Ah, so this is what death feels like, huh?
I'd expected nothing—that clean, simple unconsciousness you get after pulling an all-nighter and finally crashing into bed. But this was different. This darkness had weight. Texture. It pressed against me from all sides like I was suspended in black water, and I could still feel everything.
The throb in my arm where the angel-thing had clawed me. The wrongness in my chest—that spreading rot that made every breath feel like dragging sandpaper through my lungs. The exhaustion. The blood loss. All of it followed me down into the dark.
And because my brain couldn't even let me pass out in peace, it immediately started calculating. How long did I have? Days? Hours? I'd coughed up so much blood that last time. My arm was shredded. Something was growing in my lungs, spreading like roots through my chest cavity.
Three days, maybe. A week if I was lucky.
'Lucky', I thought with bitter humor. 'Yeah, trapped in a nightmare mansion slowly dying from some supernatural disease while monsters hunt us. I'm the luckiest guy alive.'
Except Kai wasn't alive anymore.
Kai, who'd organized this whole trip because he cared about the friend group staying connected. Kai with his perfect backpack and his plans for med school and his stupid moisture-wicking clothes that I'd made fun of. Kai who'd tried to be responsible when that thing's mouth opened too wide.
His head had rolled. I'd watched it roll across the marble floor, his eyes still wide with shock.
And Levi—
'No. Not thinking about Levi. Not now. Not—'
But I couldn't stop. His face when we'd voted. The way he'd begged, mentioning his sister Maya who needed him. The way he'd just... vanished when Zadkiel took him. Like he'd never existed at all.
I'd raised my hand. I'd voted for him to die.
The darkness seemed to contract around me, crushing, suffocating. I tried to breathe but my lungs wouldn't work. That wrongness in my chest pulsed with each attempted inhale, spreading further, taking root.
What would my parents be thinking when I never came back home? They'd be the ones calling, like always—once, maybe twice a week asking how I was doing, carrying the entire relationship. And I'd never answer again. How long until they realized I was never coming back? How long until they realized none of us were coming back?
Would they send a search team for us? What if the storm washed away our footprints? What if no one ever found this godforsaken mansion?
If they never found us, what would they think? What would my parents think?
That their son just went with a couple of friends and was never seen again? Would they think that I had been kidnapped? Trafficked?
Or even worse, that I had gone and ended it all?
'They're never going to find my body', I realized. 'I'm just going to disappear. They'll spend years wondering what happened. If I'm still alive somewhere. If I'm suffering.'
My mother would pray. Every day, she'd pray for me. And I'd be here, rotting from the inside out in a mansion that didn't exist on any map.
God, what kind of legacy was this? "Here lies Ethan Kumar: mediocre student, chronic procrastinator, voted to kill someone to save himself, then died anyway in a cursed mansion."
I'd spent nineteen years planning to become someone, and I was going to die as nobody.
The darkness pressed harder. My chest burned. My arm throbbed. I couldn't tell if I was breathing or not anymore.
'How long?' I kept asking myself. 'How long can I survive here? How long before—'
"You know, you're being super dramatic right now."
The voice cut through the darkness like a knife.
The black emptiness shattered into white—pure, blinding white that made my eyes ache even though I was pretty sure they were closed.
"Oh no, don't tell me—"
And standing in the middle of all that impossible brightness, arms crossed and wearing her school uniform with that look on her face, was Adanna.
Fucking Adanna.
"Even in my dreams, you've still come to haunt me." I groaned, pressing my hand on my eyes, hoping she would vanish when I opened them.
"Seriously, bro?" She tilted her head, and I knew that expression. "This is what you're doing with your last conscious moments? Oh no, look at me, I'm going to die and no one's ever going to remember me. Sorta pathetic, you know?"
I raised my hand and held my middle finger up. "Fuck you, Ada."
"Fuck you too, bhai." She smiled, like she was having the time of her life. "So. . . Tell me everything! How does it feel to have your arm get ripped apart by a demon? What's it like to suffer from some inevitable disease? Wait—"
She closed her eyes and appeared to be thinking. Then she opened them back up and a creepy smile crawled on her face.
"When you die. . . If! If you die, of course. . . can I have your laptop? Dad keeps saying I need to wait until college to get a proper gaming setup, but if you're not coming back…"
"Jesus Fucking Christ." I I said. "Really? Your brother is dying and that's what you're asking me?"
"I'm kidding, I'm kidding of course." She smiled slyly in a way that made it feel it wasn't completely a joke. "But besides, what do you want me to do? Give you a get well card? Make you some soup? I'm only here for moral support, bhai."
