Marisol wandered aimlessly near the edge of the forest, her steps dragging as if the ground itself resisted her passage. Her torn clothes hung loose on her frame, stained with mud and blood, while her eyes—once bright with curiosity—were now hollow, haunted by the weight of what she had done.
When the authorities found her, she didn't resist. She stood silently as they cuffed her wrists, their voices cold and clinical as they cataloged her state.
"A disturbed girl," they called her.
"A full-blown psychopath," another muttered.
She wanted to scream, to tell them everything. The Core, the otherworld, the monstrous power that had consumed her. But their eyes held no understanding, only fear. To them, she was delusional, a danger to the fragile balance of their normal lives.
They locked her away in an institution, a place meant to bury the unwanted pieces of society.
Her room was a suffocating box of sterility. The white walls were stark and unyielding, their brightness oppressive. Every corner deliberately void of shadows. It felt out of place, a reminder of something she had lost. The connection to the darkness—the power that had both protected and cursed her—was severed.
And with it, her stuffed bunny Eri was gone.
Marisol sat on the edge of her cot, her arms leashed behind her suffocating straitjacket. Without Eri, she felt hollow, as if someone had reached inside her chest and torn out the parts that mattered most. Her days passed in silence, her thoughts spiraling through endless voids of "what ifs."
Sometimes, she caught the whispers of the staff as they passed her door. Their voices were low, but they carried.
"She's not eating again," one said. "The things she did… she's lucky they didn't put her down like a dog."
"I dont know the rumors make her sound like she's not even human," came another voice, softer, uncertain.
Marisol closed her eyes, the words cutting deeper than she would ever admit. A monster. Not human.
Perhaps they were right.
The night of her eighteenth birthday was quiet, the kind of quiet that made her chest feel tight. She leaned back against the cold wall, her head tilted toward the ceiling. Her breaths came slow and measured, the sound of her own heartbeat loud in the stillness.
For hours, she stayed like that, staring at nothing, feeling the emptiness of her solitude press back against her. Then, as the clock ticked past midnight, the air shifted.
It started with a faint hum, low and resonant, that seemed to seep into her bones. The room grew colder, the chill sinking through her thin clothes and prickling her skin. Marisol sat up, her eyes darting toward the corners of her cell, where the darkness seemed to deepen unnaturally.
The hum grew louder.
From the edges of the room, a crack emerged in space. Tendrils of rotted roots began to unfurl from the splitted space, deliberate and serpentine. Marisols lips stretched into a twisted grin as they spread along the walls and floor, twisting together until they gently caressed against marisol's flesh, pulsating with an eerie crimson and black light.
The room trembled.
A voice echoed from the rift, low and commanding, like the rumble of a distant storm.
"Hello, little seed."
Marisol stood, her legs shaky beneath her, but she couldn't look away from the rift. Her reflection caught her eye in the reflection of the new gate to the Otherworld, except it wasn't her reflection. Perhaps it was a reflection of what she could be.
The girl staring back at her had sharp, glowing eyes and hair as dark as midnight. Her clothes twisted and reformed, morphing into a Gothic Lolita dress edged with lace and subtle crimson embroidery. It was a look both alien and unnervingly familiar, as if it had always been waiting beneath the surface.
The shadows coiled tighter around her, rising starting her metamorphosis, and with them, the voice grew stronger—not the one from the rift, but one from deep inside her.
"It has been far too long," it whispered, a mix of temptation and certainty. "Several years, perhaps."
Her breath quickened, her heart pounding as the core whispered again, louder this time.
"Tell me, are you still just that little girl."
She clenched her fists, the darkness taking hold once more as the blacked smoke surged. The name she had whispered in fear so many times now felt like a declaration.
"No, I'm not Marisol," she said, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands. She met her reflection's gaze and smirked faintly. "I'm Eri. The real Eri."
The rift pulsed, its red light casting strange, jagged shadows across the walls. As Eri stepped forward, the voice gave a chuckle from the rift and spoke again.
"Eri, my child. Come to me, become one with me. "
Eri didn't hesitate. She walked into the rift, the shadows wrapping around her like an embrace.
As the light dimmed, the rift began to close, its edges crackling with raw energy. The room grew quiet once more, the oppressive white walls untouched by the events that had just transpired.
The girl who had been Marisol was gone. In her place was a force born of power, doubt, and ambition—Eri, the shadow's heir.