A gaunt-looking young boy with pale skin and long dark hair was sleeping restlessly inside a gently rocking vehicle. His body was still as a corpse, but his delicate face contorted with a slight grimace. He shivered due to the biting cold of the northern winter and wrapped the blanket around his body even tighter.
The nameless boy was far from home. He sat inside a crowded omnibus that headed in the direction of a new world. The omnibus never stopped. It was supposed to continue on for days—pulled forward by three restless horses. It carried about a dozen sleeping passengers and a middle-aged coachman at the front.
While travelling through a patch of snowy wilderness brought its own dangers, the mostly asleep passengers had a subtle look of excitement. Uncertainty of the future brought both horror and hope to them. But unlike all others, the nameless boy didn't exude an excited expression. Rather his subtle frown carried an unbearable weight of regret.
While the mundane journey through the snow was unchanging, it didn't last for too long.
The entire omnibus suddenly heard a call—a scream from far behind. It called out a name—the name of the nameless boy. As soon as the boy heard that scream his eyes flew wide open, almost like he hadn't been asleep at all. The frown on his face instantly turned into a vibrant smile, as if he had secretly hoped to hear that scream. But then, the smile dimmed, even through the layers of old sweaters, a heavy jacket and a blanket on top; he felt an Insidious chill running down his spine.
The boy sat up and looked forward. After a bit of hesitation, he asked the omnibus coachman to stop the vehicle. The coachman seemed upset by the request. Most of the asleep passengers didn't hear the scream, but the coachman was awake and became wary of the unknown scream.
"Uncle! I promise I'll be quick. I just need to see who called my name. Please, it'll only take a minute!" he insisted.
The coachman, sitting at the front to control the horses, was firm. "No, son. It ain't safe—especially not here. I can't allow us to stop. In fact, I was thinking about making these horses run as fast as they could to get us the hell out of here. But I can't risk making too much noise either."
The boy lingered. Deep down, he knew the man was right; stopping in a place like this was dangerous indeed. But something about the scream—the way it had called his name—made him determined to find its source.
"Okay, you're right," he admitted, "but the scream—it called my name. I think… I think it's someone I know. I need to see them. If you can't stop, please, just slow down for a minute or two. I'll run there and come right back. I promise it won't cause any trouble."
The coachman was unmoved, his back still as stone.
"Please…"
"..."
Hearing the desperation in the young boy's voice, the middle-aged coachman sighed. He turned his head slightly, glancing at the boy from the corner of his eye. Before saying another word, he gripped the barrel of a shotgun beside him.
His hand trembled as he said, "Listen, kid. You get five minutes. That's it. You get out, do what you gotta do, and come back—all in five minutes. If you're not back in that time, consider me gone."
The coachman muttered a sound and whipped the reins. The omnibus didn't stop entirely, but the horses slowed to a much calmer pace.
Then, the boy heard a click! The door beside him was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped out. Chilly winds instantly clashed against his face making him shiver. As he was closing the door behind him, he paused. Looking down, he murmured to the driver, "Thank you…"
The coachman shook his head. "Just get going, brat."
He nodded and closed the door, to run back through the snow at full speed. The ground beneath him was less thick than the snowfields of his hometown, yet the familiar chill still crept through his worn-out leather shoes and ragged socks. The rays of the rising sun streamed from the east, warming the side of his face.
He abruptly closed his eyes, stunned by the sudden exposure to light after sleeping in the dim omnibus. A gentle wind tugged at his scarf, making it flutter as he ran. Heavy breaths steamed in the frigid air, but then he slowly opened his eyes and gazed at a beautiful sight in front of him.
The sunlight illuminated the serene, white landscape. To the west, a majestic snowy mountain gleamed in the morning sunlight. Ahead, a lush yet snow-covered taiga forest appeared, leading toward the source of the scream
And then—he slowed to catch his breath.
He slowly walked forward, counting every step while getting closer and closer to the source of the scream.
And then, he saw… He saw… Something he shouldn't have.
The figure froze in place. His heart swelled with joy, his fist clenched with wrath, sorrow poured from his eyes, and agony churned within. An indescribable weave of complex emotions rooted deep within his soul.
The consequences of gazing at the -unknown- were beyond the bounds of his comprehension.
…
Some time had passed, but the figure of the boy was still standing in the same spot, frozen in time with a complicated expression on his face.
But his soul… his soul had been torn apart from his body, ejected violently, leaving the physical form behind. His soul had been kicked out of his back with such great force, that it flipped in midair and hovered in the sky like a weightless object. His soul form had become translucent, an ethereal being made of pure golden-white light, weightless and without physical substance.
It wasn't clear how or why that happened, only that it was the result of having witnessed something he shouldn't have.
