Ares floated in the dark.
No sound. No air. No edge to anything. Just weightless pressure, pressing on him from every side. The pain never stopped — it pulsed through him, steady as a heartbeat, carving him hollow.
Where am I?
He tried to think the words, but even thought felt heavy. Each one dragged, slow and useless.
He wanted to scream, but there was nowhere for the sound to go. Only darkness — endless, suffocating, patient.
Please… just stop. Please, stop.
The plea went nowhere. The pain went on. It wasn't sharp anymore. It was dull, constant, like the grinding of stone against stone.
And then — something shifted.
In the distance, a faint glimmer — a thread of light, small as a hair — flickered through the black. It moved, slow and sinuous, like a worm.
Another appeared beside it. Then another.
They weren't light at all. They were black, darker than the dark around them, and yet visible — slick, thin, writhing like things alive. Their edges shimmered with faint ripples, something between shadow and oil.
Ares watched them, frozen. They were moving toward him.
What are you…?
The strings gathered above him in a wide arc, shifting, weaving, not touching — never touching — but always near. Then they formed something — a hole, a pale opening inside the darkness, faint light leaking through.
He felt it before he understood it. Hope.
Without thinking, he lunged.
He didn't have arms, but he tried to crawl anyway — pushing, clawing at the nothingness, dragging himself toward the glow. He could feel the pull, like wind against skin that wasn't there.
"Let me through!"
His voice cracked, a thought breaking apart in his own head. He tried again, harder, his entire being straining. The hole seemed to grow, then shrink, flickering in and out of reach.
But he couldn't pass.
Something solid stopped him — invisible, unyielding. The space around him bent, and when he pushed harder, the resistance only grew.
He realized it wasn't the darkness holding him. It was himself.
He could see now — the faint outline of a container, translucent, egg-like, smooth and cold. He was inside it. The hole was beyond it. The strings and the shell — they were made of the same thing. The same substance that bound his soul.
He pressed his hands — or what he thought were hands — against the inner wall. It didn't move. It didn't even tremble.
"No… no, please…"
He slammed himself against it, over and over, each impact sending pain through every thought he had. The hole outside flickered. The black strings pulsed, but stayed back — waiting.
He screamed again, soundless and broken. His will began to crumble. The light blurred, fading.
So this is it.
He stopped fighting. The pressure of the dark wrapped around him again, soft, heavy, final. He could feel his strength leaking away.
Then — a tremor.
The black strings moved. Slowly, purposefully, they sank toward him. He didn't resist. He barely had the strength to watch.
They touched the shell.
The moment they did, everything inside him shuddered. The strings slid through the outer layer of the container, sinking into the cracks that had already begun to form. And then they went deeper — inside.
He felt them enter him — a strange, cold invasion, not of flesh but of thought. The strings spread out like roots, weaving through the interior of the shell, creating a delicate web that trembled with every pulse of his fear.
Then, suddenly — they pulled.
The shell tore open like thin glass.
Ares gasped. Or thought he did. The light from beyond the hole burst inward, flooding the dark. He felt himself being drawn through it, the web of strings guiding him, pulling him out of his own confinement.
And then — he was free.
The darkness didn't close behind him. It stayed open, still trembling with the thin black filaments that had opened it.
He drifted forward, light washing over him — a light that wasn't white or gold, but green. Faint motes of it swam through the air, like dust that was alive. Everything shimmered, woven by threads he could now see clearly — the hidden fabric of reality itself.
The ground below was made of tiny filaments, each one glowing faintly, knotted and layered in endless weaves. Even the air was a net of shimmering lines, pulsing with slow rhythm, alive with energy.
And among them moved creatures.
Tiny squirrel-like things with feathered tails, their bodies half-transparent, nibbling at the glowing motes that drifted in the air. Another — like a pale lizard made of folded glass — crawled along a stone, its mouth leaving trails of faint light.
Ares stared, trembling.
He didn't understand any of it. But for the first time, he saw.