The boy's body, thin and brittle, felt like it was about to break as the dark-robed figures that had captured him dragged him from the cell. His legs, once thick and full of fat from days spent lounging around, now scraped uselessly against the stone floor. His skin clung to his bones like parchment stretched too tight; hollow cheeks and sunken eyes bore the marks of weeks, maybe months, of starvation.
The air was thick with the stench of damp stone, decay, and something far worse. His mind had long since stopped counting the days, lost in the endless, gnawing hunger that had eaten away at his spirit as much as it had his flesh. The feeling of eternally being parched was now familiar enough to him that he didn't even notice anymore, since he had been given only enough water to keep him alive, just barely, while he waited for whatever horrors came next.
He wanted to fight. He had tried at first, back when he still had some strength, back when he believed there was a way out. But that hope had shrivelled and died in the dark of the cell, just like everything else inside him. It stripped him of any lingering thought that he was superior to even the rats and the mould he shared this cage with.
His capture still haunted him in flashes: the thrill of the hunt, the chase through the trees, and then the ambush. Dark figures emerge from the shadows like death itself. There had been others with him. Three guards that he had known all his life. Were they still alive? His heart clenched at the thought, though part of him already knew the answer.
Two robed figures hauled him into a large, dimly lit room. His eyes widened, and for the first time in days, he felt something other than the dull ache of hunger.
Fear.
The floor was slick with blood. It was a thick, dark red; the colour of life drained away. His heart raced as he faintly recognised the bodies lying haphazardly on the stone in the dim conditions of wherever he was. Their limbs were splayed out, faces frozen in death. The guards. His guards. The men who had sworn to protect him. Now they were discarded like broken toys, tossed aside as if their lives had meant nothing. Their blood had been used to draw intricate, grotesque patterns across the floor; they were runic shapes that twisted and spiralled into a circle.
His mouth went dryer still, panic rising in his chest. What did they want with him? What was he here for? He struggled to pull himself free from the iron grip of the figures dragging him, but his body betrayed him. He had no strength left. His head swam with dizziness, the room spinning as bile rose in his throat.
They threw him to the floor at the centre of the runic circle, his body landing with a thud against the slick, cold stone. He tasted blood in his mouth, where he bit his lip from the impact. It was viscous and dark red and gave him a taste of steel.
A shadow loomed over him, and he looked up to see the oldest of the dark-robed figures, one a man whose face was a mockery of humanity. His skin hung loose and mottled, like it was rotting from the inside out, eyes gleaming with a sick, unnatural purple light. The dark wizard bent down, gripping the boy's chin in a bony hand that felt like ice.
"You'll suffice," the wizard rasped, his breath foul with decay. "Our lord Xanax needs a vessel, and you... you will do well enough." His cracked lips pulled into something resembling a smile, though it held no warmth, no kindness. Only hunger.
The boy's heart pounded so hard he thought it might burst. Our lord? he thought. For what? His mind raced, but the answer didn't come. Before he could speak or scream, the wizard struck him with a spell. The world blurred, and suddenly he couldn't move. His body was frozen, limbs locked in place as if the air itself had turned to stone around him. Unbreakable.
The dark wizard released his chin, and with a flick of his fingers, the boy was tossed like a puppet, only allowed to move on his command, into the very centre of the blood-drenched runes.
Panic flooded him, but it was muted by the stunning spell. He couldn't even thrash as fear overwhelmed him, only stare helplessly at the ceiling above, mouth slightly open as if gasping for air he couldn't reach. The robed figures surrounded him, their forms towering, monstrous, as they began to chant in low, guttural tones. The sound was wrong, as though the very air recoiled from the words they spoke.
The temperature dropped sharply, and an icy wind seemed to coil through the chamber, though there were no windows, no openings. From the circle of blood beneath him, tendrils of dark violet magic began to snake their way toward him, shimmering with an unnatural, purple glow. He could feel them as they brushed against his skin; it was cold and invasive. They wormed their way inside him, through his flesh, through his bones, and deeper still, into places he didn't even know existed.
He tried to scream, but his mouth wouldn't move. His body wouldn't obey. The magic twisted and curled, wrapping tighter and tighter around his very soul. He could feel it; the core of his being was being pulled at, drawn out of him. It was like nothing he had ever imagined. An agony that transcended the very concept of pain itself. It was a violation of his very essence, as though they were tearing him apart from the inside out.
The tendrils latched onto his soul, and with a sickening jolt, began to pull. His mind fractured under the strain, his vision blurring as the magic forced his soul out of his body, bit by bit. He felt it hovering above him, shimmering and fragile. It was a strange thing to look at the pieces of yourself floating just inches from your chest.
As much as he wanted this unknowable feeling to end, he couldn't die. As if the magic around him demands he witness this moment.
The world seemed colder now, as if he no longer belonged to it. His body was nothing but a shell, empty, disconnected from the life it once held. He watched, numb, as the fragments of his soul, once vibrant with life, began to darken and turn a sickly grey. The smaller pieces were the first to go, crumbling to black dust before his eyes.
His heart thudded weakly in his chest. There was almost nothing left now. Almost nothing but one last shard. It was small and trembling, the faintest hue of blue remaining. It hovered, spinning slowly, as if resisting the pull of the dark magic for just a moment longer. But it wouldn't last.
He knew it wouldn't last.
And then it appeared.
A presence. Alien, immense, beyond comprehension. A yellow eye, vast and unblinking, blinked into existence above him, high on the ceiling of the cave. It stared down, not at him but at everything.
