I am weightless.
There is no sense of falling, no sense of rising, only suspension, like I have been pinned in place by something that does not need hands to hold me. The absence around me stretches endlessly, as if the world has been hollowed out and I have been left inside the cavity.
It takes me a moment to understand what unsettles me most.
I cannot feel my body.
There is awareness, sharp, intact, but no shape attached to it. I try to blink out of habit, and the motion never completes. I reach for the sensation of eyelids closing, for the familiar resistance, and find nothing waiting for me there.
The void presses closer.
Not against skin, but against thought itself. It tightens around my awareness like a fist closing slowly, deliberately, as if it knows exactly how much pressure I can endure.
Panic flickers, then fades.
In its place comes something quieter.
Acceptance.
This is hell.
The realization settles into me with a strange, unwelcome calm. The emptiness, the pressure, the stripping away of everything physical, it makes sense. Of course this is where I would end up. A place with no ground, no warmth, no escape from thought, where I am forced to exist with nothing but memory and guilt.
I almost laugh.
So this is it.
This is what surviving earns me.
Images rise unbidden, sharp and merciless.
A hospital room, washed in sterile white.
Walls aged into yellow by years of neglect.
A ceiling I memorized crack by crack because there was nothing else to look at.
The steady beep… beep… beep of a machine doing the work my heart had grown tired of.
Maya's hand in mine, too small, too cold.
The promise I whispered anyway: I won't leave you alone.
My parents' empty chairs. Plates left untouched. Silence that swallowed everything.
The pressure in the void deepens, and for the first time, I feel something close to relief.
Good.
Let it hurt.
Let it crush me.
I deserve this.
Then the space ahead of me changes.
A shape forms where there should be nothing.
A door.
It is white, painfully, impossibly white, standing out against the emptiness like a wound. Smooth. Unmarked. No hinges, no handle. It doesn't glow or radiate warmth. It simply exists, wrong in a way that makes my awareness recoil.
Fear surges through me, sharp and immediate.
Not of what lies beyond it.
Of what it represents.
The void presses in harder as the door draws closer, and something cold twists in my chest.
No.
This isn't part of the punishment.
This doesn't belong here.
The door feels like an ending I didn't earn.
Like mercy.
Like release.
Like waking up.
I try to pull away.
I try to turn my awareness inward, to sink deeper into the pressure, into the emptiness.
I cling to the weight of guilt, to the memories, to the pain that proves this place is real.
Don't take this from me.
Don't undo it.
The thought tears through me, desperate and raw.
I don't want forgiveness.
I don't want another chance.
I don't want to wake up again.
The door looms closer anyway.
The pressure around me shifts, not tightening now, but pulling. Drawing me forward like a current I can't fight. I strain against it with everything I have, clinging to the void like it's the only thing keeping me honest.
I don't deserve to leave this place.
I don't deserve anything else.
The door opens.
Light spills out, not warm, not gentle. Blinding and absolute, swallowing the void piece by piece.
I am dragged forward.
I scream without sound, my awareness stretching thin as the pressure tears away, as the emptiness I accepted as punishment peels back from me against my will.
This isn't mercy.
This is theft.
The last thing I feel before the light takes me completely is terror.
Not from pain.
But of being forced to exist again.
Air slams into my lungs, sharp and invasive, ripping a sound from my throat I don't recognize. My chest convulses as I gasp again, then again, each breath burning like fire as my body remembers something it hasn't done in years.
Pain floods in all at once.
Not distant. Not muted.
Real.
The ground is cold and uneven beneath me. Grass scratches my cheek, damp with morning dew. My hands dig into the earth instinctively, fingers curling around something solid.
I sob without meaning to.
Not from sadness.
From shock.
I'm breathing.
I feel it, lungs expanding, ribs stretching, air scraping down my throat. My heart pounds hard enough to make my ears ring.
This isn't hell.
This is-
"No," I whisper, voice raw and unfamiliar. "No… please…"
My fingers twitch.
I freeze.
They twitch again.
I stare at my hands like they're foreign objects, like they belong to someone else and I'm just borrowing them. Slowly, terrified, I flex them.
Sensation explodes.
Every nerve screams awake at once. Skin stretches. Muscles tighten. Joints pull and shift. It's overwhelming, dizzying, like someone turned the volume of existence up too high.
