Black.
That was the first thing.
No pain.
No breath.
No body.
Just endless, oppressive black.
Then a whisper, gliding through the static:
"It's still warm."
Another voice followed. Deeper. Slower.
Void of emotion.
"Unconscious. Not aware. It's safe to proceed."
Somewhere in the darkness, something stirred.
A presence.
A soul.
Mine.
I didn't know I was dead.
Not yet.
Where am I...? Wasn't I just— Mother…?
The voices blurred into distortion.
Glass echoes on cold concrete.
"We should report this."
"To the Manager? For this anomaly?"
The word echoed.
Manager.
A low, mechanical hum grew from beneath.
Like turbines turning miles below my skull.
I felt motion.
Something was moving.
But not footsteps. Not... human.
I can't move my arms. Or breathe. Or scream. Am I still even—me?
My senses returned in fragments.
The scent of sulfur.
The sound of fluid dripping against steel.
A cold touch at my spine—like fingers made of wire.
Then—
light.
Pale. Blue. Unnatural.
I opened my eyes—barely.
And saw them.
Three figures.
Towering. Still.
Clothed in robes blacker than the void.
No flesh showed.
Only eyes.
The two closest—Lower Wanderers—had dim, sickly white eyes.
Flickering like dying stars.
The one in the centre glowed blue.
Not warm, not kind.
Blue like static. Like surgical steel.
That was the Manager.
And behind them—
Larger.
Still as stone.
The Warden.
His eye didn't just glow—
it burned.
A spiral of violet and crimson, swirling like a collapsing galaxy.
Cold.
Terrible.
Alive.
When it looked at me, time fractured.
I've never seen anything that felt so—wrong.
I flinched.
Or dreamed I did.
---
"A defect," the Manager said.
"I've never seen this before. Not registered in any cycle."
He glided forward. His robes scraped against a floor I couldn't see.
"Warden, permission to discard?"
No mouths moved.
No sound.
Only silence.
And the Warden's eye shifted toward the Manager.
The gaze alone crushed the room flat.
"It has begun," the Warden whispered—not aloud, but into the fabric of reality.
"Understood," the Manager replied.
"Lower Wanderers—dispose of him. Into the Abyss."
---
I was lifted.
But not by hands.
By something else.
Cloth-covered limbs with too many joints. Bent the wrong way.
They carried me.
As we moved, I glimpsed more of this realm.
A translucent floor, with rats scuttling beneath.
Shadows that walked beside us—but moved opposite.
A cleaner dragging a rod carved with ancient symbols, singing a song with no notes.
Then—
a hole.
A perfect circle.
Black.
Bottomless.
Breathing.
And without pause—
I was thrown in.
---
Falling.
No wind.
No weight.
No world.
The dark around me pulsed like lungs inhaling.
Then—
Glitches.
Not flickers.
Not static.
My chest ruptured first.
From my heart, white pixels burst—
spreading outward like infection.
They crawled up my throat, into my skull.
My mouth lit up.
My eyes cracked open, glowing.
My ears shrieked with screeching static.
My nose peeled, pixels flaking into nothing.
What is happening to me—?!
Pain.
Not the kind that screams.
The kind that devours.
My body bent and split into code.
My arms dissolved.
My ribs fell away.
And then—
my thoughts began to unravel.
No, no, no, no—stop— Please make it stop—
Like a thousand hammers inside my skull, all striking at once.
Glass. Shattering. From the inside.
And amidst the noise—
A voice.
Not from outside.
From within.
Sleep.
I didn't fight it.
I couldn't scream anymore.
I couldn't feel.
I just—
broke.
White light swallowed me whole.
And everything I was
shattered into pixels.
---
Nothing remained but the fall.