Kairo Vale hated mornings.
Not because of the cold, or the noise, or the forced rituals of school.
He hated them because they started. Because they kept starting.
Like the world was stuck on repeat and no one had noticed but him.
The same gray light bleeding through the blinds.
The same squeal of the water pipes groaning through the walls.
The same forced conversation from people who didn't mean what they said.
"Morning, Vale."
Kairo didn't answer. He passed the teacher with a nod and walked straight to the back of the classroom, bag slung over one shoulder, earphones in.
They weren't playing anything.
Just silence.
He liked silence more than people.
He didn't have friends. Not really.
People didn't talk to him unless they had to, and even then, they kept their distance like he might cough up a gun.
He didn't dress edgy. He didn't fight.
He just... existed. Quietly.
Like a crack in the floor no one noticed until they tripped over it.
"He's weird," someone whispered.
"He never talks. Probably a freak."
Kairo leaned back in his chair and stared out the window.
Clouds crawled across the sky. Dark. Heavy.
He could already feel it in the air.
Something was off today.
The day dragged.
Classes melted into each other - numbers, dates, diagrams, voices that said nothing and meant less.
By lunch, half the school had vanished into their screens.
By dusk, the halls were empty.
Kairo didn't go home.
He never rushed home. There was nothing waiting for him there.
No mom. No dad. Just a room and an old ceiling that cracked louder every winter.
So he walked. Past the station. Past the overpass.
Out toward the edge of the city where the buildings thinned and the streetlights flickered like dying stars.
That's when it happened.
It wasn't loud.
No thunder. No lightning. No portal splitting the sky in anime fashion.
Just a hum. Low. Deep. Like someone whispering behind his skull.
Then the air cracked.
It didn't glow. It bled.
A seam opened in the world, right there on the ground - like someone had unzipped the fabric of the street.
And before he could think, move, scream -
it pulled.
Not like gravity.
Like memory.
His legs buckled. His arms flailed. The concrete split under his feet like wet paper.
"This isn't happening."
He never got the chance to finish the thought.
He fell.
Not through space.
Through existence.
There was no sky.
No ground.
Just pressure. Heat. Sounds without source. Shapes without form.
Hands that touched him without touching. Screams without mouths.
His lungs burned. His eyes wouldn't close.
His body stopped belonging to him.
"You are not the Witness."
"Then why are you here?"
"Error. ERROR. ERROR."
He didn't understand.
But the world around him did.
And it didn't care.
Somewhere in the distance - or maybe inside him - a name echoed.
Not his name.
Not Kairo Vale.
A different name. One he didn't recognize.
And then something looked at him.
Not a creature. Not a god. Just... an intention with teeth.
It saw him.
And it screamed.
When he hit the bottom - if there even was a bottom - he was alone.
His body ached. His throat was raw.
He coughed black smoke that didn't fade.
He bled something thicker than blood.
He was somewhere.
Someplace wrong.
The air pulsed with hunger.
And he heard them.
The Hollowdeep, or what we used to call Hell, wasn't fire. It was silence.
Sniffing. Crawling. Whispering.
Already coming.
And Kairo Vale, the quiet kid with no friends and no future,
sat up in the dust and said nothing.
Because even then-
even as the first claw scraped against the bone of his soul-
he refused to scream.