There had never been silence like that.
It wasn't the absence of sound — it was a presence in itself. A weight. A suffocating veil of stillness that smothered everything. My own heartbeat sounded like hammers inside my skull, as if the world had sunk into some kind of hollow void where even time hesitated to move.
I woke… but I didn't remember falling asleep.
I awoke lying on an uneven ground — a harsh mixture of stones and dry mud — beneath a sky pulsing with sickly red and blackish-blue tones. A sky that looked cracked, as if someone had broken it from the inside. The stars — if they were stars — moved far too slowly, like rotting eyes drifting in thick fluid.
There was no sun. No moon. Only that artificial, heavy, damp light. And that sound — or lack of it — crushing my thoughts like a vice.
I stood with difficulty. My muscles ached as if they'd been sewn back into my bones during some cruel ritual. My hands trembled. The air… wasn't air. It was fine, cutting dust — dense enough to weigh in my lungs. Every breath burned like it was igniting something within me, something unnamed, yet familiar.
Around me, a field of ruins. Broken pillars. Crooked buildings devoured by dead vegetation — too alive to be dead, but with no trace of green. Vines that moved on their own, that seemed to watch me.
And there it was… the first rift.
I call it that because I know no other name. A crack in the earth, wide as a road, that pulsed. Yes — pulsed. Like flesh. As if the ground had grown a heart. It breathed, releasing black vapor, and something inside told me I shouldn't look for too long. But I did.
And I saw.
Down below — far below — an abyss. Not of stone or soil. But of things. Twisted bones. Melted clocks. Doors floating in the void. Corpses that still moved. Hands clutching chains… and chains binding mouths. And within those mouths… eyes.
I staggered back. The rift was calling to me. Not with a voice, but with intention. As if it wanted to show me something. As if it knew me.
I remembered my name. Elías. And nothing else.
No mother. No father. No memories before that moment. No recollection of pain before the pain.
As I struggled to breathe — if I ever truly had breath there — I saw something a few meters ahead. A mirror. Standing alone in the nothing. Upright, immaculate, planted in the ground like a vertical tombstone. My reflection… didn't reflect.
What I saw wasn't me. It was a child wrapped in black rags, its face entirely hidden behind a corroded iron mask, marked with symbols that seemed to weep. When I moved, it didn't follow. It only stared. And in its hand — my hand? — there was a small rusted key. When I blinked… it was gone. But the key remained, lying at my feet, pulsing like a tiny heart.
I picked it up.
And something… opened in me.
Not physically. But… like a door. Inside my head. A forgotten — or fabricated — memory. Me, in a wooden house. Rain falling outside. Someone calling me. A familiar voice. But no mouth. A feeling that I was being pulled outside of myself. A name echoing: Refuge.
I looked behind me. Where there had once been only gray and stone, now there was a road.
Not an ordinary road. It was made of teeth. Thousands of human teeth, fixed into the earth. And above it, an arch of bones carved with words I didn't recognize — but understood:
"THE FIRST DOOR BLEEDS BEFORE IT OPENS."
I started walking. Slowly. Each step was a sentence. Each sound a warning. And the world… the world whispered. Yes, now the whispers were there, like invisible splinters in my ears. Twisted little voices, trying to enter me, to scratch my thoughts. And at the end of the road, there was something.
A structure. A tower. But not an ordinary one. It floated. Made of flesh and metal, like a poorly stitched fusion of organic and artificial. From its top dripped a dark liquid that vanished into the air. And from it came a sound… no, a lament.
As if reality itself were weeping.
The key in my hand grew hot. The ground trembled. And for an instant, the rift behind me screamed.
Yes, screamed. And I understood what it said. A single word, but one soaked in ancient hate:
"Return."
But I kept walking.
Because, in that moment, I knew something without knowing how: there was no return.
The Refuge had opened.
And now… I was part of it.