Kael woke up.
Or at least, he thought he did.
He blinked, but his vision was still warped, like he was trapped in some impossible dream. His body felt heavy, detached, as if he was floating in a sea of fog. His hand reached out to steady himself—but his fingers passed through the air like it was made of liquid.
He could feel the Pulse. It was inside him now, crawling beneath his skin, crawling through his veins, whispering into his brain, as though it had always been there. Always a part of him. He couldn't breathe properly.
"Kael…"
That voice again.
It was her. She was standing in front of him—no, not standing. She was… floating. Her eyes were pitch black, her body distorted, like she was in pain—twisted. Her skin shimmered like glass shattering, and her mouth was stretched too wide, impossibly wide.
"You left me here… with them…" Her voice was broken, like a jagged glass scraping against metal.
"Please…" Kael's voice barely came out. His throat was dry, choking on the very air itself.
She wasn't real. He had to remind himself. She couldn't be. None of this could be real.
But it was. It felt real. Too real.
"You think I don't remember?" she continued, each word like an acid drip in his mind. "You think you were the only one who suffered?"
Kael took a step back, his feet moving like they were made of lead. His breath was shallow. Sweat clung to his skin like a second layer of suffocating pressure. His heart was racing, but it wasn't enough. Nothing was enough.
The world around him shifted. He wasn't in the void anymore. No. He was standing in the middle of a street—an old street, one from long ago. But it wasn't the real world. Not anymore.
It was the same street from his childhood. The one he had walked down a thousand times. The one he had forgotten.
No. This couldn't be real. He had blocked this out. He knew he had.
But the street was here. The people, the shops, the air—it all felt too familiar, too haunting.
His parents.
His childhood friends.
They were all there. Smiling. Laughing. Walking past him as though everything was normal.
But it was wrong. He could see their faces. The way their smiles twisted unnaturally. Their eyes—hollow, vacant. Just like her.
They were all... fake. Just like her. Puppets in his mind.
Kael reached for his head, trying to tear the thoughts away, but they wouldn't go. The more he pulled, the deeper they dug in.
"You left me behind."
Kael's head snapped to the side, and there—standing in the crowd, among the fake smiles—was a girl. A different girl. Her eyes were wide with fear, frozen in time, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her body trembled like she was stuck in a nightmare she couldn't wake up from.
Kael tried to run toward her, but his body wouldn't move.
She wasn't supposed to be here.
And then, as if it was some cruel joke, the street started to distort—the air itself began to bend and twist.
The sky cracked open like glass, the world splintering apart in every direction. The streets and buildings stretched and folded, as if they were made of paper being torn. Faces—hundreds of them—appeared in the cracks, screaming, crying, laughing. Their voices melded together into one screeching symphony.
"You can't run from us anymore, Kael," the girl said again, but this time, her voice didn't come from her mouth. It came from everywhere, from the air, from the shadows, from his own mind.
The Pulse was controlling everything now.
"You think you're different?" she whispered. "You think you've escaped? The truth is—this is all your fault."
The ground beneath Kael's feet cracked open, swallowing everything. The sky collapsed in on itself, shattering into thousands of shards of light and shadow.
And in the middle of it all, the girl's eyes locked onto his.
"You'll never be free from this."
Kael screamed as everything began to crumble, the world slipping through his fingers like dust.
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