Kieran's breath rattled in his chest. His lungs felt like they were on fire. His body, the body that should've been his sanctuary, felt more like a prison. Every movement, every twitch of his fingers, felt wrong. It was as though he was in someone else's skin—something rotting, crawling beneath the surface.
The black-winged angel stood silent, unmoving, its gaze intense, fixed on Kieran. But there was something in that stare—something shifted in the air. It wasn't looking at him anymore.
It was looking through him.
Kieran's heart beat in his throat. Thump, thump, thump, thump. His mind echoed with the growing pulse of the thing beneath his skin. He wanted to scream. He needed to scream. But when he opened his mouth—
Nothing.
There was no sound.
The whisper came again, louder now. It was an insidious scraping, like nails dragged across glass—like something trying to break into him from the inside. Closer.
"You should have never returned."
Kieran tried to move, but his limbs weren't his. They jerked in directions they shouldn't, fingers contorting, joints snapping back, as though they were bent by invisible forces. It was as if his body was fighting him, trying to return to the place it had just come from. The Maw.
And it wasn't alone.
A sudden, sharp pressure gripped the back of his skull. The world twisted, like a piece of paper being crumpled, and for a brief moment, the black-winged angel vanished—replaced by something far darker.
The smile.
Kieran didn't know how, but he knew that smile. It was the same grin from the Maw, the same teeth. Too many teeth. They weren't just grinning anymore—they were watching him. Eyes, rows upon rows of eyes, stared at him from the depths of his vision. They blinked when he blinked. They followed him when he moved.
The teeth pressed in closer, slipping past the edges of his skin.
"You're not human."
Kieran felt a sharp pain in his stomach, a tearing sensation so deep it sent a tremor through his bones. He clutched at his sides, but his fingers sank into his skin. It was soft, too soft. Like wet paper.
His fingers dug deeper.
And then, he pulled—and his skin came away.
A slick, smooth layer of his own flesh peeled off, revealing nothing but thick, dark void beneath. A space that pulsed and churned. He stared in horror as the skin he had torn free shuddered, as though it was still alive, still clinging to him, but fighting to return to its real form.
"No," Kieran gasped, but even his voice was wrong now—his throat seemed to echo with thousands of whispers. So many whispers.
And from the rip in his chest, something began to emerge.
A shadow.
It wasn't human. It wasn't anything that could be understood. It was pure hunger, a thing that had never known light or warmth. It slithered and writhed as it pulled itself out, growing from the darkness within.
Kieran's eyes bulged as he watched his body distort, his form warping, unable to hold itself together. His chest opened, wide, impossibly wide, like a mouth, and from inside, he heard something scream.
Not his voice. No.
It was deeper. Older. Unholy.
The air grew thick with the scent of decay, and Kieran's mind was lost in the intensity of the presence now surrounding him. The shadow that had been inside him was no longer satisfied with simply emerging. It wanted to consume.
With one final, violent twist, the black-winged angel lunged forward, but it wasn't fast enough. The shadow ripped free from Kieran's body, expanding, growing like a flood of darkness, pouring out, swallowing the angel whole, its wings flailing uselessly as the shadow devoured them. The screams were deafening.
But Kieran couldn't hear them. Because the thing inside him—the thing wearing him—was already beginning to feast.
His body—the real body he had once called his own—was no more.
Only the emptiness remained. And the hunger.
And that was the worst part.
Because Kieran was still there—he could still feel the last fragments of himself, trying desperately to escape, to hold on. But he was being consumed by the thing that had always been inside him.
And as the darkness began to swallow the angel, Kieran heard it again.
The whisper.
"You were never supposed to leave. You were never supposed to wake up."
And this time, it wasn't just a voice.
It was his own.