The wizards, the circle of blood, the broken bodies on the floor. It was a gaze that pierced through all of existence, seeing everything and caring for none of it.
For a moment, everything stopped. The chanting, the magic, even time itself seemed to freeze in that eye's presence. The air itself recoiled in disgust, as if the world itself were ashamed to exist in its gaze.
The contempt was palpable. A wave of revulsion so strong it made the boy's skin crawl. The eye seemed to loathe everything it saw. The dark wizards, the bloodied runes, the very act of being called here. It hated all of it. Hated them. Hated him. Hated his slovenly lifestyle. Hated how he thought the world had once revolved around him.
A slight feeling of mirth came from the being at how ignorant we all were.
Then, with a blink, it was gone. And with it, so was everything.
The world then collapsed into blackness.
The boy stirred, his consciousness clawing its way back from the darkness. At first, he thought he was still dead, floating in the cold, empty void that had swallowed him. But no, there was something more now. A cacophony of voices, dozens of them. All whispering, screaming, and calling his name. They were faint and distant, yet they clawed at the edges of his mind, begging for something he couldn't understand. He couldn't give them. His head pounded with their noise, his skull splitting with the weight of them, yet he couldn't block them out. Their words slipped through every crack in his thoughts, weaving through the corners of his mind like parasites.
With great effort, he forced his eyes open.
At first, there was nothing. Just a thick, endless black that stretched in all directions, suffocating in its emptiness. But then two pinpricks of light appeared in the distance. Purple, glowing orbs that floated in the void, watching him. The voices surged louder now, frantic, pulling at him, desperate to be heard.
His body, still the weak, starved husk he had never known, strained as he tried to move. His legs, trembling and weak, barely responded as he stumbled forward, his feet dragging against what felt like solid ground beneath him. There was no light, no floor he could see, yet somehow he knew there was something hard beneath him. The ground felt cold and unyielding, sending sharp shocks of pain through his bones with each clumsy step. His legs wobbled, unfamiliar with the weight of his own body, and he struggled to keep his balance.
Just reach the lights. His mind screamed at him to move, but his limbs felt like lead, clumsy, and foreign. He staggered forward, desperate, his breath ragged in his throat. He could feel the weight of the souls pressing down on him, a weight that had no physical form but suffocated him nonetheless. They tore at his insides, pulling him in a thousand directions, each voice demanding to be heard, each one filled with anguish, anger, and madness.
The purple orbs grew brighter as he neared, illuminating a small patch of the void. But as the dim light revealed more, he gasped and stumbled backward. His foot caught on the invisible ground, and he fell hard. His frail body slammed into the surface beneath him, and pain shot through his ribs, his bruised bones groaning in protest. He curled into himself, clutching his chest, trying to breathe through the agony. It was too much; his body, his mind, everything hurt.
But worse than the pain was the sight that now hovered above him.
The purple orbs weren't just floating lights. They were eyes; these empty, glowing sockets of a massive skull. The bone was ancient, cracked, and weathered, but its form was unmistakable. The hollow gaze bore down on him, illuminated by the sickly purple glow that pulsed from within its eye sockets.
His breath hitched in his throat as he stared up at the skull, his mind reeling in terror. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to get as far away as possible, but his body was frozen in place. He couldn't move, couldn't even blink, as the massive, grotesque skull seemed to loom closer, its presence filling the void with a malevolent energy.
It felt like the skeleton regarded him with those glowing eyes, and for a moment, the voices in his head quieted as if they too were terrified of the sight before them. A suffocating silence fell over the space, and the boy's heart raced as he lay there, his chest heaving with shallow, panicked breaths.
His body shook with fear, his limbs trembling uncontrollably as he forced himself to speak, though his voice came out hoarse, barely a whisper. "W-what... what are you?"
The skull didn't answer. It only watched, its eyes burning brighter, the darkness around them pulsing in time with its strange energy.
He tried to push himself up, but his body failed him, too weak to even stand. His bones ached from the fall, bruised and battered, and the voices began to creep back into his mind. They whispered again, angry, pleading, their words incoherent, but the desperation was clear.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block them out to force the noise away. But the moment his lids closed, the image of the skull burnt behind them; those terrible, glowing orbs seared into his vision. He couldn't escape it.
"Please... stop," he whimpered, his voice shaking. He wasn't even sure who he was begging, whether it was the voices, the skull, or whatever unseen force had dragged him into this nightmare. His hands clutched at his temples, trying to press out the noise, the pressure, the overwhelming presence of the souls gnawing at his mind.
But nothing stopped. The voices grew louder, the pressure mounting as if something inside him was going to tear open.
The skull remained steadfast, its empty sockets staring down at him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. It felt like it was staring straight into him, through his flesh and his bones, down to whatever was left of his soul. And though it said nothing, a cold, terrible understanding settled over him.
He was nothing to this thing. Nothing to the skull. Nothing to the souls that now clawed inside him. Nothing to whatever force had pulled him from death and into this twisted half-existence.
He was a vessel. A hollow shell, filled with the screaming remains of others. Puppeted by forces he couldn't even begin to comprehend.
"Calm," he whispered to himself, choking on the word. He had to stay calm. He had to control his breathing control his thoughts. If he lost himself now if he gave in to the panic, he would be devoured. Swallowed whole by the madness inside him.
But the skull, the voices, the darkness, they pressed closer. They knew. And they were waiting.
Waiting for him to break.
(Let me know if I should continue this.)