I gasp and clutch my hands to my chest.
This is cruel.
I push myself up, but my body doesn't respond the way I expect. My arms shake under my weight, overcorrecting, strength misjudged. I nearly collapse back onto the grass, catching myself at the last second with a sharp cry as pain shoots through my shoulders.
I groan, a short, broken sound.
It hurts.
Not the distant, muted pain I was used to, but the kind that proves I'm alive.
And that terrifies me.
I scramble upright, legs trembling beneath me. My balance is off, my center wrong. Every movement feels delayed or exaggerated, like I'm piloting a body with unfamiliar controls.
I look down.
My skin is darker.
Not pale like I remember. Not mine.
My breath stutters.
I press my hands against my face, hard, as if I can wipe this away. My cheeks are warm. Solid. Real.
"No," I whisper again, louder now. "I don't- I don't want this."
I'm alive.
And I don't want to be.
The guilt comes roaring back, worse than before. A familiar, poisonous voice whispers in the back of my mind: You survived again.
I stagger forward, panic driving me on, nearly collapsing into myself as I move, needing to see, to confirm or deny what my hands are telling me. A lake glimmers nearby, its surface still and mercilessly reflective.
I drop to my knees at the edge.
The face staring back at me steals the air from my lungs.
Brown skin.
Dark eyes, deep and unfamiliar.
Black hair falling into my face, dark as the void I left behind.
I recoil with a strangled sound.
"No please-"
I strike the water with my palm.
The reflection shatters.
Ripples distort the face into something warped and wrong, and for half a second I cling to that distortion like it's proof this is a dream.
The water stills.
The same face remains.
I hit it again.
Again.
Again.
My chest tightens until breathing becomes painful.
"This isn't me," I whisper, but the reflection doesn't argue. It just watches.
Eventually, my strength gives out.
I sit there shaking, staring at a life I don't recognize and didn't ask for.
A headache blooms suddenly, violent and blinding.
I scream.
Images tear through my mind, memories that aren't mine. Streets I don't know. Voices calling out to someone who isn't me. Warmth and familiarity that feel like trespassing.
A woman's laugh.
A man's steady presence.
A child's excited voice calling Brother!
The pain is unbearable.
I clutch my head and collapse forward, retching as the fragments tear through me without meaning, without order. I can't understand them. I can't see them clearly.
And then-
Nothing.
I lie there trembling, empty and exhausted.
I don't know who I am.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do.
The thought doesn't come with panic at first. It settles in quietly, heavy and final, like a door closing somewhere inside me. I sit there on the grass long after the pain in my head fades, long after my breathing steadies, staring at nothing in particular.
I wait.
For something to tell me what comes next.
For a voice.
For an instruction.
For the world to realize I don't belong here and undo itself.
Nothing happens.
The breeze keeps moving through the grass. The sun keeps drifting, unbothered by the fact that I am sitting in a body that isn't mine, alive in a way I never wanted to be again. Somewhere nearby, a bird calls, sharp and bright, and the sound slices through me with a bitterness I can't explain.
I should be screaming.
I should be breaking something.
Instead, I feel… hollow.
Like all the screaming already happened in a place where no one could hear it.
My hands curl and uncurl in my lap, restless. There's a strange tension in my chest that doesn't feel like fear or grief, not exactly. It's softer. Warmer. And it makes my skin crawl.
It isn't mine.
The realization hits me slowly, then all at once.
Some of what I'm feeling doesn't belong to me.
There's a faint pull in my chest, like nostalgia without a memory. A sense of direction that doesn't come from thought but from instinct, tugging gently, persistently, as if my body is trying to remember something my mind refuses to accept.
I press my palm flat against the ground, grounding myself in the cold earth.
"No," I whisper, not to anything in particular. "Stop."
The feeling doesn't stop.
If anything, it grows more insistent the longer I stay still, like the wrongness of not moving outweighs the terror of moving forward.
I laugh quietly, bitter and exhausted.
Even now… even here… I'm still being dragged along.
I get to my feet slowly, carefully, half-expecting my legs to give out again. They don't. They hold me with a steadiness that feels undeserved. Each step sends unfamiliar feedback through my nerves, weight distribution, muscle tension, balance recalibrating itself without my permission.
