Darkness.
It wasn't the gentle quiet of sleep or the recovery of rest. It felt much tighter than that, like being sealed inside a box buried deep underground.
He tried to move. His limbs responded with a stubborn sluggishness. It felt as though his muscles had to manually remember how to track his commands. Beneath his back, the texture was rough and uneven. The lumpy mattress felt biting cold against his bare skin. His lungs expanded, pulling in a sudden breath of air, but the oxygen tasted entirely unfamiliar in his throat.
Then, the pain hit. It wasn't a sharp external wound or a broken bone. A crushing pressure throbbed violently right behind his eyes, making it feel like something was trying to claw its way out from the center of his skull.
"…ngh…"
A low, involuntary groan escaped his lips before he could clamp his jaw shut. His fingers curled into the rough fabric of the bed. He froze in place, trying to figure out what his body even was.
He forced his eyelids open, but absolutely nothing changed. There were no outlines or faint trickles of light. The room held only a thick, suffocating blackness that refused to respond to his presence. He blinked once, then twice, staring hard into the void. Still, nothing appeared.
His breathing slowed. His chest tightened as the reality of the situation set in.
"…I can't see?"
The words sounded strangely distant. They echoed in his ears as if some stranger was using his vocal cords to speak through him. He lifted his hand right in front of his face. No shadow crossed the dark, and no visual anchor verified the movement. There was only an absolute, empty absence.
Right then, something fundamental shifted deep inside his chest. It wasn't raw panic just yet, but a cold, jarring recognition. Something massive was missing from his soul, leaving an absolute void behind.
Then the pressure started. It didn't feel like a natural memory flowing back into his brain. Instead, it felt like a physical weight, like an internal dam that had been waiting for the exact moment of his awakening to burst open. A sharp fracture spread behind his thoughts, and the floodwaters pushed through with brutal force.
He saw a river. He heard loud, echoing laughter and a voice calling out to him through the sun.
"Shawn!"
Water splashed hard against his skin. He saw a boy standing right beside him, grinning too widely. Jean. The name materialized in his mind with terrifying clarity, fitting into his thoughts as naturally as breathing. His chest tightened instantly, and a sudden ache wrapped around his heart.
"Stop…" he muttered to the empty room, though he had no idea who he was actually commanding.
The vision didn't care. It forced itself even deeper into his skull. He saw a birthday party, a shiny watch resting in his palms, and a sudden wave of genuine warmth. Then came a tight hug that brought a sense of absolute safety.
"Happy birthday, bro."
His breath hitched in his throat. His fingernails dug straight through the thin fabric of the mattress until his knuckles turned white.
"Why do I know this… who is that…"
Before he could process the warmth, another memory surged forward, colliding violently with the first. This one didn't flow smoothly; it smashed into his mind like a freight train. He felt freezing cold water swallowing him whole. A pitch-black abyss yawned below his feet. Something thick and heavy wrapped tightly around his ankle, dragging him under as a frantic panic rose too fast to contain.
"Jean!"
A desperate scream tore through his mind. The scream belonged to him, yet it felt entirely alien. Then came the suffocating sensation of drowning, followed by a sudden, empty nothingness.
His physical body jerked violently on the bed. He nearly tumbled straight off the edge of the mattress onto the cold floor, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped animal.
"No… no, stop it…"
But the flood wasn't stopping. It accelerated, losing all narrative structure. The memories stopped behaving like scenes from a life and began acting like raw, chaotic interference. He saw a glowing, endless ocean. He saw floating lights that had once been living people. A massive train tracked across the very fabric of reality itself while a voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Judgment begins."
He heard the mocking laughter of souls who were no longer alive, yet still drifted through the void arguing about absolute nonsense. He saw a cold, mechanical system that decided the ultimate endings of mortal lives like standard paperwork.
His head snapped forward, his breathing turning ragged and uneven. This part of the vision didn't feel like a dream or a wild imagination. He had actively witnessed this with his own two eyes. It wasn't a passing glance; he had seen it completely.
Then, an entirely different layer of existence slammed directly into the chaos. It was a different life altogether, carrying a completely different label.
"Three."
The name hit his consciousness harder than any of the others. It didn't strike because it was inherently stronger, but because it felt brutally imposed on him, like a violent edit written over the top of his original existence. His mind recoiled from the word instinctively, fighting the intrusion.
"I am...."
The sentence shattered mid-thought as the river, Jean, and the identity of Shawn reasserted themselves in his mind. But a second later, the structure fractured all over again. He grabbed his head with both hands, pressing his palms against his temples.
"No… I am Shawn…"
He paused, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck. A second voice inside him didn't speak in words, but its sheer presence was undeniable: Three. The identity wasn't replacing or erasing his original self. It was overlaying it. Two distinct lives refused to separate cleanly, like two different inks spilled on the same page.
His breathing grew shallow. The unseen room felt smaller and tighter by the second. The total blindness made the psychological claustrophobia ten times worse. Without a visual grounding point or an anchor to look at, there was nothing to stop the confusion from filling the empty void.
As he struggled for air, a heavier, different memory surfaced from the bottom of his mind. It felt like a sealed iron door cracking open just enough to leak out a drop of poison. He saw a silhouette with grey hair, an outstretched hand, and a blinding flash of green light.
It wasn't a standard life memory like the others; it was a direct record of an action. His throat tightened, a sudden spike of raw anger mixing with the confusion.
"…someone did this to me…"
The thought was fragmented and incomplete, but the certainty behind it was sharp enough to hurt.
Step. Step.
Real footsteps echoed from outside the room. They were slow and perfectly steady. The stride wasn't cautious or rushed; it carried a simple, terrifying confidence. The physical sound immediately cut through the storm raging inside his head. It caused the chaotic memories to slow down, hesitating as if whatever was approaching possessed the power to freeze them.
The footsteps stopped right outside. A brief, heavy pause followed, and then the door creaked open.
The ambient air shifted instantly as a massive presence entered the small space. The movement felt simple and human, but the sheer weight of the person's gravity was extraordinary. The pitch-black room didn't physically change, yet every single object inside it suddenly felt intensely observed.
The heavy silence stretched out between them, vibrating with tension. Then, a calm, direct voice broke the quiet.
"I see that you are awake."
Another physical step came forward into the room, free of any dramatic ceremony. There was only an absolute certainty in the stranger's movement.
After a brief, lingering pause, the voice spoke again.
"Now, let's talk."