The morning light barely touched the streets.
Yet every step felt heavier than the last, as if the air itself pressed against his chest.
The alleys twisted unnaturally around him, swallowing his movement, bending the world into something almost… unreal.
He couldn't tell if he was awake—or if the nightmare had finally slipped beyond the borders of sleep.
The streets felt familiar… and wrong. Their shapes he knew, yet the warmth had vanished, as if life itself had silently left.
Every sound whispered his name… then went dead.
Even the wind carried a strange melody, like a memory he had forgotten he forgot.
Something was following him.
No shadow. No sound. Just a presence pressing at the edges of his mind, pushing him toward a place he had never seen… yet somehow knew.
At the end of the alley, light stretched like a silver curtain over the ground.
The distance between him and the world shrank, the air swirling like a cold vortex.
He saw his reflection on the wall.
But it didn't move with him.
It stared, waiting… as if they were meant to swap places.
He didn't understand.
One step forward would not be on solid ground.
What lay beyond the light was no path—it was the end of the world he knew, and the birth of one yet unseen.
In an instant, the world dissolved.
No walls. No alley. No light.
He was nowhere.
He couldn't tell sky from ground, standing from falling.
He felt… not a body, but consciousness alone—floating, borrowed, unanchored.
Fear wasn't what gripped him.
It was awe.
What happened? How? Why him?
Questions stormed through his mind until thinking failed.
Only the weight of nothing pressed on his chest, dragging him toward an abyss without bottom.
He spun, searching for something—anything—to cling to.
But there was only silence.
Then, as if the universe exhaled, darkness split.
A blinding light surged.
He screamed without knowing it.
The light pierced his eyes.
He saw nothing.
One moment…
Then he fell.
Not his body.
His mind.
Everything.
And it went out.
Like a candle in a storm.