The silence is replaced by the gushing of a rapid wind. The screen flashes blurry, disorienting glimpses of clouds and a starless night sky before returning to black for a couple of seconds, and then showing the scene again—simulating the heavy, bloodshot blinking of waking eyelids.
The sound of the wind intensifies until it is absolutely deafening, roaring through the theater speakers. Finally, the screen shows the scene completely.
Nephis, wearing her standard government-issued clothes, is plummeting down from the sky. The fabric of her uniform snaps and tears violently against the brutal friction of the air, her speed increasing exponentially the closer she gets to the ground. On the screen, we see Nephis's eyes open wide as she looks frantically from side to side, completely disoriented and trying to find a way out of this situation.
"What is this?! How is anyone supposed to survive falling from the sky?!" Nephis's panicked thoughts resounded from the speakers of the theater.
Giving up on trying to stop the fall—since there was nothing around her but open sky—Nephis looked down, only to see the horrible sight of complete darkness. Frantic music started to play, competing with the roaring scream of the wind as Nephis continued falling into the abyss.
"This is the end! All that training for noth—" Nephis's inner thoughts were cut off, and a terrible ringing sound replaced everything as her body brutally hit the surface of a dark ocean. At that terminal velocity, the impact didn't sound like a splash—it sounded like slamming into a wall of solid concrete, a violent crash that reverberated through the theater's subwoofers.
The ringing sound continued, but it was gradually fading. On the screen, Nephis's body had been momentarily stunned unconscious, drifting aimlessly in an ink-black abyss. The lack of light below made it completely impossible to tell which way was up, until her eyes snapped open and caught the faint, distorted glow of the surface far above.
We see Nephis try to orient herself and start swimming up. With arduous strokes, she fights her way toward the light. But her soaked, government-issued uniform is working against her now—the heavy fabric clings to her limbs like lead weights, making her movements visibly grow weaker as the lack of oxygen becomes increasingly evident.
After a long, grueling minute of Nephis swimming upward, the music hangs on a single, tense note. In the dark theater, Effie and Cassie lean forward in their seats, completely gripping their armrests and holding their breath.
Miracously, Nephis breaks the surface of the water and inhales a deep, ragged breath.
But there is no time to rest. As Nephis tries to stay afloat, an enormous wave looms over her, its crest blotting out the starless sky before crashing down with crushing force. She is dragged right back under into the suffocating dark and has to fight her way up to the surface all over again. This brutal cycle repeats over and over on the screen while the music swells, giving the audience a deep sense of unease and hopelessness. Eventually, through sheer, exhausting struggle, Nephis manages to stay afloat for longer than thirty seconds.
Using this brief respite, she looks around, and on the screen, we view the scenery through Nephis's eyes.
She looks up to see a void-black, starless sky dominated by a dimly lit circle in the center of the darkness—the eerie, oppressive silhouette of the permanent eclipse. Below it, the black ocean expands in all directions endlessly, a vast and terrifying void. She continues to kick and move her hands to stay afloat, spinning slowly in place as she searches for anything—land, other Sleepers, or even a distant light that she might use for guidance. She continues to float in circles for another minute before she catches sight of something.
On the screen, Nephis scrours the horizon, squinting hard through the salty spray. The perspective changes to show what she is seeing: in the distance, a towering, jagged shadow of stone rises like a solitary needle from the water.
"That doesn't look too far."
Nephis's thoughts echo through the theater as she stops spinning. Now with a fixed destination in mind, Nephis starts to swim, her form elegant and rehearsed, cutting through the waves with textbook precision.
Suddenly, the music fades out completely, replaced by a low, rhythmic thumping that reverberates through the theater like a massive, collective heartbeat. The atmosphere instantly feels charged with danger. Abruptly, Nephis stops swimming. She hovers in the water, a sudden instinct causing her to slowly turn her head around.
The frame changes to show the turbulent waters of the dark sea behind her—and something else. A massive, silent bulge rises in the ink-black water, a terrifying V-shaped wake cutting through the waves. On the screen, Nephis squints her eyes, and a heartbeat later, they widen until they are the size of saucers.
Nephis rapidly turns back toward the jagged stone spire. The frame shifts to an overhead view, showing Nephis desperately swimming for her life, her elegant form completely abandoned for an explosive, frantic sprint. Behind her, the massive form breaks the surface, closing the distance with horrifying speed. The low heartbeat thumping in the audio tracks explodes into a chaotic, urgent orchestral swell, driving the panic of the hunt to a fever pitch.
In the theater, people hung on the edge of their seats; some had their hands clasped as if in prayer, while others were holding onto their partners or the nearest person available. The charged music made the heartbeats of the viewers erratic.
On the screen, the perspective shifts, presenting a frontal view of Nephis's straining face as she tries to swim faster and faster. As she continues to fight the water, a darkness slowly starts to rise behind her. Illuminated by the dim light provided by the eclipse, sharp, jagged rows of fangs—each the size of an armored vehicle and glistening with black water—can be seen protruding from the dark creature. The music swells. The creature gets closer. Nephis screams with the effort.
On the screen, Nephis's hand suddenly hits a black wall on one of her desperate strokes. Not wasting a single second, her hands grab for purchase, and she starts climbing up the black structure. The music continues its frantic notes, keeping everyone on edge.
