Darkness.
No sky above-only jagged rock and utter stillness, as if the world had collapsed in on itself.
Damp walls closed in from all sides. The air was heavy with mold, rust, and the stench of decay.
Somewhere above, a single drop of water fell.
Drip. Drip.
He lay on cold stone, motionless. He couldn't tell where his body ended and the void began.
Was he alive? Dead? Trapped somewhere in between?
Pain pulsed in his skull-slow and deep, like the beat of a distant war drum.
His thoughts shattered like glass underfoot.
His lungs burned.
His muscles spasmed.
His skin scraped raw against dust and stone.
The metallic tang coated his throat, ash filled his mouth.
Every breath came with fire.
"Where... am I...?"
His voice barely made a sound. Just a dry rasp in a world with no ears left to hear.
Stillness. But not empty stillness. An unsettling awareness lingered in the air.
It was waiting.
Abruptly-movement.
A girl emerged from the darkness like a faint smudge of light-small, thin, covered in dust and bruises.
Her eyes were wide, sharp with fear, yet unbroken.
She stopped a few steps away, catching her breath.
"Are you okay?" she asked. Her voice was calm, steady, but he caught the slight tremor.
She offered her hand.
For a moment, he didn't move.
Then, on instinct, he grabbed it-skin cold, but real.
He rasped, voice hoarse but edged with urgency.
"How did you get here?"
She hesitated briefly before whispering a single word: "Observer."
An icy dread clenched deep within him
Observer.
The word struck him like a blast of frigid air-familiar yet deeply wrong, distant as a memory half-buried beneath ice.
"He gave me a choice," she continued quietly. "Die... or fight."
A cold knot twisted sharply in his chest.
She looked directly into his eyes, her gaze sharp, questioning.
"You got a name?"
He hesitated, lips parting slightly.
"...Agito," he said. The name slipped out before he could think. It sounded familiar-but somehow wrong. Still, he kept his expression unreadable.
The girl tilted her head slightly.
"Is that really your name?"
His breath caught for a fraction of a second, but he covered it with a small shrug.
"That's what they call me," he replied casually-like he'd answered this question a hundred times before.
She didn't press.
"Sera," she finally said.
Their names hung between them like an oath. Or perhaps a warning.
They sat in the dark, listening to the heavy silence.
But the silence wasn't empty. It vibrated with a presence just outside perception.
Sera was watching him.
She pointed at his face.
"What's with your eye?"
Agito blinked, confused. "What do you mean?"
He turned toward a puddle by the wall-barely a shimmer of reflection. But what stared back wasn't his face.
His right eye was wrong.
Black. Pulsing. Veins bulged outward as though a living entity squirmed beneath the surface.
A sudden burning erupted behind his skull, sharp and invasive.
From the corner, thick black ichor oozed, heavy and slow. It slid down his cheek like oil, glistening sickly in the darkness.
"What the hell..."
He fell backward, gasping, frantically clawing at his face with shaking hands.
The fluid smeared across his fingers, greasy, warm-alive.
It didn't stop.
She tore a strip of cloth from her shirt-damp, smelling of sweat and dust-and pressed it over his corrupted eye.
Agito recoiled, heart pounding in panic.
"Shut up and breathe," she snapped, hands working fast and firm.
He tried to protest. The words caught in his throat.
"It's... inside me. Not now. Get up..."
Her fingers tied the makeshift bandage tight behind his head, pulling hard.
"There. Now you don't look like a corpse."
He panted, chest heaving. The rag was already soaking through, warmth and blood seeping into the fabric.
He examined himself briefly-lean muscles beneath tattered clothing, hardened by countless struggles.
Old boots, cracked and worn.
His fingertips traced a deep scar running along his cheek.
A memory lingered just beyond reach-was it earned in battle? During training? The question faded unanswered, slipping from his mind like smoke.
He appeared young-perhaps twenty-five-yet his eyes reflected an older soul, weary from witnessing horrors the mind chose to forget.
Sera stiffened without warning.
"Did you hear that?" she whispered, tension sharp in her voice.
Agito turned, straining to listen. The quiet pulsed, barely perceptible-a faint whisper, an ominous hum.
Before he could react, she was ripped away.
Her scream cut through the dark, sharp and raw.
Agito twisted in horror.
Sera hung in midair, pinned by a writhing thread of crimson like a grotesque ribbon.
Her eyes were wide, frozen in disbelief.
Her limbs dangled limp.
Behind her stood something monstrous-an abomination forged from nightmare.
Limbs contorted grotesquely, faces melded together in a grotesque tableau of agony, twitching organs pulsed without purpose.
Some of those faces moaned softly, pleading for release.
"Take me..." murmured a broken voice from within its corrupted mass.
Agito stood paralyzed.
The abomination grasped Sera's waist and began to squeeze mercilessly.
Her desperate scream shattered the air again, louder and more desperate than before.
Bones snapped like brittle twigs, dark ichor streamed down her body in horrific trails.
Jaws opened wide, revealing jagged, glistening teeth.
It lunged forward, sinking into her flesh with brutal force.
Warm droplets splashed Agito's frozen face.
His stomach lurched violently.
Their gazes met one final, agonizing moment.
Sera reached desperately toward him, her expression an unspoken plea.
A sudden silence, deafening in its finality.
Her body tore apart grotesquely, splitting as if it had never been whole. Bones splintered, flesh shredded, organs spilled onto the stone floor in a sickening rush.
Agito remained rooted, horror seizing his throat. He tasted the metallic tang of gore-not his own-dripping down his chin.
He couldn't breathe.
He stared helplessly at her severed hand, fingers still outstretched, eyes wide open in accusation.
"Why didn't I move...?"
A triumphant, ghastly roar echoed through the tunnel. The monster's hideous form rippled, its many tortured voices rising in an unbearable chorus.
"It hurts..."
"I don't want to die..."
"Take us..."
A single voice pierced clearly through the chaos:
"Agito... why did you leave me...?"
Sera's voice-real, accusing, hauntingly clear.
The creature surged forward, unstoppable.