"Moral support my ass." I coughed. "Every second I spend with you I start to feel more depressed. You're the worst."
Despite everything—the pain, the fear, the crushing weight of knowing I was dying—I felt a laugh bubble up in my chest. It hurt. Everything hurt. But god, she was such a brat.
"I'm pragmatic." She shrugged. "Mom's gonna try to keep your room as like a shrine or whatever. Super depressing. But your laptop's got decent specs, and it's not like you use it much, except to watch porn."
"I hate you."
"The feeling's mutual." She moved closer, and in the white space she looked more real than anything else. "So what now, elder brother? You're half-dead in a haunted mansion with monsters that can devour you whole with a single bite. What are you going to do about it?"
'What was I going to do?' I thought as my mind blanked. I stared upwards, only to meet an unending, pure white sky.
"I mean, you've already seen someone die." She shrugged, relentless. "You voted for that Levi guy to die so you could live, and then you got all guilty about it, which is very on-brand for you. Doing something terrible, then performing regret instead of actually dealing with it."
"I do regret it," I said, and my voice cracked. "I really do. He had a little sister. Like you. Maya. She needed him and I—"
"Yeah, yeah, you're haunted, it's very tragic." She waved a hand dismissively. "But here's the thing, bhai. You did it. Can't undo it. So now what?"
"What do you mean 'now what'?"
"I mean..." She leaned forward, and her voice lost some of its teasing edge. "You've already decided your life is worth more than someone else's. You chose yourself over Levi. So what I wanna know is—what lengths are you willing to go to now?"
The question hung in the white space between us.
"There's no hope left for me." I whispered, more to myself, but she heard it. "I'm dying. I'm injured. Even if I wasn't any of those two, once a month of Zadkiel's protection is up, I'm dead. I'm literally the weakest link in the group. I can't fight monsters, and since there's no way to escape, I'm stuck here forever. There's nothing else for me. So just. . . leave me alone, okay?"
"Everything kills you eventually." She shrugged. "You said that yourself, like two minutes ago. Very nihilistic. Very 'we're all gonna die anyway.' So if you're gonna die either way..." She paused, and her eyes bore into me. "How far will you go to make it mean something? How much are you willing to sacrifice?"
I opened my mouth but couldn't answer. Because I didn't know. I'd already voted to kill someone to save myself. What else was I capable of? Where was the line?
"You've spent your whole life planning to be someone," Adanna said, softer now. "Making lists and schedules and promises you never keep. 'New semester, new me.' 'This time will be different.' But you never actually do anything. You just... prepare. Forever."
"That's not—" I started, but stopped. Because she was right. Even now, lying here dying, I was narrating my own tragedy like I was writing a sad Instagram post. "I know, okay? I'm a fraud. I'm useless. I freeze when it matters. Priya was right to vote for me."
"See, that's exactly your problem." She stood up, brushing off her uniform. "You're still performing. Even in your own head, you're performing this whole self-aware, self-deprecating thing. Like if you admit you're a mess first, it'll hurt less when other people say it."
She grinned, knowing exactly how much I hated when she quoted musicals at me. "Come on, you're literally dying, and you haven't created anything. You've just existed. You're like the opposite of that. You're waiting for permission to start living."
"Adanna—"
"No one's giving you permission, Ethan." Her voice turned serious again. "You're in a nightmare mansion. Kai's dead. Levi's dead because you voted for it. You're dying from some corruption plague. And you're still in your head overthinking instead of just—" She made an explosive gesture with her hands. "—being."
The white space started to fracture, reality bleeding in at the edges. I could feel it—consciousness pulling me back up, my body demanding attention. Pain signals firing. The weight of my injuries becoming real again.
"Wait," I said. "Before I go, can you tell mom and dad I'm sorry? That I'll miss them?"
"C'mon, bhai. You both know I can't do that." Adanna said as she folded her arms against her chest, one foot tapping against the ground. "I'm a figment of your imagination, or something something."
"Right, right." I muttered. I knew this was just some kind of hallucination my subconscious was generating, but for some reason, I actually hoped Adanna was somehow psychically talking to me from the real world so she could tell our mom and dad how I really felt. So fucking stupid.
"So," She continued, stepping closer until I could make out her scent. "Why don't you survive long enough to tell them that yourself?
And then she was gone, and the white shattered into darkness, and the darkness was lifting, and I could feel hands on my shoulders, someone calling my name, and the pain came rushing back all at once—my arm, my chest, the rot spreading through my lungs—
I gasped, and my eyes flew open.