The darkness swallowed everything, a void without time, without form. It pressed in on all sides, suffocating and oppressive, like a dream half-remembered, and yet, more real than any dream ever could be. Elias could feel it—his own body, his own mind, but he couldn't move. He couldn't scream. He could only watch.
A distant, muffled voice broke through the nothingness.
"Wake up."
It wasn't his voice. It was a voice he didn't recognize, and yet it was so familiar, so... wrong. The words echoed in the void, twisting the fabric of his being. He wanted to call out, to shout, but his lips refused to part, his throat refused to make sound. His mind, fragmented and frail, screamed in the silence.
"No. No, please. Don't take me."
But it was already happening. His thoughts, his soul, began to stretch, to fragment. Like a thread being unraveled, he felt himself slipping—pulled from his body, his world, and thrust into something else. Something new.
And then—he was there.
Avery awoke with a start, his body lurching upward as he gasped for air. The suddenness of it left him dizzy, his vision blurring as the room around him slowly came into focus. He was in a dimly lit room, its cold stone walls covered in tapestries he didn't recognize. He felt the bed beneath him—a bed far too large for someone of his size. His hands moved to push himself upright, but they were… wrong. The skin was softer, paler. The fingers were slender, fragile.
He could feel the air cool against his face—unnaturally so, as if it were trying to drag him into the coldness. His gaze swept over the room, finding nothing familiar, nothing that grounded him.
His name. It whispered through his mind, unbidden: Elias.
A wave of confusion hit him like a slap. He wasn't Elias—he couldn't be. He wasn't this child. His body was wrong, his mind was wrong. He looked down at himself, at the strange clothes he was wearing—a fine tunic, the fabric heavy but not oppressive. His chest felt too light, as if he hadn't breathed in years. The weight of it… the weight of his body, it wasn't right.
A cold draft brushed against his cheek, and he stiffened. The door creaked open.
A figure stepped into the room, but Avery didn't recognize them. His heart raced. Who were they? What did they want with him?
"Elias," the figure said sharply, their tone commanding.
Avery blinked, still reeling from the disorientation. They spoke his name again, but this time, it felt wrong—like a name he shouldn't answer to.
"Get up. You're expected." The figure turned, as if already assuming he would follow.
Avery didn't know whether to fight, to run, or to question what was happening. But he found his legs moving before he could make a choice. It was as though they were his legs, yet not his at all. He stumbled, catching himself on the edge of the table, and for the briefest moment, he saw something flicker in the reflection—a man, not a boy.
Elias. The name still felt foreign, but there was something deeper. Something inside of him shifted. He recognized it, the unnatural familiarity of his movements, his thoughts. It was like waking up inside someone else's dream, unable to control the actions but aware of their weight.
Elias screamed.
It wasn't a sound Avery could hear, not consciously. But in the back of his mind, in that fractured place where his own thoughts should've been, there was something else—a presence. Elias's presence.
"Please..."
Avery froze mid-step, feeling a pulse of emotion he couldn't place. Fear. Desperation. Anger. But it wasn't his.
No, no, no! This is my body. My life!
But it wasn't. And it wasn't Elias's either—not anymore. They were both here, fighting for control, trapped in this borrowed existence. The sense of a soul—Elias's soul—wrapped around his own, like a spider's thread, tightening and pulling him deeper into the void.
Avery's movements slowed as his mind screamed. It was the strangest sensation—like being trapped in a cage with no bars, suffocated by the weight of memories that weren't his own. He could feel Elias—no, he could sense him—fighting to push him out, to reclaim the body.
"I don't want this. I never asked for this!" Elias's voice reverberated through his mind, growing louder, more insistent with every passing second. It became a physical pressure, a push against his skull, like hands clawing at his thoughts.
Elias was still here. Trapped in the space between life and death, between consciousness and oblivion. He had never left. He was just waiting. Watching.
Avery reached the door, opening it, but his mind was far from the simple act. Elias's desperation echoed in his head, reverberating with each breath he took, pulling at his consciousness like a riptide.
And there—there it was. A flicker of his own self, his real self. Not Elias. Not this body. Not this world. But Avery Donovan, buried beneath the chaos. Still alive, still fighting to wake up.
But would he wake up? Would he even be able to leave this life behind? Or would Elias's soul continue to claw its way back, claiming what was once his?
The footsteps behind him grew louder, and the presence of the figure drew nearer. Avery turned, his heart thumping in his chest, and then—like a ghost, like a whisper—he heard the final words.
"Elias." The voice was colder now. "It's time."