on one side, jagged on the other, faintly glowing pale blue.
"What is this?"
"Memory," Flicker says, like it's obvious. "Not yours. Don't drop it."
I freeze instinctively. "What do you mean, not mine?"
The glow flares. My vision fractures — a woman screaming, a door slamming, a white wall splitting open — and then I'm back.
I stagger, nearly dropping the shard.
"Careful," Flicker warns flatly, finally stopping. "Lose too many of those and you'll forget your name. Or worse."
"Worse?" I rasp.
He points ahead.
At first, I see nothing. Then I realize it isn't horizon — it's a vertical wound in the white, faint red static bleeding from its edges.
"The Gate," Flicker says softly. "Everyone wants through it."
I open my mouth to ask what's on the other side — but then a sound rolls across the Pale.
Not thunder.
Not wind.
Static.
Deep.
Low.
Hungry.
Flicker's grin fades. He glances back over his shoulder, glitch-eye twitching.
"Keep moving," he says sharply. "Now."
I follow his gaze — and freeze.
Far behind us, where we'd been standing, something unfolds from the whiteness.
A shadow with no owner.
Tall.
Wide.
Dripping memory like smoke.
It doesn't walk.
It slides.
And as it turns, I hear it for the first time:
"Fading."