Through the rhythmic sound of tapping rain on the window, past the distant hum of a city's night, and the traffic's buzz, a sigh cut through a room, so tired and weary that it seemed to take the warmth from the air. A sound not just heard, but felt, from a man teetering on the edge of the void.
"Haaaa..."
In a dark room, sat the silhouette of a man by the window, etched in exhaustion, only visible due to the light given off by the phone in his hands and the city lights smeared by the rain in the background giving him form against the shadows.
"Hollow."
It was the only word he could think to use as he stared into the phone screen. On it, two words glared:
Chapter Finale
His favorite novel had ended in disappointment. This novel was his escape. For hundreds of chapters, he absorbed himself in its dark world. Its guilds in political strife, the horrors of the underworld, and the mysteries people solved to purge them.
And the heroine, the main protagonist of the novel, was no less important to him. He'd seen himself in her, in the weight she carried, being constantly in the spotlight yet feeling utterly unseen and unrecognized for who she was.
He thought maybe... just maybe he could find a way to find meaning in himself from it. In the end, the novel had failed him in its final moments. Luna sat alone on her throne, stronger? Yes. But she was alone, cold, and distant like a star. And the other protagonists were no better, leaving an aimless group at the end of their tale.
Lucian dragged his gaze to the city lights, slowly moving his head. His hand lifelessly let go of the phone, which hit the carpeted floor with an audible thud, but Lucian had little care for the well-being of his phone. The only thing running through his mind was how pointless everything felt. He had started to see the world in shades of gray, dull and meaningless.
He'd tried. Everyone knew he'd tried. He was the center of attention when he was younger, the boy who could do everything. Coding bootcamps, woodworking classes, piano lessons, athletics programs of all types, esports. He had even been a line cook through college. Each hobby sparked a flame, but no matter how much fuel he added, it would trickle and die, leaving only him in the dark of the night.
He thought maybe if he read, he could find a way out. Reading the lives of others to see what gave them meaning, what gave them purpose. His latest read felt different from the rest; it wasn't real, but the heroine's life felt truer than anything in his own life before. She had the same issue, a sense of belonging not found. But now, her ending mirrored his own emptiness.
Driven restless by his own thoughts, an irritation gnawed at him as he picked up his phone once more. He went to the novel page and started to write a comment, to vent his frustration out on an author who would never read it.
- The ending is pathetic! Luna's throne is a cage. Kael's freedom is abandonment. After the final boss, is it all just a slow fade to gray?! You've made their victories taste like dust. The ending is simply hollow. Just completely hollow...
As he mashed down his thumb on the submit button and watched the comment fade into the lines with the rest, silence filled the room once more. This time it was heavier, thicker, now filled with his own regrets. Not about the comment he left, no, but from the wasted hope he invested in the novel while trying to seek meaning.
As his flame of interest flickered, refusing to die in its own indignance, he drew his attention to the rain and city lights painting an art piece on the clear canvas of his window. All of it blurred as he was enveloped by his own thoughts. The world seemed colorless; each interest simply added another shade of gray.
'Another shade thrown into the pile...'
'More objects, once interesting, now lie to gather dust.'
'Another job on the resume.'
But then he was pulled out of his thoughts, which were drifting to despair, because something had caught his eye.
Light.
Not the sterile white hue of the phone in his hands, not the multitudes of yellow and blue coming from the city's lights. No, it was bright red.
Lucian's breath hitched. His gaze focused on the reflection in the window; a red square of light could be seen, worse, it could be felt. Slowly turning his head around, he had a clear view of it.
Floating in the air with no threads to hang it from, a royal red panel gilded in the corners with weathered gold sat unmoving in his room. Oddly enough, despite being so bright, it did not illuminate the dark room at all, as if the light did not exist.
His blood froze as he stared at it, still in shock, as questions flooded his mind about how it was here and what it could be. Seconds passed like hours as Lucian stared at the floating panel, an eerie sense creeping in.
'Am I going mad?'
Steadily, he reached his hand out to touch it when something happened that made all his thoughts stop.
[ Lucian Veil ]
As the words appeared on the panel, Lucian stopped breathing. It felt as if this panel was staring straight into his soul. He opened his mouth slightly as if to say something, yet no words came out; his mind was blank.
[Are you dissatisfied?]
Even though it did not state what it referred to on the panel, Lucian knew it was asking about the novel. Something deep within told him this, and he felt certain. Even if it wasn't talking about the novel, his answer would still be the same.
"Obviously."
Lucian sighed, the word leaving a bitter taste in his mouth.
"The narrative was incomplete. The potential was... squandered."
[Along with your hope?]
He frowned, realizing what that eerie sense was before. It was the sense of being perceived, being seen through. It hadn't read his comment; it had read him.
[You understand the emptiness, seeking to fill your own]
The thought of Luna flashed through his mind. The heroine was the light in his tunnel, yet her ending left him confronting an inescapable truth.
The panel flared brighter, like a flame burning. The gold edging seemed to harden.
[You demand the canvas be repainted? The threads of fate rewoven? The hollow filled?]
[Very Well]
[You will become the variable. You will bear witness to the ending you seek.]
Lucian shivered as a sense of dread dawned on him, his thoughts racing.
'Become the variable? Witness it how?'
He shot up to his feet, dropping his phone onto the ground. His frown was now more prominent than ever. The shadows on the wall seemed to stretch. The panel flared again.
[You dissatisfaction is the key. And I am the door.]
The words blazed as though they were embers on a burning page.
A question clawed at his throat:
'What door?'
But before he could ask, the panel collapsed into a single point of crimson brilliance. Now noticing his surroundings, he saw the world begin to stretch around him. The falling rain slowed to a stop. The hum of the city died, replaced by a deathly silence.
The single point turned black, as if swallowing all of existence around it. a perfect dot of void, deeper than any darkness Lucian had ever seen, floating in his room. The temperature dropped as the void radiated a chill.
"Wha-?"
Then, it pulled on him. A cold sweat formed on Lucian's brow.
Everything, including himself, began to distort, sucked in like a thread of yarn, slowly unraveling. The world seemed to contort more with each passing moment, unraveling faster by the second.
"W-wait! Shit!"
Desperation and confusion overwhelmed him as the unraveling accelerated violently. Colors, shapes, sounds, everything ceased to be. A silent, weightless darkness swallowed him whole, leaving only the echo of his panicked thoughts.
When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by darkness, an absence of all he knew. He could still feel the phantom pressure of the ground on his feet, but everything, including the ground itself, was gone. The world had vanished.