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They never tell you what it feels like to be between.
Not alive, not dead. Not sleeping, but not awake.
I suppose no one really knows what it’s like. That liminal stretch of nothingness that lingers after a soul is torn too violently from its body, but before it moves on—if it moves on.
That’s where I am.
And I was trapped. I, alone, had no body, no senses, no feelings.
Time doesn't tick here. There's no heartbeat to drum against the silence. I float—or maybe I just exist. I can’t tell if I’m breathing. There’s no wind, no sound, no colour. Not even black. Just… nothing.
You might think that’s peaceful. That silence, that absence of sensation, would be comforting. But I can assure you—it isn’t.
It’s horrifying.
Because your thoughts don’t stop.
They echo. Louder and louder in the hollowness.
I remember the moment it happened.
We had been fighting him—Fukuchi. The tension in my limbs, the way my hands trembled on the hilt of the sword I had no right to hold. Bram Stoker's coffin chained beside me. His blood. The smell of war in the air.
But the thing about being brave… no one tells you how stupid it feels when you're about to die for it.
He struck.
I think he did. I’m not even sure. It was so fast. One moment I was standing, thinking, I won’t let this happen. The next, I wasn’t.
No scream. No pain.
No body.
Just absence.
I want to cry.
But I have no eyes.
No tears.
I want to scream.
But there is no throat to carry the sound.
The sword, the mission, Bram, Kenji… even the one person who I consider my father, Kunikida.
They feel far away now. Like dreams I’m only imagining I once had.
Was I really ever alive?
Was I just a flicker in someone else's story?
A child in a war too big for her?
What did I think I could change?
I don’t know how long I’ve been here.
In this emptiness.
With only myself.
Or what’s left of myself.
But something... flickers. A tug.
A sensation, faint like the memory of wind through my hair.
A voice. Not a sound, not truly. More like… intention. The shape of someone's will, pressing against this sealed place.
“Aya.”
It pulses through the void like light through closed eyelids.
A name. Mine.
My name.
Aya Koda.
Daughter of a journalist who never came home for dinner.
Girl with a camera who wanted to write truth.
Child who stood before monsters, defiant.
I remember now.
I wanted to save someone.
And that’s what cracks the void open.
A cold rush. Like falling. Like being born backwards.
Suddenly, I feel again.
Fingertips. They tingle.
Lungs. They burn.
A heartbeat. Thudding like drums in a parade.
And then—eyes. The weight of them opening. Light stabbing into them like a blade.
Voices. Real ones.
“—she’s alive!”
“Her pulse is weak but steady—!”
“Don’t move, Aya—stay with us—!”
And I cry. This time, I really cry. The tears sting and spill down my cheeks and I feel them. The salt. The heat.
Because I am here.
Because I wasn’t gone.
Because even in that hollow space, that blank between being and nothingness—someone remembered me. Called me.
And I answered.
Later, I will ask if Bram is still alive.
If the war is over.
If I did anything that mattered.
But for now, I’m just grateful for the ache in my limbs. The air in my lungs. The throb behind my eyes.
The feelings.
I was trapped. I, alone, had no body, no senses, no feelings.
But I returned.
And this time, I won’t waste a single breath.