Adrian awoke to silence.
Not the comforting kind. Not the absence of noise. This silence pressed against him, heavy and unnatural, as if the entire Dimensional had gone still just to watch him breathe.
And then he realized—he wasn't breathing.
His chest rose, but there was no air. His lungs expanded, but no breath entered. Instead, the spirals along his skin pulsed, and he felt the Dimensional feeding him.
You don't need air anymore, it whispered. You need me.
He staggered upright, clutching his chest, but the moment his feet hit the floor, his legs bent wrong. His knee twisted too far inward, his ankle rotating ninety degrees before snapping back into place like nothing had happened.
Adrian screamed, collapsing onto all fours—
—and his fingers elongated, stretching like wax in heat, then snapping back with a wet crack.
The pain was unbearable. Yet some sick part of him felt… relief. Like his body had wanted to bend that way all along.
---
He crawled to a wall, dragging himself upward, but the surface rippled like water beneath his palms. His hands sank inches deep before the wall hardened again, trapping him wrist-deep inside the Dimensional's flesh.
The whispers coiled around his head, weaving into his thoughts.
You are ours. You have always been ours.
His wrists burned. He yanked them free, skin tearing as he ripped himself loose—only to find spirals carved into the wounds, neat and perfect, as though his flesh had been rewritten.
Blood spilled down his arms. Except it wasn't red.
It was black static, hissing as it dripped, vanishing before it touched the ground.
---
His reflection appeared again—only this time, it wasn't contained to glass.
It crawled out of the wall. A warped version of him, taller, thinner, with spirals etched across its face where eyes should be. It opened its mouth, and Adrian's own voice poured out, distorted, echoing like a hundred overlapping recordings.
"Why are you running from what you already are?"
Adrian backed away, clutching his arm, sobbing. "I'm not you. I'm not—"
The reflection stepped closer, its spirals spinning, drawing him in like a whirlpool.
"You are," it said.
And Adrian's chest split open—just slightly, just enough for him to see the faint silver spiral glowing where his heart should be.
---
He collapsed, shaking violently, clutching his chest as if he could hold himself together. Tears streaked his face.
The Dimensional whispered softly, almost tender:
The body remembers what the mind denies.
The spiral in his chest pulsed once.
And then again, harder.
Adrian screamed until his voice broke, the sound collapsing into static.
---