"Wake up... Eli, please wake up. Come on..."
Eli felt as though he had fallen into a strange, lucid dream. The darkness surrounding him was oppressive and painful, stinging every part of his body until he wanted nothing more than to curl into a ball and hide. Yet his body would not obey him. He could only hang limply as something carried him through the darkness, swaying with every movement.
He could not see anything.
Black mist enveloped him from every direction, leaving him with nothing but an overwhelming sense of fear. There was no apparent reason for it, no horrifying scene before his eyes and no immediate threat he could identify, yet the fear remained, growing stronger with every passing moment. The black mist seemed intrinsically connected to that emotion, stirring it up, magnifying it, and reaching into the most vulnerable corners of his heart until he could no longer find a moment of peace.
