I was woken up by the sting of cold air scraping down my throat.
My eyes snapped open to a sky streaked with shades of crimson and gray, its faint light at dawn choked by thick clouds. For a moment, I did not know where I was. It was just the dead weight of my own body that weighed me down on the jagged ground, the edges of stones pressing into my back, reminding me of the cruel fact I was still alive.
My chest heaved, breath ragged like I'd been drowning.
Maybe I had...
The sky went white.
Not the soft white of clouds or the pale glow of moonlight. This was an oppressive, blinding white that swallowed everything, time and thought. It wasn't light. It was absence. A void so sharp it felt like staring into the exposed bones of reality itself.
Am I dead?
Is this Heaven?
My thoughts were not whispers in my head anymore. They were screams, raw and echoing, even though no sound escaped my lips. My throat was dry, carved from stone; when I moved, my body protested. All of my muscles seemed alien. As if they were strings pulled by unseen hands.
I wasn't dead. I couldn't be because I hurt too much for that. My chest was on fire with every shallow breath I made. My heartbeat hit in erratic rhythms like it tried to punch its way out.
I put my hands down, pressing against the cold surface beneath me. It wasn't grass neither was it dirt it was something smoother, slick like glass but gritty with dust. I shoved myself up, vision clearing in bursts as if reality itself was struggling to load back into focus.
Shapes began to emerge—fractured lines carved into the ground, spiraling out from where I'd been lying. Symbols. Ancient, maybe older than language itself, pulsing faintly with veins of dark crimson light, like blood flowing just beneath translucent skin.
I struggled to my feet, my balance wobbly, the pounding echo still reverberating in my head. My surroundings shifted as if the world had been waiting for me to wake up. The white peeled away like fragile paper burning from the edges, revealing walls: crumbling, jagged stone walls covered in ivy that moved-slithering like tendrils searching for something.
I was inside a ruin.
Or what was left of one?
The ceiling was replaced by a sky that wasn't a sky at all. No sun. No stars. Just one yawning expanse of gray, swirling clouds that blinked with faint flashes of violet lightning and no thunder to accompany it.
The air was heavy, humming with static, as if reality itself was stitched together by threads too thin to see.
And I was alone.
Or so I thought.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than the whispers were back, thin, slithering things weaving through the cracks of the broken stone all around me. They didn't echo because there was no place for echoes to go. The space here felt flattened like the sound had no place to hide.
"Not dead yet."
"Closer, though."
"How disappointing."
I spun, fists clenched, claws itching to tear into something—anything.
"Show yourself!" I screamed, my throat dry, and it came out in a raspy tone that cleaved through the air, sharper than a knife. The whispers stopped, stilled by my shout for one heartbeat, before they exploded into soft laughter, neither nasty nor nice, merely amused.
And then, she was there.
No flickering this time, no glitching in and out of sight. She was just leaning casually against one of the broken stone pillars like she'd been there all along, waiting. Her eyes held the same eerie, empty glow I remembered, but there was something else now-like they reflected things that weren't there.
I didn't think. I lunged.
My body moved on instinct, driven by anger, confusion, fear-all of it. But the moment my claws should've met flesh, Serena glitched again vanishing, just shifting-like reality stuttered. My momentum carried me straight through where she'd been and-
CRACK.
I slammed headfirst into a pillar.
The world spun. Stars danced mockingly in my vision, and I stumbled back, clutching my forehead. "Damn it!"
Behind me, Serena's soft laughter chimed in, melodic and faraway, like the wind blowing through hollow bones.
Fury boiled in my veins. I spun again, growling, but she was gone.
No. Not gone. Everywhere.
The whispers moved with a voice among them now, a strand of silk in the tangle of weeds.
"You're quick to anger. Does that make you strong?"
I ran.
I don't know why. Rage, fear, confusion—all of it mixed like poison in my blood. My legs carried me through crumbling archways, down twisted corridors choked with vines that writhed like living things. My breath came ragged, each inhale scraping against my throat. The ruins blurred around me, walls shifting like they weren't built to stay still.
But the whispers followed.
"Running won't help."
"You're still prey, Ashen."
"Did you think you were the hunter?"
I struck harder, faster, feet pounding cracked stone, my heart pounding like a war drum. The ruins gave way to something worse—a forest, yet not of this world. The trees were wrong—tall, bone-white trunks spiraling into tangled black canopies that blocked out even the faintest light. The ground pulsed beneath my feet, breathing like a beast lying just beneath the surface.
My vision blurred. My chest burned.
And then—she was there.
Again.
I skidded to a stop, breath hitching. Serena stood in the clearing I'd stumbled into, her head tilted slightly as if studying me. No mockery now. Just quiet, infuriating calm.
I was shaking—not from exhaustion, but from something colder.
Fear.
The realization hit me harder than the pillar had.
I was afraid.
I bared my teeth. "What are you?" My voice was a growl, broken and ragged. "Why are you following me?"
Serena stepped forward, her bare feet silent against the strange, breathing earth. She crouched, tilting her head, her glowing eyes boring into me like she was trying to peel back layers I didn't know existed.
She opened her mouth to speak—
And the world shifted again.
A shudder ran through the earth, and behind her, something else began to emerge: a figure-not human, not anywhere close. Its shape was fluid as if the darkness itself had decided to stand upright. No eyes, no face, just nothingness.
The whispers stopped.
Even Serena's face changed a little. A flicker of something like recognition. Or maybe… concern.
I stumbled backward, hard, ragged breaths, my heart racing on.
What is that?
Serena didn't answer.
Because the answer stood right in front of me.