Consciousness returns not with a gasp, but with a slow, dreadful seep.
My eyes open. Not to morning light, but to a dim, oppressive gloom.
A dark room. Silence so complete it has its own weight, pressing against my eardrums.
Where...?
I sit up slowly. My body feels wrong. Lighter, yet leaden with dread.
Sothing is wet. I look down.
My hands are stained red. My white school shirt—not bunny hoodie—is soaked through, plastered to my skin with a dark, clinging dampness.
The tallic tang of copper fills my nose.
Blood.
My own? Whose?
A cold, nauseating shock freezes in place.
What the hell is this?
My gaze lifts, drawn forward. A massive, ornate mirror hangs in the gloom, catching what little light there is.
I walk toward it, my steps unsteady on an unseen floor.
The boy in the reflection walks with .
Black hair. A too-thin face, pale with fear and exhaustion. A 19-year-old’s fra swimming in a blood-soaked uniform.
Wide, terrified eyes I haven’t seen in what feels like a lifeti.
Neon.
It’s . My real body. Not Zyren Kael.
Just... Neon.
The broke, tired, dead high school student.
A choked sound catches in my throat. Then, the world begins to dissolve at the edges. The mirror, the room, it all starts to bleed away into absolute, swallowing blackness.
Hey..... what is happening?
I take another step, and the last of the light vanishes. Complete, perfect darkness.
I am blind.
I stretch out my hands, grasping nothing.
How did I end up here?
I was just... I was with Deniz. His chest was warm.
I was... safe.
"Hello?" My voice is small, swallowed by the void.
"Is soone here? Hello?"
No echo. Nothing.
Panic, cold and sharp, claws up my spine.
"Help ... I don’t like the darkness."
The confession is a whimper. My knees buckle, hitting a surface that is neither hard nor soft, just there. I curl in on myself, weak, the fever-fire still raging beneath my skin.
"Please... soone. Help . I’m afraid."
The tears co then. Hot and silent, they trace paths down my burning cheeks, dripping onto my knees.
How am I trapped here again?
Did I die?
Am I dead again, lost in the between-space forever?
"Neon..."
A voice. Clear, calm, cutting through the void like a shard of ice.
I jerk my head up.
A figure stands before , materialized from the nothingness.
As he walks closer, the darkness seems to recede just enough to define him.
Silver hair that glows with its own faint light. Pale, flawless skin. Eyes the color of polished rcury, bright and knowing.
Zyren Kael.
He smiles. It’s not a kind smile. It’s a curve of lips that holds centuries of bitterness and a sharp, amused pity.
He kneels in front of , his posture elegantly casual, a king visiting a prisoner.
"How are you, Neon?"
I can only stare, my mind shattering and re-forming around the impossible reality of him.
Here. In my mind. In my darkness.
He reaches out. His fingers are cool as they brush the wet tracks from my cheeks. The touch is intimate, violating.
"Who... are you?" The question is a ragged breath.
His smile widens, showing perfect teeth.
"Are you kidding? I’m Zyren Kael."
He leans in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that coats my soul in frost.
"Your most hated villain."
A whisper slips from my numb lips.
"How... is this possible?"
"It’s possible," he says, tilting his head, "the sa way you’re living my life. A cosmic joke. A narrative loophole."
I blink, another tear falling.
"You... know about ?"
"How could I not?" He chuckles, a dry, rustling sound.
"You were my most devoted critic. Cursing my na with every turn of the page, weeping for your precious ’Angel,’ wishing for my downfall. Your voice was a constant, irritating buzz in the fabric of my existence."
He leans closer still. His silver eyes are vast, and in them, I don’t see my reflection—I see the pages of a book, burning.
"Now, tell ," he murmurs, the words slithering into my core.
"How does it feel? To wear my skin? To live in the hell you so righteously condemned?"
I’m trembling. From fever, from fear, from a dawning, horrible understanding.
"Why..." I swallow.
"Why were you so cruel?"
He pulls back as if struck, then laughs—a short, harsh bark. He straightens, looking down at from his full height.
"Do you really think I was born from the womb clutching a knife?" His voice loses its amusent, turning flat and cold.
"I was an innocent once. A child. They carved the cruelty into . Line by line. Betrayal by betrayal. They made this monster. They needed a villain for their pretty, precious story."
"You had choices!" The argunt bursts from , fueled by all my reader’s frustration.
"You could have been better! You could have had a good life! A happy ending!"
He looks at then with an expression of such profound, weary disdain that I shrink back.
"You truly are a child," he says, his voice quiet and final.
"Do you really think you can be an angel in hell? That a flower can bloom in a furnace?"
He turns away, beginning to walk back into the darkness.
"In my own story," he calls over his shoulder, the words fading, "I’m the hero. I don’t care if I’m the villain in soone else’s."
"You’re wrong!" I scream at his retreating back.
He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t look back.
"Hey.... Wait! That’s not an answer!" I scramble to my feet, my blood-soaked clothes clinging.
"Stop!"
But he is fading, dissolving into the black. Desperate, I run after him.
My foot splashes.
I look down. Water. Black, icy water, rising from nowhere. It coils around my ankles.
"Ahh! Where—?!"
It’s rising fast. A tidal wave in slow motion, filling the infinite dark space. In seconds, it’s at my knees, my thighs.
I try to run, to swim, but the water is thick as oil, dragging at .
"Zyren! Where did you go?!"
Panic floods , colder than the water.
"HEY, SOONE! HELP !"
The water reaches my chest, my chin. I tilt my head back, gulping one last, shuddering breath before the surface closes over my head.
Silence.
The world is weight, and cold, and choking black.
I flail, but my limbs are numb, heavy. The fire in my veins is doused, replaced by an icy paralysis.
My lungs scream. Spots dance behind my eyes, brighter than the darkness.
I can’t... I can’t...
My struggles grow weaker. The need to breathe is a agony tearing through my chest.
It’s... getting harder...
My eyes, open against the sting, see nothing. The last of my strength ebbs.
I can’t... bear it... anymore...
My eyelids, so heavy, begin to drift shut. The last bubbles of air escape my lips in a silent, desperate stream.
The darkness doesn’t just surround now.
It becos .
.....SILENCE
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