Pant. Pant.
The heavy breathing of an individual echoed through a gaudy, eerie world. His footsteps struck what seemed like clouds—feet slamming down with fervor, scattering the dark haze that clung around him.
"God dammit!" the boy shouted into the darkness.
The woman had said... said the sigils would protect me from nightmares. But why did that thing have to— The thought rang incomplete in his head.
His heart thumped loudly, audibly, forcefully pumping within his chest as he teetered between consciousness and oblivion. The cold hands of fear gripped him oh so tightly. The narrow path he crossed was paved with cobblestones that had existed before him—and would remain long after. A vestige of forgotten glory, now reduced to a withered, unnamed trail.
The bumpy sensation beneath his feet contrasted with the cold sting biting into his skin. A familiar scent lingered in the air—His eyes dilating in sudden understanding.
The scent was that of damp soil after a stormy night—offering a fleeting semblance of normalcy in this otherworldly place.
He drifted forward. Or was he rooted still? He could no longer tell. The area was faintly lit by a tenebrous fog, casting a lambent halo around him—as though the mist itself were threaded with dying embers.
The throbbing pain surged again—radiant, resonant, like a bell tolling deep within his skull.
But even that was nothing… nothing compared to the fear.
A fear that bloomed slow and sickly—rising like warm wine leaking from a fractured chalice. His hands trembled. His lungs scorched. His feet ached. It felt as though his very soul was being massaged by the cold, unrepentant fingers of death—fingers cold as a tombstone.
Was this suffering the consequence of forgetting who I was?
No.
It was the fear—raw, ancestral, the kind that clawed up the spine like something old… too old. The kind buried in the marrow of the world, whispering from an age that came before.
And his hope?
It hung limp, like a carcass on a rusted butcher's hook—forgotten, dripping—not blood, but the liquid of despair.
Yet he ran.
He staggered, his body drifting in fugue, as though no part of his soul dared speak a single hush of protest. His ears strained for an escape—any sound, any sign. But alas, silence hung in this strange world like a secret waiting to be confessed. The only sound was the faint echo of his worn-out shoes tapping the cobblestones—a forgotten hymn played for an audience long buried.
Pant. Pant.
His breaths grew thinner. Sweat beaded at the nape of his neck, and dread—cold and silent—slithered down his spine.
And then… the figure came.
A faint silhouette—one he saw every time he closed his eyes. A phantom that felt far, far too real.
He screamed.
But the remaining will he had to flee evaporated as the figure drew closer within his mind's eye. It wore long, ethereal silken robes, flowing like water through the air. He tried—weakly, feebly—to banish the image… but he could not.
The robes grew clearer. Embroidered with golden silk. Divine—too perfect for mortal eyes. No crease. No speck of dirt. It didn't touch the ground, yet it moved.
He stumbled. The veil of hopelessness tightened around his throat. Still, he forced himself up.
Why does this place feel so… familiar?
A faint feeling of anamnesis overtook him. Every step forward was a mental blow. Grainy half-memories stirred. Blurred faces. Broken echoes. And still—the figure.
The boy rose again. He ran. Because there was nowhere else to go.
He ran, and he hurt. He feared, and still… he ran.
The stones beneath his feet seemed to echo his despair. He glanced down—he could still see his shadow—his umbral companion—cast on the ground.
But… how? There's only fog here.
The more he moved forward, the more it felt like his soul was merging with the surrounding darkness. His feet slightly off the ground. The atmosphere thickened so much, it felt as if he were beneath the sea. He felt a strong sense of lucid dread, watching his own sanctity slip from his fingertips.
He was drifting. Or maybe… he always had been. And always would be.
He thought: Maybe this is a fitting end... for someone who committed the gravest sin of them all.
The echoing absence of sound. The eerie ghost touch around his body that welcomed him like one of their own.
His eyelids fell. His heartbeat slowed. He was losing consciousness.
---
And then, suddenly—the fog stilled.
He looked around, breath catching.
Silence. Again.
In the air, orange effulgent particles drifted in the breeze.
The fields beneath were cracked, stretching in every direction like the roots of an ancient tree. Every footfall echoed with indignation. The cliffs in the distance bore sigils—timeworn, sacred once, now ruined and forgotten.
But he didn't see them.
His gaze had risen skyward.
And lo—he beheld it.
A sky so beautiful, it looked as if it had been dashed with celestial dust and painted by divine hand. Stars dotted every inch of the astral sea, outshone only by a singular lunar eye.
The moon.
Dark. Exceedingly dark. And trimmed in gold.
He walked gently.
The hush of silence was… welcoming.
He looked down again. Silvery-gold light washed over him, and beneath his feet—glowing in the moon's cursed glow—bloomed soft, violet flowers. Figures moved among them—some in eerie postures, others crawling as though swimming through soil. Some looked blight-born. Others, calcified while alive. Some had been exsanguinated, their remains stark and grotesque, littering the field.
He drifted forward, brushing his hands through the flowers. The glowing particles rested on his skin like dying stars.
Could this be the end of the nightmare? he wondered.
He closed his eyes for a fleeting moment of peace… until he looked ahead.
And then—he saw them.
Statues.
Far ahead. Silent. Waiting.
Some bowed to unknown forces. Some held harps. Others raised hands to the moon, pleading for its answer.
And the one at the center—tall, towering—held a grimoire. Its face was veiled by a blindfold.
He moved toward it.
He saw an altar beside the statue. Upon it, a figure ossified—mouth open, screaming to the heavens. Chained by links far too large for any mortal. A sword pierced through the mouth, pinning it in eternal agony.
The boy stopped—transfixed.
His heart pounded with dread.
The golden-robed figure flickered again beh—this time merging with the statue holding the grimoire.
Above, the stars shifted.
But not naturally.
Wrong.
Everything here was wrong.
So wrong… and yet… so beautiful.
Then, a sharp, blistering pain erupted in his chest.
He looked down—a hand had pierced him. Blood ran down sinewed fingers.
He looked back—
And saw it.
One of the bodies from the field, standing now—its leg twisted, its face half-blasted away. But the half that remained still bore a grin.
As life faded from his eyes…
He realized:
This was a place no soul was ever meant to be.