"Power is subjective."
The voice pierces through my skin, a cold blade slicing into the void of my consciousness. The words ripple through the darkness, reverberating in the hollow space where my thoughts should be. I try to breathe, to pull in air, but my chest remains still. There's no rise, no fall, only a suffocating emptiness that threatens to swallow me whole.
It's as though my body has forgotten how to live, each function severed from the next, leaving me stranded in a paralyzed void.
Panic settles.
It begins to claw at the edges of my mind, but I push it down, focusing all my energy on the simple act of feeling.
I force my senses to work, willing them to respond, to break free from this numbness. I strain to feel something — anything — but my body remains stubbornly unresponsive, a dead weight under my command.
I concentrate on my fingers, trying to curl them into a fist, but they refuse to move. I attempt to wiggle my toes but it's like trying to move a phantom limb — there's nothing there. I try to speak, to call out for help, but my lips won't part. My tongue lies heavy, useless. I can't smell the room around me — there's no scent of antiseptic, no faint whiff of fabric softener, nothing to anchor me to the reality I once knew.
And the darkness?
It's haunting.
My eyelids are sealed shut as if by some invisible force. I want to open them, to let in even the faintest sliver of light, but they refuse to obey. There's no flutter, no twitch, not even the comforting pressure of my lashes against my cheeks. It's as though my eyes are no longer mine to command, locked away in some unreachable part of myself.
Sound is the only sense that remains, and even that is tenuous, distorted. The voice that haunts me seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, its origin a mystery. It's not the soft murmur of someone close by, but neither is it the distant echo of a faraway speaker. It's as if the words are being poured directly into my mind, bypassing my ears entirely.
The silence between the words is a void of its own, stretching endlessly, amplifying the terror of my situation.
The numbness blankets me, smothering every attempt to connect with the world. I can't feel the cold of metal or the warmth of sunlight. My skin is a boundary I can no longer sense, a barrier that isolates me further. I'm lost, submerged in a void where even pain has abandoned me.
And then the voice returns, more insistent, the only tether I have to reality.
"Power is subjective."