CHAPTER TWO
Begin Again
Reya's blood hit my face before I registered the sound.
Warm. Metallic. Sudden.
The can she gave me rolled across the cracked pavement, hissing open, coffee pooling at my feet.
I wasn't moving. I couldn't. My body froze as if my mind had detached from it, watching the moment from somewhere far away.
Reya's body was still twitching just a little. Her head, her face, was facing me. Mouth open, like she wanted to say something. Her body slumped forward with a sickening finality. Her blood spread out in tendrils, mixing with the spilled coffee.
I had turned around just in time to see it happen.
Just in time to see the thing near the tree.
At first, it was only a shadow long, reaching, shapeless. Stretching unnaturally from the base of the old acacia tree behind Reya.
It wasn't moving like anything that should exist. Its shape wavered, liquid-like, but held the tension of something ready to strike again.
I don't remember standing up.
I don't remember screaming.
I remember the scream starting—cutting through my throat—and never quite ending. My body stumbled backward, legs bending the wrong way. I collapsed onto my palms, feeling dirt and broken gravel dig into my skin.
A person doesn't know what death smells like until it's inches from their face. Until blood stains the ground next to their shoes. Until the air changes.
Heavier. Thicker. Wrong.
"What is that…?"
It wasn't human. Not anymore. Not even close.
The shadow twisted around her corpse. Gripped it like a second skin. I watched, too slow to move, too stunned to breathe, as it slid over her bones. In one blink, it wore her. Her limbs snapped like dry sticks. Her spine cracked audibly. Her flesh turned gray, then darker, until it was all void.
And then the thing… stood.
No face. No eyes. No mouth. Just a formless, breathing silhouette, quivering like it was tasting the air.
A breath.
A heartbeat.
A soundless, instinctive terror washed through me.
This wasn't a hallucination.
This wasn't a nightmare.
I knew what I was looking at.
I'd drawn it a hundred times.
No… no, no, no. Why is it here?!
I could barely get the words out.
"This… this doesn't make sense. This isn't real. This can't be real!"
But it was.
The creature stepped forward, liquid tendrils trailing behind it like spilled ink. Each step left behind streaks of darkness that refused to reflect the light.
A Shadow Fiend.
The name alone made my skin crawl.
These things didn't exist.
They weren't supposed to exist.
In Ecaria the world I built for my webcomic Shadow Fiends were born when raw, festering emotion seeped into the Tapestry. When wrath, hatred, grief, and despair grew too strong, too twisted, they infected the magic like a disease. Like a parasite with no form of its own, feeding on agony until it could become something worse.
It needed a vessel. A corpse. A body.
And now it had one.
A being born from the most broken parts of emotion.
Not just evil. Not just violent.
Instinctual.
It didn't think. It didn't reason.
It devoured.
And now it was here.
Here in the real world.
"How are you here…? I made you."
My voice was barely more than a thought escaping my mouth.
Reality and fiction had overlapped.
Somehow.
Somehow, this was my fault.
I turned and ran.
My legs weren't working right, but I forced them to move. I didn't know where I was going and just away. Away from Reya. Away from the tree. Away from the thing that wore her skin like a puppet.
Every breath I took scraped my lungs raw. My limbs refused to coordinate, every step clumsy and desperate.
Behind me, the world bent.
Not the sound of footsteps no.
It followed like wind warping space. The air itself bent around its presence.
Pain.
A flash of searing heat across my back.
My knees gave out.
I screamed a dry, broken noise, more panic than voice as I hit the ground hard. My face smashed against the pavement. Dust and grit filled my mouth.
I tried to crawl.
I reached for my bag.
Empty.
Of course.
All my sketches, everything I had ever drawn were gone. Erased.
That's what started all this.
That's what took her.
I was helpless.
I was alone.
I—
Wait.
My hand brushed something cold. Small. Metal.
The mirror.
Reya's mirror.
My fingers wrapped around it, numb and shaking. I pulled it from the rubble.
She gave it to me a few days ago. Teased me. Said I could use it to "reflect on my terrible life decisions."
It had made her laugh. I remembered that laugh.
God, I could still hear it.
If I could just—
In Ecaria, I'd written that light especially reflected light could disrupt lower-level Fiends. They couldn't process it. Couldn't stand it. But this was no lower - level friend, this was a Shadow Fiend. It wasn't light it feared. It was its own reflection.
The creature lunged.
I screamed.
Raised the mirror.
It struck.
The glass shattered in my hand. Splinters of silver embedded deep in my palm. Blood poured out, painting the edges of the frame. I collapsed again, the shock too much to withstand.
And then—
A wet, cold pressure in my chest.
It pierced something inside me. Not muscle. Not bone. Something deeper.
Warmth rushed through me. Drowning warmth.
Like being pulled underwater.
I couldn't move.
Couldn't breathe.
Even the pain was leaving me now.
Even Reya's face.
Even…
I remember one last thing.
Not a sound. Not a voice.
Just a presence.
Like something brushing gently against my mind.
Stitching.
Threading.
Words silent, weightless, appeared behind my eyes. Like light bleeding through closed lids:
"Begin again."
Then—
Darkness.
When I opened my eyes, the world was wrong.
I was lying on damp dirt.
My clothes were torn. My skin was scratched and bruised.
The trees overhead weren't normal. They bent the wrong way. Towering, gnarled things bark like charred flesh, leaves shimmering with color that didn't belong in reality. Silver? Blue-green? Oil-slick gray?
I pushed myself up, coughing, spitting out soil.
There was a cliff nearby.
Beyond it… a city.
But not any city.
Not Manila.
Not home.
And yet…
The clock tower. The bridges of broken stone. The crooked dome with ivy pouring from its cracks. The crystalline archways. I recognized all of them.
Because I drew them.
Because they were mine.
These were my designs. My imagination.
Only… wrong. Real. Tangible. Towering miles into the sky.
"I've never been here."
But I had.
Hadn't I?
The world spun.
I reached for a tree for balance, but the bark cracked beneath my hand like burnt glass.
My breathing was too loud in the silence.
Silence.
That was when it hit me.
Her.
Reya.
Gone.
Torn apart in front of me.
I touched my chest where I'd been stabbed. No blood. No wound.
But something inside me had been hollowed out.
A void. Raw. Gaping.
I fell to my knees.
And broke.
I screamed.
The kind of scream that only grief can birth howling, ugly, animal.
Fists to the earth. Dirt in my teeth.
I sobbed until I couldn't breathe. Until my ribs ached.
Reya had been everything.
My voice.
My friend.
The one person who pulled me back from the edge.
Now—
Gone.
There was no one here to hear me.
No one to say I was being dramatic.
No one to say anything at all.
Just me.
Just me and this world I never asked to enter.
A world I made.
A world that killed her.