When Arav's eyes opened, the world looked wrong.
The air shimmered, edges of the room bending as if viewed through heated glass. His ears hummed with a low vibration — the same frequency as his own pulse. Thump... thump... thump. It wasn't just inside him. It was in the walls, in the air, in the spaces between his thoughts.
The floor beneath his bed pulsed like flesh.
He sat up, heart racing, but his body moved a second too late — as though his limbs were listening to an echo of his will. The mirror across the room rippled, and in it, his reflection blinked a moment before he did.
He whispered, "Where… am I?"
And the reflection smiled.
For a moment, silence. Then a familiar voice — distorted, layered with static — spoke from nowhere and everywhere.
"You are in the Pulse, Arav. The truth you wanted is breathing with you."
The voice was Aisha's — or what was left of her.
He turned toward the sound, and in the corner, she stood half-faded, her body flickering like a candle in wind. Her eyes were hollow, but in them burned something like sorrow — or rage — or both.
"You left me in the house," she said. "You opened the door that shouldn't breathe. You thought the whispers would stop with the truth, but they feed on it. They fed on you."
Arav staggered to his feet. The room pulsed again — each beat syncing with the throbbing inside his skull.
"I didn't leave you," he said, clutching his temples. "I tried to—"
"You tried," she interrupted, her voice cracking into static. "You always try. But the Abyss doesn't want effort. It wants surrender."
The walls began to bleed light — thick, luminous strands seeping down like veins of molten gold. The floor trembled, and from the cracks, black hands reached upward, clawing at his ankles. He kicked them away, but every touch left a mark — thin, black lines tracing his skin like living veins.
The reflection in the mirror spoke again, this time matching his voice perfectly.
"The Pulse is your guilt made real. You buried what shouldn't have been forgotten."
"What did I bury?" he shouted. "What are you?"
"You know."
A second voice, low and familiar — his father's.
And then he remembered — the storm, the well behind the house, the body they never found. His mind fractured, flashes of memory breaking through: water, screams, his father dragging him away as something beneath the surface reached for him.
Aisha stepped closer, her form solidifying. "You lied to yourself, Arav. That's what this place feeds on. Lies with a heartbeat."
He wanted to scream, but the Pulse beneath the floor grew louder — thump... thump... thump — until his thoughts drowned in its rhythm.
The black veins crawled higher, wrapping around his arms, neck, jaw. They didn't choke him. They whispered.
"Let go. Let go. Let go."
The lights dimmed.
He fell to his knees, breath shallow, whispering, "If this is punishment, then let it end."
But the voice in his head laughed — his own laughter.
"Punishment? No, Arav. This is the reward. You wanted to understand the Abyss. Now you are part of it."
The walls melted away, revealing a dark plain that stretched forever — no sky, no stars, just a horizon of pulsing light beneath transparent ground, as if he stood atop a beating heart the size of the world.
Aisha walked across it barefoot, each step echoing in impossible distance.
She turned to him, eyes softening. "If you stay here, you'll dissolve. You'll forget who you are. That's how it keeps its secrets safe."
"How do I leave?"
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Find the pulse that isn't yours."
Before he could ask, she was gone.
Silence again. Then — a sound. Faint at first, then clearer.
A second heartbeat.
Not his.
It came from somewhere deep beneath the ground.
He knelt, pressing his ear against the trembling surface. The pulse below beat slower, heavier — like a god sleeping.
Without thinking, he clawed at the ground. The translucent layer peeled like skin.
Underneath — flesh. Warm, wet, moving.
He dug deeper. And then he saw it — a massive heart made of faces, each one whispering, screaming, crying. Some were strangers. Some were his own — different versions of him, broken and twisted.
Each face whispered the same thing:
"Remember."
His hands shook. "Remember what?"
And then, amid the chaos, one face — calm, familiar, human — opened its eyes. It was his mother.
"Remember who killed me," she said.
The world shattered like glass.
The ground fell away, and he was falling — not down but inward, collapsing into his own chest.
The pulse roared, the voices screamed, and just before the void swallowed him whole, he saw Aisha again, reaching for him.
Her words were the last thing he heard before everything went black again:
"Wake up before it becomes you."