Wh… where am I?
What… is this?
I…
What is "I"?
Who… am I?
How do I know that I exist…but not how I know it?
Why don't I remember anything?
What is happening?
Why… can't I move?
No—
A sharp white light burned into his eyes.
He tried to turn away—
He couldn't.
Something was holding him down.
No… not something.
Many things.
His arms were tight.His legs locked.His chest barely able to move.
Straps.
Cold. Hard against his skin.
A bed…?
No.
Not just a bed.
Too rigid.
Too… precise.
Like something made to hold, not to heal.
The light came from above—thin lines tracing the edges of the ceiling.
LED strips.
Too bright.
Too clean.
It burned.
His body trembled.
Not from fear.
Not from cold.
It was… deeper.
A constant vibration.
Like every part of him was slightly off—misaligned.
He didn't understand it.
He couldn't stop it.
"Let me go!!"
The words tore out of him—
Wrong.
His voice… warped.
Too high—
Then too low—
Like multiple tones collapsing into one.
It cracked, stretched, folded over itself.
"Le—t… me… g—o!!"
He froze.
That… wasn't his voice.
It couldn't be.
It sounded like it couldn't decide what it was.
He pulled.
Nothing.
He pulled harder.
Pain shot through his arms.
"Let—me—GO!!"
His body jerked violently against the restraints.
Again.
Again—
Then—
Something snapped.
Not the straps.
Something else.
They were there—
And then they weren't.
Gone.
No sound.
No break.
No resistance.
Just… absence.
But he didn't stop.
He kept pulling.
Clawing at his wrists.
Trying to tear free from something that no longer existed.
His breathing fractured.
His voice still wrong.
His body still shaking—
No.
Worse.
The vibration was stronger now.
Like the world around him had slipped slightly out of place.
He collapsed.
Hard.
The bed—Gone.
He hit the ground, limbs thrashing, still trying to break free from restraints that were no longer there.
His thoughts shattered.
Noise flooded in—
Distant.
Muffled.
Sirens.
Shouting.
Footsteps—fast, uneven, too many.
Somewhere outside.
Somewhere close.
But his mind couldn't hold onto it.
It slipped.Everything followed.
The floor beneath him—
It didn't crack.
Didn't break.
Didn't sink.
It just…
Stopped being there.
No fragments.No debris.Not even sound.
One moment, solid—
The next—
Nothing.
Something reached him.
A smell.
Sharp.
Chemical.
Wrong.
It burned the back of his throat before he even understood it.
There was nothing around him.No source—just him.
And the smell.
His thoughts faltered.
Slipped.
The noise in his head—fading.
The panic—dulling.
His body slowed.
The shaking weakened.
His vision blurred at the edges.
Darkness crept inward.
Not sudden.
Not violent.
Controlled.
Precise.
His last breath felt heavy.
Thick.
Like something had filled his lungs that shouldn't be there.
The sirens were louder now.Closer.More urgent.
Then—
Nothing.
Silence settled over the room.
What remained of it.
The center was gone.
Not broken.
Not shattered.
Gone.
A hollow carved into the ground—wide, deep, too clean.
The walls still stood, untouched.
Too far.
Too safe.
At the bottom—
He lay there.
Still.
Unmoving.
The air above the crater shimmered faintly.
Like something had disturbed it… and it hadn't settled yet.
A faint hiss.
Then—
A click.
The door.
It cracked open.
Slow.
Careful.
Just enough to see through.
A pause.
Then—
It slammed open.
Hard.
No hesitation.
No caution.
A shadow fell across the boy's body.
Tall.
Still.
Unwavering.
It did not hesitate.
Did not recoil.
Did not fear what lay at its feet.
For a moment—
Nothing moved.
Then—
A step forward.
The boy's body trembled.
Not violently—no.
A subtle, constant vibration, like something misaligned beneath the surface.
His outline wavered.
Blurred.
Uncertain.
As if the world itself refused to hold his shape for long.
As if he was not meant to be seen.
His clothes were gone.
Not torn.
Not removed.
Simply—
absent.
Leaving him exposed.
Unshielded.
Not just from the cold—
but from whatever had begun to notice him.
The figure looming over him raised his right hand.
The soft shift of leather filled the room as the sleeve of his long coat slid back.
Deliberate.
Measured.
His arm lifted from the elbow.
Palm turned upward.
The boy's body followed.
Slowly—
unnaturally—
rising from the ground as if pulled by something that did not exist.
Limbs slack.
Head lolling.
Weightless.
Like a puppet with no strings—
and yet, completely controlled.
The figure extended his other hand toward the ruined room, fingers rigid, aligned like spears. Then, slowly, he turned his wrist—precise, almost delicate—like adjusting an unseen mechanism.
A faint glow ignited in his eyes.
Yellow.
It bled into the existing cyan, the two colors intertwining, swirling in quiet harmony. There was no strain in him, no resistance—only calm, absolute control, reflected in the slow, fluid motion of his hand.
Then—
the room began to change.
The fractured ground trembled—not with violence, but with intent. The broken surface drew inward, reforming, knitting itself back together as though time itself had reversed direction. Edges softened, cracks sealed, and the crater began to close—like flesh healing over a wound that had never been allowed to exist.
From within that restoration, something began to take shape.
Not emerging—but assembling.
Piece by piece.
Form by form.
As though invisible hands were reconstructing reality at the smallest possible scale.
The bed.
As the final fragments settled into place, the figure made a subtle motion with his raised hand.
The boy's suspended body responded instantly.
Lowering.
Slow.
Weightless.
Until it met the surface of the bed with unnatural grace, as if gravity itself had been instructed to behave.
The glow in his eyes dimmed.
The yellow faded first.
Then the cyan.
Leaving behind only a steady, unremarkable green—
as if nothing had happened at all.
He studied the boy for a moment.
Then, almost to himself, in a voice low and steady—yet edged with something he could not quite conceal—
"What the fuck are you?"