Chapter Text
Was it real? Did he see it right? The blackness around him tightened, pressing in like it wanted to swallow him whole. He couldn't breathe. Cold. Silent. Everything stopped. The world, his breath, his heart. It felt like nothing really mattered in that moment. Time itself seemed to unravel.
Something slithered next to him. A creeping numbness climbed from his ankles to his knees. It became harder to stand, his body growing heavier with each passing second. The air in his lungs tasted stale, almost foreign like it didn’t belong to him anymore. The circulation in his legs slowly faded. The slithering sensation crawled higher. His left hand lightly brushed against the creature. A snake? A dragon? Some kind of ancient lizard? He didn't know and did it really matter?
The numbness was eating him alive, and he just stayed, hoping for the end. It consumed him, devouring every part of him until even his thoughts felt distant. Stillness kept him suspended. Was it water around him? Air? Vegetation? He was there. Standing. Waiting for something to happen. The end had never felt closer. A strange excitement flickered in the abyss.
And then...he fell.
Branches clawed at his hands and arms, tearing his skin as if trying to hold him back. Blood oozed slowly, dripping and falling with him. In the stillness, crimson painted the surrounding darkness, marking the path of his descent like a quiet confession.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Impact.
As his body collided with something solid, something alive, his heart stuttered, then started to beat again. With a sharp gasp, air rushed into his lungs. He could breathe. Feel. Live. A snake coiled around the frail body, catching him, saving him from the fall. Not devouring, not comforting, just holding. Steady. Unyielding. Certain. Making sure he would not break. His physical self was already broken.
The boy curled in on himself, knees close to a heaving chest, trying to take everything in. The end that had felt so near was suddenly far away, slipping beyond reach like a dream just before waking.
He could not return to the peaceful nothingness he had almost touched. So, he stayed there, suspended in the cold embrace of something that should have felt like salvation, but instead felt unfamiliar in its weight. And the shadows did not leave. They never truly had. They were not things approaching him. They were the parts of him that had always stayed behind. They simply remained, not outside of him, but within him, where they had always been. Quiet echoes of thoughts that had learned his voice, fragments of feelings he never managed to abandon. They did not speak loudly. They did not need to. They only waited, patient and certain, as if they already knew the shape he would return to when everything else fell away.
Familiar. Unchanging. Unforgivingly close. And still, they wanted him. Because they recognized him.