The silence was suffocating.
Nima's vision blurred as the last remnants of reality slipped away. Time seemed to stretch, the edges of the world bending and folding like paper caught in a storm. Her body felt heavy, as though the very weight of existence had collapsed onto her, and her mind was adrift in a sea of chaotic noise. The Abyssal Echo still rang in her ears, a maddening symphony that drowned out every thought.
Her heartbeat slowed, or was it speeding up? She couldn't tell anymore. The distortion of space around her made it impossible to grasp onto anything solid. There was no floor, no sky. Only the oppressive blackness, the feel of a presence that was both within her and all around her, suffocating every corner of her soul.
Am I still alive? she thought, though the question felt pointless. Life, death—it didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered except the song. The Bell's song, pulsating through her veins, mingling with the echo of the Abyss, binding her to something vast and unknowable.
In the periphery of her fractured perception, shapes began to form. Slow and deliberate, like creatures waking from an eternal slumber. Faint, skeletal outlines emerged from the darkness, figures twisted and ancient, their forms barely comprehensible in the shifting void.
There was a sense of movement—but not in the way she had known. This wasn't the forward motion of walking or running; it was the relentless drift of something far larger, more primordial. The figures were moving toward her, and as they did, their presence grew heavier, more suffocating.
One of them stepped into her view, its outline sharp and angular, a towering figure crowned in darkness. Its face—if it could be called a face—was an amalgamation of endless eyes, each one filled with a swirling storm of galaxies. The figure tilted its head, a strange, unsettling curiosity in its gaze.
It sees me, Nima realized, and the thought sent a wave of terror through her.
"You have sung the Song," the figure's voice echoed, but it wasn't spoken aloud. It resonated deep within her mind, a dark, familiar pulse. "The Song of the Bell is yours to command now, as it has always been. But you are bound by its chains."
Nima recoiled, though her limbs felt like they were submerged in liquid. She couldn't escape it. The Abyss, the figure, the Song—they were all part of her now. The weight of that realization crushed her.
"Bound?" she echoed weakly, struggling to form words through the overwhelming sense of displacement. "What do you mean?"
The figure's eyes swirled, galaxies spinning within them, and Nima could hear the faintest hint of a laugh, like the distant sound of a thousand storms.
"The price of the Song is not in what you gain, but in what you lose," it intoned, each word dragging her deeper into an unspoken truth. "The Bell's echo reverberates across all realities, and you, Nima, are the first to truly hear it. But at what cost?"
The figure raised one hand, and as it did, the blackness around them shimmered, stretching like a veil that parted to reveal fragments of another world—of other worlds. Images flashed in rapid succession: cities burning, faces twisted in agony, and skies cracked open, pouring blood and fire. A world of death and destruction, endless, sprawling like a nightmare made real.
Nima could feel her breath quicken, panic rising in her chest. This was no vision. This was not some fleeting glimpse of another time or place. This was what awaited them. This was the future.
Her heart pounded in her chest as she tried to look away, but the images pressed in on her, each one more violent than the last. She couldn't escape it. The Song—the Song—was making her see the consequences, the future that had already been set into motion.
"You can't escape it," the figure said, its voice growing colder. "The path you have chosen will unfold before you, and you will bear the weight of every step. The Song calls for the end."
The end of what? Nima thought, but the answer was already within her. She could feel it, deep in her core, like a seed planted in the darkest part of her soul. The end of the world as it had been. The beginning of something worse.
And then, the weight of its presence broke through everything.
The Bell—its Song—roared to life inside her mind, a deafening crescendo that filled the void. A blinding pulse of light erupted from the shard in her hand, and she screamed. It felt as though her very being was being torn apart.
This was the price.
The world bent, cracked, and then reformed. The faces she had seen—those twisted and broken souls—flared to life, like flickering embers being kindled into flames. They surrounded her, staring at her with vacant eyes, their mouths moving, though she could hear no words. The sound of their voices filled the air, overlapping, jumbled, chaotic.
They were waiting for something. They were waiting for her.
Nima staggered, trying to find her footing, but it was as if the ground was shifting beneath her. She couldn't make sense of it all. The Song, the Bell, the abyss—it was all too much. Too overwhelming.
"You will carry this burden," the figure intoned, as if it had been waiting for her to understand. "And when the Song reaches its crescendo, the world will be unmade."
A flash of light. The sound of shattering glass. And then, nothing.