At first, it had no shape. Just a smoldering stain in the darkness, a slow-moving thing in the air. But then, the more I looked, the more it took form. A figure. It was big — too tall — its body shifting between solidity and smoke, like a dying fire struggling to stay alive. Its ribs pressed against its skin as if something had hollowed it out from within. A tattered coat, sharp at the edges like blackened iron.
But the worst was the face. Or rather, the lack of one. The place where its features should have been was a burned ruin, a gap of cinders and embers, with only two eyes — white, empty — peering from the blackened husk. There was no malice in them, no hatred, no rage. Just… nothing.
And that was worse. A shudder ran through me. My skin was prickling with cold, my limbs were locking in place, but my breathing had quickened, too shallow, too weak. I told myself to move, to grip my sword, to lift my feet, anything. But I stood frozen, my body betraying me, my fingers twitching uselessly.
The thing was stepping forward. It did not make a sound. No breath, no rustle of cloth, not even the weight of its steps against the ground. And yet, I felt it. It was pressing against my chest like an unseen hand, pushing the air from my lungs.
It did not speak. It didn't need to. The silence was enough. The silence whispered what I already knew. That all of this, my anger, my struggles, my desperate grasping for meaning — had been for nothing. That I was staring at the thing I had always feared: the proof that my existence did not matter. That I would be forgotten. That my name would vanish, leaving nothing but a fading echo.
My fingers clenched at my sides. Nails dug into flesh. I wanted to scream. But my throat had closed, locked in an iron grip of terror. The thing took another step forward.
The dread was seeping into my bones, thick and suffocating, like tar filling my lungs. Knees were locking, and my breath was coming in sharp, broken gasps. The air had changed. It was heavier, wrong, thick with something unseen, like the quiet before a storm that never breaks.
The thing was near now. Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from it — not warmth, but something harsher, like the last breath of a dying candle, burning without light. My skin prickled, sweat slicking my back, cold despite the heat. My mouth tasted of iron. I tried to move, to force my limbs into action, but they remained rooted, trembling with
submission.
Then the whispers. Soft at first, slithering through the dark, curling around me like fingers. Then, the laughter. Low chuckles, giggles, growing louder, multiplying. I turned my head, too afraid to look, too terrified not to.
And there they were. The people. Flickering figures, shifting like smoke, half-formed yet unmistakable. Faces I knew, faces I had passed in the streets, faces that had once been nothing but background noise in my life. And yet here they were, more solid than my own breath, more real than the ground beneath me.
They sneered. They grinned. They laughed.
"Coward."
"Failure."
"Pathetic."
Their voices grew together. A mockery that dug into my skull like knives. They were close now, standing in a circle, their faces distorted with cruel delight, their eyes bright with something worse than hate — amusement.
I tried to back away, but there was nowhere to go. The thing stood behind me. The villagers in front. The laughter swelled, pressing against my ears, rattling inside my skull, drilling into my bones until I thought I would collapse beneath the weight of it.
The sound came from everywhere and nowhere, crawling through the air like a living thing. It wasn't a voice — not in the way a voice should be. It twisted and warped, low and high at once, stretched thin in some moments, thick and guttural in others. It shuddered against my ears, vibrated in my bones, and whispered behind my eyes.
"A trembling soldier obeys more than a loyal one… Do you fear me?"
My legs gave out beneath me. I fell to my knees, my breath breaking into ragged, uneven gasps. My body shook violently, as if I were nothing but brittle glass on the verge of shattering. Cold sweat ran down my spine, and without meaning to, without wanting to, I felt something hot spill down my cheeks.
Tears. I shook my head, frantic, desperate. No. No. No. But the crowd only laughed harder. The people were looming over me, faces stretched in grotesque delight, their voices sharp and merciless.
"Coward."
"Disgrace."
"A joke."
It burrowed into my mind like worms. I wanted to scream, to make them stop, to drown out the sound, but my throat had closed, useless. The thing did not move, but I felt it lean closer.
"Do you fear me? Why not end it?"
