Evin ran.
But the horror followed.
Not behind him—
inside him.
Every breath scraped his throat like swallowing broken glass. His vision warped, stretching the corridor into impossible shapes. Walls shifted inward, then outward, as though inhaling and exhaling.
Evin stumbled, catching himself on the floor. His hands sank slightly into the stone.
Not because the stone was soft.
Because he was losing solidity.
He jerked his hands back with a gasp.
They flickered.
For a moment—
just a moment—
his fingers weren't fingers.
They were shadows.
Not metaphorically.
Not symbolically.
They were actual shadow-lines, shifting and re-forming, digits melting and re-shaping as if his bones were trying to forget they ever existed.
"No—no, no, NO—"
He slammed his hands against the wall, trying to feel something real. The stone wavered like rippling water, distorting at his touch.
His palms left behind dark stains—
not blood
not ink
memory.
The remnants inside him were leaking into the world.
He staggered away from the wall, heart hammering. The corridor twisted violently—angles bending wrong, corners stretching like pulled skin. Shapes flickered at the edges of his vision.
Eyes in the walls. Faces in the stone. Hands reaching out of the cracks.
He blinked—
And they were gone.
Blink again—
And they were closer.
He stumbled backward until his shoulder hit the opposite wall. His breath came out in short, shaking bursts.
"Stop—stop—get out of me—"
A whisper slid into his ear.
Not with breath.
Not with sound.
Inside his skull.
You opened us.
Evin spun, slamming his back to the wall. The corridor twisted into focus. The air thickened with pressure and cold.
He grabbed his head, fingers digging into his scalp.
"No—NO—stay out! Stop it!"
The remnants didn't stop.
They pushed harder.
Another whisper, overlapping with dozens of others:
We are you.
Evin screamed.
He clawed at the wall, at himself, at the air—anything to anchor him—but his own shadow stretched independently of his body, writhing like something alive trapped under the floor.
He stumbled forward, trying to outrun himself.
It didn't work.
His shadow peeled away from his feet and crawled up the wall like a spider, twitching with disjointed limbs.
Evin froze.
"No."
The shadow's head snapped toward him.
Its face—
if it had one—
was a shifting mass of features that weren't his.
Eyes that belonged to the burned man.
A jaw belonging to the erased woman.
Teeth too many, too sharp, too wrong.
Half a child's cheek.
Part of a priest's brow.
It was not one remnant.
It was ALL of them.
Merged.
Leaking.
Splintering him apart.
Evin stumbled backward until his shoulder hit stone again—this time hard, solid, blessedly real. He slid down it, curling in on himself as the shadow on the wall rippled and distorted, its limbs growing too long, its torso bending in unnatural angles.
It stepped out of the wall.
Literally stepped—
detaching like a second layer of skin peeling away.
Evin gagged, bile rising in his throat.
"No—no—no—get back—get back inside—"
The shadow-thing twitched violently, spasming in and out of existence like a corrupted echo. It reached toward him with fingers that dripped memory like tar.
When it spoke, it used dozens of voices overlaid:
"You left us."
Evin shook his head until it hurt.
"No—I didn't—I didn't leave anyone—"
The creature convulsed, its limbs cracking like splintering wood.
"You survived."
He pressed his palms over his ears, but the voices were inside him.
"I didn't want to!" he cried. "I didn't want to survive alone—"
The shadow stopped reaching.
It tilted its head.
A dozen voices spoke at once—
"Liar."
Evin's breath shattered.
He slid further down the wall, curling his knees to his chest, shaking uncontrollably.
"I didn't—" his voice broke, "I didn't ask for this—"
The shadow moved closer, each step jerky and unnatural, as if the ground rejected its existence.
Evin squeezed his eyes shut, sobbing, the stone cold beneath his palms.
The creature stopped inches from him.
A single cold fingertip touched his cheek.
His skin burned with the contact.
His vision went white—
A Memory Surge
Not his memory.
Not anyone's memory.
Thousands.
They flooded into him in a violent torrent:
-Bones breaking under the Church's hammers
-Children burned alive in purges
-Mothers screaming as their names were stripped
-A man erased so thoroughly even the scars he once bore vanished
-Eyes gouged out to prevent witnessing
-Tongues cut so prayers couldn't form memories
-Entire family lines erased from census and soul
-Mothers forgetting they had children
-Fathers forgetting their wives
-Remnants screaming in cold void
-A girl begging the Church to remember her name
The moment no one did
The moment she vanished
It didn't stop.
The memories came faster.
More violent.
More suffocating.
-A girl's face melting into smoke.
-A boy's shadow screaming as it ripped free from his dying body.
-A cleric whispering prayers over a burning pit of corpses, his voice shaking.
-A nun begging forgiveness as she turned her back on a child begging not to be erased.
The flood kept coming.
Evin's body convulsed on the floor.
He felt his mind fracture.
Something deep in him snapped.
He opened his mouth to scream—
—
But no sound came out.
Just darkness.
Just cold.
Just the Veil.
He lay on the floor gasping, shivering violently, drenched in sweat. The corridor had returned to normal—solid, still, silent.
The shadow-creature was gone.
But the fingerprints on his cheek still burned.
Slowly, Evin pushed himself upright on trembling arms.
His voice was a ragged whisper:
"…I'm losing myself."
A whisper answered him:
No. You are finding us.
Evin choked.
"Stop… please… stop…"
The remnants inside him pulsed—
not painfully now,
but with intent.
A warning.
The Bishop's voice echoed faintly down the corridor, far away but unmistakable:
"Do not fight it, Evin. Embrace it."
He shuddered so hard he nearly collapsed again.
He wasn't alone.
But not in the comforting way.
He was not alone because he was becoming all of them.
He staggered forward, barely able to walk.
He needed to escape.
He needed to breathe.
He needed to keep whatever sanity he had left.
But the remnants whispered again—
soft, cold, bleeding into his bones:
We are inside you now.
Evin squeezed his eyes shut, tears slipping out.
He didn't answer.
He couldn't.
He just kept walking.
One step.
Then another.
Into the next nightmare.