"Fear becomes dangerous only when it begins to understand you."
The final bell shuddered through the school like an alarm meant to wake the dead.
A wave of students surged into the corridor, all elbows, backpacks, and impatient shouting. The entire building felt too narrow for the violence of their escape—like walls might crack under the pressure of teenagers desperate to touch freedom.
Among them walked Jel, carried forward by the crowd rather than his own will. His face was drained of life, his thoughts frayed by lack of sleep and an unshakable heaviness that had been clinging to his chest for weeks. His mind flickered with scraps of nightmares he didn't remember fully—headlights, glass, a sickening crunch. He was in this state because of reading every book related to the Fears , he became addicted to learn everything about fears.
He tried to breathe. He tried to stay present.
But the world felt off today, like it was leaning slightly to one side.
A shove hit his back.
"Move, man!"
His foot tangled with someone else's shoe.He pitched forward—hands useless in the crush of bodies—and fell hard onto the ice-cold floor.
The laughter came immediately, vicious and unfiltered.
"Again??""This guy's a magnet for gravity!""Bro walks like the floor owes him money!"
He didn't react. He'd heard it all before. He braced his palms against the tiles and pushed—
—only for the world to suddenly drop into absolute stillness.
The noise didn't fade.It died.As if someone had ripped the sound out of reality.
The chaotic bodies around him froze mid-motion.A girl remained suspended with her hand halfway into her locker.A boy's mouth hung open in a half-laugh that would never finish.A teacher's arm was raised mid-scold, petrified like a statue.
The air was cold.The silence felt suffocating.
His heart sank.
He knew exactly what this meant.
The Law of Fear—a principle every Fearlogy student learned but prayed never to experience.
When the mind enters a freeze-state, reality fractures.Time halts.Everything becomes a still photograph.
Because in that moment, a person's fear acquires form.
And if the fear gains too much form, too much presence, too much influence—
the host is already one step closer to death.
He swallowed and forced his eyes upward.
It stood before him.
Tall.Ghastly.Utterly wrong.
Its body was a silhouette formed from swirling black fluid, not quite liquid, not quite smoke—constantly reshaping itself, refusing stability. Within it floated skulls, small and numerous, drifting like trapped ghosts, rotating slowly as though they were suspended in thick tar, for its body it was a thin skeleton
The creature leaned forward.Its head twisted with an eerily human curiosity.
His breath caught in his throat.
Textbook sketches in Fearlogy never prepared him for the visceral horror of seeing one's fear in its raw, undiluted state. No diagram had skulls drifting like drowned memories. No lecture described the way its presence gnawed at the edges of sanity.
This was his fear—the fear of metal twisting,of bone breaking,of his skull shattering inside a mangled wreck.
The creature extended an arm toward him.
A long, dripping hand.Fingers thin as needles, fluid surging upward against gravity.
He froze.
His body refused to move. His skin prickled. His heartbeat hammered like it was trying to break out of his ribs.
A voice bloomed inside his skull.
Not monstrous.Not demonic.
Calm.Casual.Almost… conversational.
"Relax. I'm trying to help you up."
The tone was wrong.Terribly wrong.Something that looked like this had no right to sound so ordinary.
"You fell," the fear murmured, the words echoing through his bones."Take my hand."
He recoiled, instinct tearing his body backward.
"No. Don't touch me," he whispered. "If I accept you—if I acknowledge you—then I—"
He couldn't finish.
Fearlogy lectures flashed through his mind.Theories. Case studies.People who lost to their own fears never recovered.
The fear paused. Its head tilted, like a child hearing something absurd.
"Who told you that?"
He blinked.
And it vanished.
The sound of hundreds of students crashed back around him.Movement returned in a violent rush.Someone stepped around him, annoyed.The teacher resumed yelling.
He stood up on shaky legs and fled the building before anyone could speak to him.
The clinic smelled like disinfectant, old paper, and quiet despair. He perched on a metal bed as the local doctor scanned his file, then his face, then the file again.
"So," the doctor said slowly, "you experienced a freeze-state."
He nodded.
"You saw a full projection."
Another nod.
The doctor closed the file, his expression darkening. "Listen… if your fear has manifested with this level of clarity, it means the boundary between your mind and the fear realm is thinning."
"I know how fear manifestations work," he muttered. "I studied Fearlogy. This shouldn't be happening to me."
The doctor sighed. "Fearlogy teaches theory. You're living the in reality."
The room felt like it was shrinking.
"If the fear becomes dominant," the doctor continued, voice low, "you'll no longer be the primary decision-maker in your mind. That's how people lose themselves. That's why they… end things."
The implication sliced through him.
"You think I'm going to die," he said, barely breathing. "Just like that?"
"I think," the doctor replied gently, "that you need immediate help."
Something inside him snapped.
"I'm not dying," he growled, grabbing the doctor's collar and yanking him forward. "Tell me how to stop it!"
"Security!" the doctor shouted.
Two guards burst in. They pulled him off violently, dragging him through the hallway and shoving him out the front door.
He hit the ground.
Silence fell instantly.
His blood turned to ice.
Because he didn't need to look up to know—
It was there.
The fear stood inches away, its presence heavier this time. Shadows twisted around it like the entire world bent toward its shape.
It knelt beside him with unsettling grace.
"You fall a lot," it murmured."I should really start catching you."
It extended its hand again.
"Let me help you.I don't want you hurt."
"No," he breathed, voice cracking. "Stay away."
The fear tilted its head, skulls drifting gently inside its form.
"Why?" it asked softly. "Because of some law you memorized in class? Because of rumors? Because other people are scared of me?"
He said nothing.
The creature's voice dropped to a whisper.
"I'm not here to kill you.I'm here because you need me."
Jel squeezed his eyes shut.
"I said no."
When he opened them—
The fear was gone.
Cars passed by the clinic.People walked normally.Birds called from a tree nearby.
The world looked unchanged.
But he wasn't.
He sat there, trembling, realizing with growing dread:
The thing he feared mostdidn't want to leave him.
It wanted to stay.
To be continued…