Something clattered against the ground. My sword. My fingers reached for it, slow and mechanical, as if moving on their own. The blade was cold when I grasped it, far colder than it should have been, and when I lifted it to my face, I felt it. It was watching me.
The steel was polished but dark, swallowing the dim light that surrounded us. My reflection barely formed within it, twisted and blurred, as if something beneath the surface was moving, waiting. The longer I looked, the more I felt it looking back.
It was a question. A door. An abyss waiting to be stepped into. Something stirred within me. A spark, buried beneath the weight of fear, of shame, of everything that had pressed me into the dirt my entire life. A burn of something raw, something I had long forgotten.
I wanted to live. Not just survive. Not just endure. I wanted to live. To breathe air that wasn't choked with regret. To run, to escape, to carve my own path — not as the man they named me, not as the failure they saw, but as myself. Whoever that was. Whoever that could be.
My fingers tightened around the sword. The steel was still cold, but now it felt real — solid, mine. My knees steadied. My breath slowed, deepened. I rose, inch by inch, until I stood tall.
And for the first time, I looked at it. The thing stood before me, no longer a distant specter but a force, a presence that refused to be ignored. Its form flickered, shifting between solidity and smoke, but its face — its face was different.
The blackened husk of a skull, burned and cracked, as if fire had once tried to consume it but had not finished the job. The ridges of bone jutted out, sharp and uneven, half-melted, half-decayed. What little flesh remained was stretched and dry, dark as coal, peeling at the edges like scorched parchment. The hollows where cheeks should have been pulsed with a sickly red glow, the embers of something old, something endless.
And the colors. Red. Orange. Black. They moved, shifted, and danced like fire trapped beneath the surface of its skin. It did not breathe, yet its entire form seemed to smolder, the heat of it distorting the air, making reality waver. But its eyes — those white, empty orbs — did not waver. They remained locked onto mine, unblinking, unreadable. Waiting.
The villagers had circled us now, but their voices had changed. They still called me names, still spat their cruel words, but there was something else in their voices now. Excitement. They were cheering. As if this was a battle.
As if I were a bard playing my role in the tavern, and they had been waiting, waiting for this moment, waiting to see what I would do. The fear was still there, gnawing at the edges of my mind, whispering that I was nothing, that I was doomed before I had even begun.
But the fire inside me had not gone out. I was afraid. But I was alive. And I would not kneel again. I attacked. The moment my blade was cutting through the air, the thing moved. Not like a man — not like anything I had seen before. It was twisting, shifting in a way that made no sense. One moment it was before me, the next it was at my side, its arms — or the absence of them — floating through the air as though separate from its body.
And then. The world spiraled. It was like a clock. A motion both rigid and fluid, circular yet fragmented, as if time itself had shattered and was trying, in vain, to piece itself back together. But it was also a mirror, breaking and reforming with each flicker of movement.
It was falling. Not onto the ground, not onto me, but over me, swallowing sight and sound and breath itself. The world spun. The faces of the villagers twisted into grotesque, stretched-out mockeries — mouths too wide, eyes bulging with cruel delight — until shaped into my own face. My own distorted features sneering at me.
And the creature. Swirling, interchanging, a sickening loop where identity collapsed, reassembled, collapsed again. I slashed. Wildly, desperately. At everything. At the thing. At the air. At myself. My own blade nearly carved into my shoulder as I swung in blind panic. But the strikes met nothing — nothing — as if I were fighting a shadow, a thought, a nightmare that had slipped into waking.
Something was striking me. Pain. Sharp, deep, behind my back, an explosion of fire beneath my ribs. Something had struck me, something real. The force of it sent me flying, my body weightless for a single, horrifying moment before I crashed. The impact sent my sword clattering against the ground. My arm followed, the steel biting into flesh, drawing a jagged line of red.
And suddenly, it was clear. The spinning stopped. The faces stopped. The laughter — dim, distant, as if from another room. I was gasping, ragged and breathless. My head pounded, my lungs burned, but my thoughts — finally — were not drowning in the spiral.
I was forcing myself up. My vision wavered, shifting between blur and focus, as if reality itself was struggling to settle. But I was standing. And I was not done.