I should have died.
That thought followed me through the dark. The Hole wasn't just falling—it was being torn apart, piece by piece. My body… my mind… everything unraveled. Skin first, then bone, then the sense of myself, like threads yanked from a weaving until nothing was left but loose strands drifting.
And yet I felt no pain. I still thought. I still… was.
And in that nothingness, I glimpsed things.
Places that weren't my home, weren't my world. Vast oceans under alien skies, their waves tinted with colors water had no right to hold. Towers of glass that reached too high, stabbing at stars I didn't recognize. A desert where the sand itself writhed like a living thing. A forest of shadows where something enormous moved between trees older than time.
Each vision lasted no longer than a heartbeat, before dissolving into black.
Each struck like lightning—too bright, too sudden, gone in a blink. No sound, no smell, no weight. Just images carved into the dark, then gone, leaving only the uneasy certainty that none of it was meant for me to see.
Through it all, something resisted. Something in me.
I should have stayed apart like everything else the Hole swallowed. I felt it stripping me, peeling me down to nothing. But just when I should have disappeared entirely… something gathered the pieces back together.
Not gently. Not neatly.
More like being lashed into a shape that barely held.
Still… it was enough. Enough to keep me. Enough that when the tearing stopped, I was still myself.
And then, silence.
I opened my eyes.
Not on cobblestone, not on familiar earth. The ground beneath my sandals was damp, uneven. A faint mist crawled close to the surface, clinging to my legs. The air smelled strange—like wet stone and iron. Heavy. Too heavy.
Alive. Still alive.
Everyone else was gone. The whole city, the only thing I could call family, swallowed and shredded. And me… still here.
Why?
Didn't matter. Alive meant one thing: survive.
I sat there for a long while, testing myself. Fingers flexed. Chest rose and fell. My balance was unsteady, but I was breathing. That should have been enough comfort, but it wasn't. Something in me felt off, like pieces stitched together by someone who didn't care where they belonged.
I forced myself up, swaying. My instincts screamed at me to move, but I didn't go far. Just a few steps from where I'd appeared, keeping the misty shimmer of the Hole in sight until it finally faded from view.
The world was quiet. Too quiet. No birds, no insects, just the faint rustle of unseen things.
The trees were bent at odd angles, their bark pale and cracked, their branches scraping against each other like gossiping old men. The ground wasn't dirt so much as ash packed solid, leaving faint gray smears on my skin when I touched it.
I crouched low, unmoving. Not hiding exactly—more like bracing. Like I had so many times as a kid, when loud footsteps outside the door meant trouble was close. Survival had always meant listening first, moving later.
And now… the forest listened back.
The silence stretched until my nerves threatened to snap. I almost laughed just to break it—then I heard it.
A sound.
Something massive pushing through the mist, steady and deliberate.
My heart thudded once, painfully loud. My body locked. Every instinct I'd ever relied on screamed the same thing: don't breathe, don't move.
The mist shifted, and I saw it.
A beast taller than houses back home, its frame crooked and wrong, twisted with horn and jagged bone-like ridges. Its heavy steps sank into the ashen earth, leaving pits that smoked faintly in its wake.
It stopped.
The air felt colder. Its head turned, nostrils flaring, as though scenting me out of the haze.
I didn't dare blink.
The shadow of its bulk rolled over me, heavy enough to smother. My lungs ached, my eyes burned, but I stayed still.
Then… nothing.
It moved on. Step after step, its form faded back into the mist, until the sound of it was gone.
I collapsed into the dirt, my body trembling uncontrollably. The laugh that clawed its way out of me sounded cracked, broken.
"Good. Yeah. Keep walking. Don't mind me. Just an unremarkable pebble."
But the forest wasn't listening.
That was the first monster I saw.
It wasn't the last.