Falling.
Falling...
The fall was endless—an unrelenting descent through a void where nothing but darkness existed. No sky, no ground, no sun, no moon—nothing. Only vast emptiness, stretching infinitely in all directions.
Yet within it, there was something… or someone. An infinitesimal spark in the boundless abyss. It was a falling figure, made of light. He was a faint, translucent silhouette shaped like a human body—a pale soul amidst overwhelming nothingness. There was no resistance to its fall, no sense of time or direction, just an endless, hopeless drop.
He was a soul trapped in an unchanging hell of eternal descent. His suffering was unbearable, but what made it truly suffocating was solitude.
But his soul hadn't always been the lone tenant of the abyss. Rather, He came to this desolate hell long, long ago.
***
The soul's life before its endless fall into the bottomless abyss wasn't much better than his current situation. Not that he knew of it himself.
So much time had passed that he could no longer remember his life from before. Maybe the vague memory of two parents and a handful of friends was nothing but a dream. Perhaps the nostalgic vision of a snow-covered hut he called home was merely an illusion. Maybe his entire life had just been this bleak, endless, and unchanging fall. So every other memory was nothing more than a mere hallucination?
'No! That can't be right,' he thought to himself. 'I was alive once. I lived.'
With that thought, fragments of memories from his past life began to emerge in his subconscious. Straining his mind, he focused, as though pulling at a string wrapped around distant, countless scenes. With great effort, he managed to recollect certain things about his past.
He envisioned his two parents, his few friends, and the good times they had shared. His life wasn't the best—in fact, much of it was spent in poverty and the harsh reality of child labour. Yet, those bittersweet fragments of memories were what kept the plummeting soul sane. They were what kept him human.
But at the end of that string of memories lay a particular scene.
Envisioning it made the lonely soul grit his illusory teeth. Even though much of his past life was shrouded in haze, that one harrowing memory was vivid and clear—as though it had happened just yesterday.
The memory of the day he first fell into the abyss.
***
That fateful day had begun like any other. Light snowfall blanketed the region; the sun was waking up from the east, and the soft chirping of birds lent life to the quiet world.
The figure—The physical body of the past of the descending Nameless soul inside the memory scene—was asleep. Not in his own house, but inside a vehicle travelling through a snowy wilderness, far from his hometown. His mode of transport resembled a carriage, but it was much larger than any he had ever seen. It looked more like a bus than a typical carriage. The vehicle was pulled by three horses and carried about a dozen sleeping passengers, along with a middle-aged coachman at the front to control the horses.
…
'What was that carriage called again?... An omnibus!… I think…' The descending soul thought while envisioning the scene.
The descending soul couldn't recall why he had been on that omnibus that day. He didn't remember where he was travelling to either. Yet, the crowded interior remained vivid in his mind.
Before he could linger on memories of the peculiar carriage, the scene progressed.
…
The sleeping figure in the scene suddenly heard a call—a scream, far behind him, calling out his name. Even though he wore layers of old sweaters and a heavy jacket, an Insidious chill ran down his spine. His eyes flew wide open like he hadn't been asleep, almost as if he had been waiting for his name to be called.
…
'Wait… My name? What was it again?... Who cares anyway?'
The Nameless soul laughed at himself as he recollected the scene. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember his own name.
'Guess I'll just call myself Nameless, then.'
With that, the Nameless soul continued to watch the scene of the past—back when he had a name.
…
In the scene of the memory, the figure quickly asked the omnibus coachman to stop. The coachman seemed upset by the reasonable request for some reason.
"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 here—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. But I can't risk making too much noise either."
The figure 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 man's voice, the middle-aged coachman sighed. He turned his head slightly, glancing at the boy from the corner of his eye.
"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 calmer pace.
Then, the figure heard a click! The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped out. As he began to close the door behind him, he paused. Looking down for a second, he murmured to the driver, "Thank you…"
The man shook his head. "Just get going, brat."
The figure nodded and ran back into the snow. 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 vivid scenery of that place remained crystal clear in the Nameless soul's mind…
While running the rays of the rising sun streamed from the east, warming the side of the figure's face in the memory scene.
He abruptly closed his eyes, stunned by the sudden exposure to light after sleeping in the dim omnibus. But then he slowly opened his eyes and gazed at a beautiful sight.
The sunlight illuminated the serene, white landscape, while a gentle wind tugged at his scarf, making it flutter as he ran. Heavy breaths steamed in the frigid air. He turned to the west, a majestic snowy mountain gleamed in the morning light.
And then—he slowed to catch his breath.
Ahead, a lush yet snow-covered taiga forest appeared, leading toward the source of the scream.
He slowly walked forward, counting every step.
And then, he saw… He saw…
…
'What had I seen?' The descending Nameless soul had an unexplainable gap in his memory scene.
The recollecting of the memory scene… glitched, the Nameless soul rubbed his illusory chin in thought. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember what he saw.
Though he still remembered what he felt upon gazing at that -unknown- sight.
…
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 comprehension.
…
Even though this scene was being played as a recollection of memories inside the mind of Nameless plummeting into the abyss, he still shivered.
Even the scene of the memories became distorted and fragmented. Certain parts of the memory were inexplicably corrupted and the scene skipped ahead.
The scene finally resumed normally a few seconds later.
…
The figure was still standing in the same spot, frozen in time.
But his soul… his soul had been torn apart from his body, ejected violently, leaving the physical form behind. His soul had been thrust out with such great force, that it flipped in midair and hovered in the dawn sky like a weightless object. His form had become translucent, an ethereal being made of pure white light.
It wasn't clear how or why that happened. Only that it was the result of having witnessed something he shouldn't have.
His soul had no weight, no substance. The figure in the soul body looked confused. He was scared to be levitating a few meters up in the air. He observed his surroundings and looked down. Recognizing the wilderness, and realizing he wasn't falling down, he slightly calmed down.
After observing his new illusory soul body, he slowly extended his hand to touch the snowflakes suspended in the air. The falling snowflakes, along with the entire world around him, felt static as if time itself had frozen.
The soul body'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.
The soul body felt no cold, no hunger, no pain, no attachments. He was free, but the cost of freedom was 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 gravity 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, the need to return to the omnibus—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.
For a moment, hope sparked within him.
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.
Unlike him, the world frozen in time was unchanged. The birds in the air were still. The snowflakes hung motionless. The physical world was completely untouched by this special force pulling him to the depths of the world.
Only he was being pulled.
Then… 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.
Something…or Someone intended, and was also capable of pulling down illusory substance such as his soul.
But the fact that this gravity only pulled on the illusory matter and not the rest of the world meant only one thing:
It was... illusory gravity.
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.
Then, without warning, the force of this illusory gravity overwhelmed his power of levitation. He began to plummet—downward, into the depths of the earth. Instinctively, he reached out, desperate to grab onto anything, but his hands, no, his entire being, passed through all 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 did. The fall continued, unrelenting.
The downward acceleration left his thoughts fragmented, his memories of the descent were a patchwork of surreal impressions. In the depths of the earth, he glimpsed at vast, still lakes, their surfaces disturbed by unknown creatures he couldn't name. 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 the 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.
...….