It's like wearing someone else's shoes and realizing they fit too well.
That thought makes my stomach twist.
I stand there for a long time, turning in place, scanning the unfamiliar landscape. Fields stretch out in rolling waves of green, broken by clusters of trees whose leaves shimmer softly in the light. Everything is peaceful in the most offensive way possible.
Then I see it.
The stone path.
It isn't dramatic. It doesn't glow or beckon. It's just… there. Worn smooth down the center, edges softened by grass creeping between the stones. A path shaped by decades of footsteps taken by people who had somewhere to go.
I stare at it.
I don't decide to follow it.
I follow it because standing still feels worse.
The path carries me forward at a pace that doesn't match my thoughts. My body walks while my mind lags behind, tangled in guilt and confusion, struggling to catch up.
The world opens around me gradually.
Fields give way to clusters of trees, their shadows long and cool against my skin. The wind brushes my face, lifting my hair, and the sensation nearly makes me flinch. I'm not used to being touched by the world anymore. Not like this.
Every sound feels too clear.
Birdsong overhead.
Insects humming near the grass.
The soft crunch of stone beneath my feet.
I notice everything, and I hate that I do.
Because noticing means I'm here.
As I walk, the foreign feelings return in waves, soft surges of familiarity that don't align with my memories. There's a curve in the path where my chest tightens inexplicably. A patch of trees where something like fondness brushes against me and vanishes before I can grasp it.
They don't come with images.
Just emotion.
Just echoes.
My head throbs dully as if warning me not to look too closely.
More than once, I stop walking, breath hitching, heart pounding, convinced I've made a mistake, that if I keep going, something irreversible will happen.
But when I try to turn around, my legs hesitate.
That terrifies me more than the void did.
The sun moves lower in the sky, painting the fields in gold and shadow. Time passes in a way that feels both too fast and too slow. Eventually, I smell smoke, woodsmoke, warm and familiar in a way that punches straight through my chest.
Voices reach me next.
Laughter.
Conversation.
Life.
My steps slow.
I crest a small rise, and the town comes into view below me, modest, clustered, alive. Lanterns flicker to life one by one as evening settles in. Windows glow amber. Doors open and close. Someone calls out to someone else, and the sound carries easily through the air.
I feel like an intruder looking into something sacred.
As I enter the outskirts, people pass me without hesitation. A nod here. A smile there. Casual, unguarded. One of them speaks a word, just one, and it hits me like a slap.
A name "Cyrus".
Not mine.
I don't answer.
I can't.
My stomach twists violently, my pace faltering as the sound of it echoes in my head. Whoever they think I am… whoever this body belongs to… he had a place here.
That realization makes my chest ache in a way that's dangerously close to envy.
My feet carry me down a quieter lane before I realize I've turned. The pull in my chest grows heavier, no longer subtle. Each step feels thicker than the last, as if the air itself is resisting me.
The house at the end of the path waits quietly.
Not grand. Not small. Just… present.
I stop several feet away, breathing hard, heart pounding so loud I swear it must be audible. My hands tremble. My mind screams at me to turn around, to run, to disappear before I break something I can't put back together.
I don't want this.
I don't deserve this.
But my knuckles rise anyway.
The knock sounds too loud.
The door opens.
Relief floods the woman's face, immediate and unguarded, and something inside me collapses under the weight of it.
"You're finally home," she says.
The word home nearly knocks me to my knees.
Before I can speak, before I can run, a small figure bursts into view, eyes wide with excitement.
"Brother is here?!"
She runs into my arms.
I catch her.
And the world shatters.
Because it feels warm.
Because it feels right.
Because it feels like everything I lost and everything I swore I didn't deserve again.
I clutch her instinctively, arms tightening as if letting go would kill me. My vision blurs instantly, tears spilling down my face as overlapping images crash into my mind, Maya's smile, Mom's voice, Dad's laugh, ghosts superimposed over this impossible moment.
"I'm sorry," I sob, words breaking apart as they leave me. "I'm so sorry-"
Hands guide me forward. Voices surround me, worried, gentle, real. The door closes behind us with a soft finality, sealing me into warmth I never asked for.
And as I stand there shaking, holding a child who trusts me, drowning in love that isn't mine.
All I can think is:
Why do I get to feel this… when I let my family down?