Pant. Pant.
The heavy breathing of an individual echoed through a gaudy, eerie world. His footsteps struck what seemed like clouds—feet slamming down with fervor, scattering the dark haze that clung around him.
"God dammit!" the boy shouted into the darkness.
The woman had said the sigils would protect him from nightmares.
But why did that thing have to—
The thought shattered, unfinished.
His heart thumped loudly, forcefully, as though it wanted to tear itself free. He teetered between consciousness and oblivion. The cold hands of fear gripped him oh so tightly.
The path beneath him was narrow, paved with cobblestones—stones that had existed before him, and would remain long after. .
He drifted forward—or was he rooted still? He could no longer tell. A tenebrous fog faintly lit the world, casting a dim, lambent halo around him, as though the mist itself was threaded with dying embers.
Then came the pain. A throbbing pulse surged again, radiant, resonant, like a bell tolling deep within his skull.
But even that was nothing compared to the fear.
A fear that bloomed slow and sickly—rising like warm wine spilling from a fractured chalice. His hands trembled. His lungs scorched. His feet ached.
It felt as though his very soul was being massaged by the cold, unrepentant fingers of death. Fingers cold as a tombstone.
Was this suffering the consequence of forgetting who he was?
No.
It was the fear—raw, ancestral, the kind that clawed up the spine like something old
And his hope?
It hung limp, like a carcass on a rusted butcher's hook. Forgotten. Dripping. Not blood—but despair.
Yet he ran.
He staggered, drifting in a fugue, as though no part of his soul dared speak a protest. His ears strained for an escape—any sound, any sign.
But silence clung to this strange world . The only sound was the faint echo of his shoes tapping the cobblestones.
Pant. Pant.
His breaths grew thinner. Sweat beaded at the nape of his neck. Dread slithered cold down his spine.
And then… the figure came.
A faint silhouette—one he saw every time he closed his eyes. A phantom that felt far, far too real.
He screamed.
But his will to flee evaporated as the figure drew closer in his mind's eye. It wore long, ethereal silken robes, flowing like water through the air.
He tried to banish the image—weakly, feebly—but he could not.
The robes grew clearer. Embroidered with golden silk. Divine—too perfect for mortal eyes. Untouched by dirt or crease.
He stumbled. The veil of hopelessness tightened around his throat. Still, he forced himself up.
Why does this place feel so… familiar?
A faint feeling overtook him— deja vu . Every step forward was a blow to his mind . Blurry faces. Broken echoes. And still—the figure.
The boy rose again. He ran. Because there was nowhere else to go.
He ran, and he hurt. He feared, and still… he ran.
The stones beneath his feet echoed his despair. He glanced down. His shadow was still there—his umbral companion.
But how? There was only fog.
The more he moved, the more it felt like his soul was merging with the darkness. His feet hovered just above the ground. The air grew thick, pressing in like the deep sea.
Lucid dread crawled over him. His sanctity slipped from his fingertips.
He was drifting.
Or maybe… he always had been.
And always would be.
Maybe this was a fitting end… for someone who committed the gravest sin of them all.
The absence of sound. The ghostly touch of unseen hands, welcoming him as one of their own.
His eyelids fell. His heartbeat slowed. He was losing consciousness.
---
And then, suddenly—the fog stilled.
He looked around, breath catching.
Silence. Again.
In the air, orange particles drifted like dying embers.
The fields beneath him were cracked, stretching in every direction like the roots of an ancient tree.
In the distance, cliffs bore sigils—timeworn, sacred once, now ruined and forgotten.
But he did not see them.
His gaze had risen skyward.
And lo—he beheld it.
A sky so beautiful, it seemed dashed with celestial dust and painted by divine hand. Stars blanketed the astral sea, outshone only by a singular lunar eye.
The moon.
Dark. Exceedingly dark.
And trimmed in gold.
He walked gently.
The hush of silence was… welcoming.
He looked down again. Silvery-gold light washed over him. Beneath his feet, glowing in the moon's cursed glow, bloomed soft violet flowers.
Figures remained fixed in the ground among them—some twisted in eerie postures, others crawling as though swimming through soil. Some were blight-born, others calcified while alive. Many exsanguinated, their remains grotesque, littering the field.
He drifted forward, brushing his hands through the flowers. The glowing particles clung to his skin like dying stars.
Could this be the end of the nightmare? he wondered.
He closed his eyes for a fleeting moment of peace. Until he looked ahead.
And then—he saw them.
Statues.
Far ahead. Silent. Waiting.
Some bowed to unknown forces. Some held harps. Others raised hands to the moon, pleading for its answer.
And the one at the center—tall, towering—held a grimoire. Its face veiled by a blindfold.
He moved toward it.
Beside the statue, an altar. Upon it, a figure ossified—mouth open, screaming to the heavens. Chained by links far too large for any mortal. A sword pierced through the mouth, pinning it in eternal agony.
The boy stopped. Transfixed.
His heart pounded with dread.
The golden-robed figure flickered again—this time merging with the statue holding the grimoire.
Above, the stars shifted.
But not naturally.
Wrong.
Everything here was wrong.
So wrong… and yet… so beautiful.
Then, a sharp, blistering pain erupted in his chest.
He looked down—a hand had pierced him. Blood ran down sinewed fingers.
He looked back—
And saw it.
One of the bodies from the field. Now standing. Its leg twisted. Its face half-blasted away. The half that remained still bore a grin.
As life faded from his eyes, he realized:
This was a place no soul was ever meant to be.
---