Suddenly, the screen trembles with a massive impact. A deep, low-frequency boom ripples through the theater speakers, a physical shockwave that forces Nephis to stop and hold on tight. Clinging to a small, almost imperceptible crack in the structure, Nephis looks down, staring at the black silhouette in the water. What appears on the screen can only be described as colossal—its body stretches out beneath the waves as far as the camera can see, a shadow that swallows the ocean itself.
Nephis looks at the creature, her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open for a few seconds as she waits for something to happen. Seeing that the massive figure is not moving, she lets out a relieved breath. Her skin is burning from the brutal exertion and the freezing water, and she presses her forehead against the dead, ancient stone, the grounding shock of the cold surface bringing her back to reality.
"It can't do anything. I'm safe—"
The sound of waves being broken apart by a rising object suddenly interrupts Nephis's inner monologue coming from the speakers. With a startled expression, Nephis watches as multiple black tentacles break the surface of the water and slam themselves against the structure. After each strike, the tentacles stay attached to the stone as if they were vines defying gravity, creeping upwards.
As the frame changes to show Nephis pressing herself against the structure, the music swells again—this time with a sharp sense of urgency. On the screen, Nephis's eyes open wide like saucers, and she scrambles upward at a frantic pace that disregards all caution. The camera stays fixed as she climbs out of the frame, leaving only the now-empty space where she just was.
The frame continues like this for a few seconds, showing nothing but the black structure, when slowly, almost imperceptible, a sickly, rhythmic squelch starts coming from the speakers. The wet, parasitic audio design intensifies as black tendrils start rising from the bottom of the screen.
The scene expands to an overhead shot, showing the tiny figure of Nephis climbing the structure while being pursued by the rising mass of tentacles. The music continues to build as she climbs, the dark tendrils snapping at her heels and closing the distance by the second. The frame changes, showing a close-up of her straining face looking back down in terror.
Suddenly, the perspective shifts, and a tranquil, dark stone platform appears on screen—until this peace is disturbed by a pale, white pearlescent hand rising and grabbing purchase, standing out sharply against the pitch-black ledge. It is followed by her bruised, soaking body hauling itself up.
Collapsing onto the ground, her body shakes violently with cold and exhaustion, her chest heaving as she hyperventilates against the dead stone, completely spent from the narrow escape.
Nephis gulps in quick, ragged breaths, her chest rising and falling as she tries to calm herself, an arm falling over her eyes, her body completely exhausted by the race. With another shake of the structure, Nephis rises onto one arm and looks back over the edge she had just come from.
Every noise stops, plunging the theater into a dead silence where only the frantic dripping of seawater from her clothes can be heard. A few seconds pass in this unnatural quiet. Then, from one moment to the next, the music suddenly resounds through the theater, startling everyone as a multitude of tentacles rise from the dark abyss of the ocean and start crawling in her direction.
Seeing the new threat, Nephis quickly stands up and half-runs, half-limps toward the center of the structure. Looking back as she runs, the tentacles—which can now be seen clearly in the pale light of the eclipse—are the width of an armored vehicle. Suction cups run along the length of each appendage, interrupted only by nasty-looking, jagged black hooks that scrape against the dark stone with a horrifying, screeching metallic sound.
Not losing sight of the black tendrils, Nephis jumps to the left, evading a tentacle that had risen to crush her. The impact sends tremors through the entire structure, but surprisingly, the spot where the tentacle struck is completely undamaged; not even a single scratch or crack appears on the surface after such an attack.
"What kind of material is this?!" Nephis's panicked thought flashes through the theater. She has no time to waste thinking about it as she continues dodging left and right, fighting through the agony in her leg to evade the rising and falling tentacles.
"I can't keep this up!"
With this decisive thought, Nephis turns around to face the monster after realizing that the area is nothing but flat stone with nowhere to hide. A mixture of sweat and seawater droplets falls from her hair and face as she watches the black, fast-approaching tendrils. Steeling her anxious expression into one of grim determination and taking a firm stance, Nephis raises her arm and opens her palm.
The music, which had been running rampant, stops altogether. The frame changes to a slow-motion shot from behind Nephis's illuminated figure, showing the massive tentacles as they begin to fall. The frame cuts to Nephis's face, and then shifts again to show only her mouth.
"Silver Flame!"
An explosion of light and sound leaps out of the screen. A blinding, multicolored light illuminates not only the scene itself but the entire theater, followed by the deafening reverberation of an explosion. From her seat in the very last row of the theater, Nephis hears the people closest to the screen scream, some even falling to the ground while covering their ears.
Among the people who had fallen from the immense sound, there are those convulsing on the floor from what look like epileptic seizures. Fortunately for them, medics quickly arrive and escort them out of the room, while the movie continues undisturbed.
"Kai! What the hell was that?!" Effie whisper-shouted at Kai, who, like the rest of the cohort, had covered his ears at the sound of the explosion.
As Kai was about to speak, a sound came from the left of the cohort. Leaning over to see, Nephis and the others spotted the director in a heated conversation with someone else—a man wearing a brown shirt and glasses, with a wild style of hair. At some point, the director just put his face in his hands, leaned back, and let out an exasperated sigh that only Awakened could hear with their evolved senses. Beyond the heavy double doors of the theater, the faint, muffled sound of shouting theater staff and the distant wail of medical sirens echoed into the room.
"Seems the director and the sound designer are going to have to answer some rather unpleasant questions based on the reports outside," Kai said, turning to Effie. The huntress only gave a crooked smile and continued to eat.