The nameless boy in the form of an illusory soul looked around, completely confused. He was scared to be levitating a few meters up in the air. He observed his surroundings and looked down. Recognising the wilderness, and realizing he wasn't falling to his death, he slightly calmed down and thought about his situation.
After first observing his new illusory soul-body, he looked towards the rest of the world. The falling snowflakes, the previously moving omnibus, the swiftly flying birds and the entire world around him were static… as if time itself had frozen.
After a bit of hesitation, he slowly extended his hand to touch the snowflakes suspended in the air. The nameless boy's illusory hand completely passed through the static snowflakes. No matter how hard he tried, the soul-body could not interact with the physical world—it was completely intangible.
'What the hell have I become?' The boy thought to himself while looking at his translucent, golden-white hands.
The illusory soul-body of the boy felt no cold, no hunger, no pain, no attachments. He was free, but the cost of freedom was a complete disconnection from the world. Before he could even comprehend his new state of being, something unexpected happened.
He felt...A pull. A force was acting upon him,
The force of…Gravity.
But the gravity of the physical world wasn't supposed to work on him, he was made up of weightless and illusory matter in his soul-body form after all. But still, the feeling of plummeting was real.
He resisted, trying to escape the pull. He had no idea how to fight this force, but he had no choice but to try. Desperation surged within him, he felt the need to return to the physical body—to return to what was familiar, to what remained.
As he focused, something inside him stirred—a flicker of power, awakened by instinct.
The power of Flight.
It was as though the very essence of his soul had granted him the ability to move freely in the air. He rose, weightless and unbound, moving against the pull as though levitation was as natural as breathing to him.
For a moment, hope sparked within him. He gritted his illusory teeth and used all the power and will he had to try and levitate towards his physical body.
But as seconds passed, the pull grew stronger. The invisible force intensified, dragging at him like unseen hands gripping his very being. He struggled against it with everything he had, fighting the strange tug of war between his newfound power of levitation and the ever-increasing pull of this special gravity. But for how long could be last?
'What the hell is this?' He thought and then looked around to see how the force affected the rest of the world.
Unlike him, the world frozen in time was unchanged: The snowflakes all around his soul remained still in the air. The birds in the sky were stuck in an unchanging pose. The falling leaves of dying trees hung motionlessly in the sky much the same way bricks don't. The entire physical world had completely frozen in time and was untouched by this special force of gravity pulling him down.
Only he was falling, all alone.
As the power of gravity grew stronger and stronger by each second… A horrifying realization struck him.
This wasn't the natural gravity he had known all his life. Real gravity didn't change. It didn't increase or decrease in intensity with time. No—this force was different. It was alien, unnatural.
It was something that acted upon his soul itself. A power beyond his comprehension.
Someone…or Something intended, and was also capable of pulling down the illusory matter of his soul-body. But the fact that this gravity only pulled on the illusory matter and not the rest of the world meant only one thing:
'This gravity, it's not normal... it's a force that's illusory itself.'
After all, if his illusory being couldn't interact with the physical world, it only made sense that the illusory gravity wouldn't affect the physical world either. But at the same time as his soul was illusory, it only made sense for an illusory force to act upon it.
Regardless, the soul of the nameless boy kept struggling, he gritted his teeth and swung his arm around in an irrational attempt to 'swim' towards his physical body. But no matter how much or what he tried, the ever-growing force of illusory gravity kept pulling at him, straight down.
Then, without warning, the force of this illusory gravity finally overwhelmed the power of his levitation. He began to plummet—downward, into the depths of the earth. Instinctively, he reached out, desperate to grab onto anything, but his illusory hands, no, his entire illusory soul body, passed through all physical matter. The snow, the dirt, even the solid bedrock beneath—it all gave way.
'No! Is this it? Am I really falling straight to hell?' Panic surged as he thought, 'I swear I'll stop gorging on those sweet Rasgullas and Ras Malai. I won't be a glutton I promise. God, just let this stop!'
But nothing helped slow him down. The fall continued, unrelenting.
The downward acceleration left his thoughts fragmented. In the depths of the earth, he glimpsed at vast, still lakes, their surfaces disturbed by unknown colossal creatures he couldn't recognize. Hidden underground rivers larger than any he'd ever seen carved their way through forgotten worlds. Massive icebergs encased in darkness held secrets of a time long past; Fossils, ancient murals, and the remnants of civilisations no one remembered flashed before his eyes.
Then he passed through a molten layer of lava, its searing heat incapable of harming his illusory and intangible soul-body. Finally, he plunged into absolute darkness.
The light vanished, leaving him adrift in the depths of the earth, devoid of sight; he was truly lost from light.
And then came… The Shadows.
...….