When his eyes opened again, everything was replaced by darkness.
Not the kind of darkness that belonged to a room, or a night sky, or even a closed basement. This was something with no edges. No ceiling to imagine. No floor to fear. Just an endless absence that made direction feel like a lie.
Something heavy pinned him to the world. Not weight exactly, more like a hand pressing down from the inside, gripping his chest, his spine, his limbs, holding him in a shape he no longer trusted. His arms wouldn't answer. His legs were dead stone. Even his lungs felt like they had decided to stop breathing.
His head throbbed with a deep, punishing ache, the kind that made thoughts feel like broken glass rolling around his skull. The pain wasn't sharp. It was old and dense, like it had been waiting for him here.
He tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
Panic tried to rise and found no room.
The darkness didn't react.
Then a voice touched his mind.
Not sound. Not words. More like signals threaded directly into the part of him that understood language.
The sensation was familiar.The same presence that had made him stop counting in the cabin. The same one that had told him what to do before he even understood he was in danger.
Hey. You're still here?
Hao tried to swallow, but of course nothing happened.
Still here?
He forced the thought upward like lifting a bar off his chest.
Who are you, why are you speaking using my thoughts?
A faint pause followed. Like the thing speaking wanted to choose the right words, or the least dangerous ones.
Who am I? Good question. It has been so long I have even forgotten my own name.
Hao's heart stuttered. Or he imagined it did. He could barely feel his body anymore. Everything was dulled, delayed, far away.
Well that doesn't say anything. How are you talking from inside my mind?
That is a bit too hard to explain for now.
The words felt emotionless, like the speaker had forgotten what emotions were for.
Then where am I?!
Oh. You are nowhere now.
What? What does that even mean?!
The darkness felt heavier, or maybe his fear had finally found a place to sit.
You're just drifting aimlessly. Actually, imagine your surroundings like space. You are just a tiny rock drifting around.
Hao almost laughed. Maybe he would have, if his body had remembered how.
Why does everything you say make zero sense?
But it does make sense.
A beat.
You are a tiny rock. The trial you just got out of was what remained of me. And now you are just drifting aimlessly, probably towards other remnants.
Hao froze as much as someone already frozen could.
What… you were a cabin?
It's hard to explain.
Just explain it!
The darkness shifted.
Not visually.
Conceptually.
Like the space around him had decided to lean closer.
Well. Once I was just like you. An anchor. And a strong one at that, but-
Wait. What did you call me?
The answer arrived instantly, like it had been waiting.
An anchor.
The word landed with the weight of a verdict.
What is an anchor?!
You. You are an anchor.
And what does that mean?!
A pause again, longer this time. As if the voice was sorting through a ruined archive to find a file that wasn't corrupted.
Hm. Think of the anchor as a candle. It burns, it melts, but it can also grow if it gets more wax. And the more wax it has the stronger it burns. Do you get it?
No, I do not get it!
The thought came out too loud, too desperate.
What just happened? The cabin, those guys, that thing that killed the others!
The darkness didn't console him. The voice didn't pretend to.
Well. I didn't kill everyone. I didn't kill that boy, Kevin. I wasn't the one to throw kitchen drawers at him.
Hao went cold.
The sentence was wrong in a way his brain couldn't ignore.
Wait. You were that ugly thing?!
Yes. And also no.
A tiny hesitation, as if the voice had once been human enough to dislike admitting the truth.
It is what remained of my body after all these years. I thought no anchors would ever get into that place after I died. I thought I will eventually just stop existing. Merge with the Black Mass.
Hao's mind snagged on the phrase.
Black Mass?
The edge. The part of reality that collects remnants that bled into each other.
He could almost feel that sentence carrying a private history. Like the voice knew more but decided to hand him only the minimum.
You're not making this better.
Why would I want to make this better.
That sounded like truth.
Or the echo of a truth that had once been screamed.
Hao tried to move his fingers and got a faint twitch, a ghost of motion. The pressure inside him relaxed by a fraction, as if his body was slowly remembering its owner.
So you're… dead. And the cabin was you. And I'm… what, stuck inside your leftovers?
You are no longer inside.
Then why can I still hear you?
Because I'm not a body now. I'm what's left of my remnant.
The word was heavier than "dead."
A remnant is what happens when an anchor dies with too much wax and nowhere to put it.
Hao pictured a candle exploding in slow motion, spilling molten wax into the world until it hardened into a shape that refused to disappear.
So you made that trial?
I became it.
He wanted to argue. He wanted the world back, even if the world was a cabin full of corpses and a monster that wore a person's shape wrong. At least that had walls. At least that had logic he could fight.
This was a void with a lecture.
Why did it look like a cabin?
A soft shift in the voice again.
The closest thing to pain.
Because I really liked cabins once. I still do. I feel like I always wanted to live inside one.
So the trial is your… memory?
Not memory. Residue.
That word felt clinical.
The difference mattered.
Memory implied choice.
Residue implied inevitability.
I didn't choose the shape. I didn't choose the rules. I only… I didn't really have a choice. I shouldn't even be able to talk now.
Hao's throat tightened as sensation returned in thin, uneven strands.
Then how are you talking with me?
I don't know either.
Hao tried to swallow again. This time there was no blood, just dryness that made his tongue feel like sandpaper.
And Kevin?
The voice went quiet.
Two seconds.
Three.
Kevin was also just an anchor.
Then why did he try to kill me?
Anchors often kill each other, maybe even more than the remnants they are supposed to face.
A beat, and then the voice turned colder.
But in Kevin's case, that monster, what was left of me, got into his mind.
Hao felt sick.
Kevin was a person. A friend, even if their friendship only lasted for an afternoon and ended with Kevin trying to jam a knife into his head. Actually, it didn't really count as a friendship, did it?
You just used him.
I didn't do anything. I don't have any power over what was left of me.
That didn't help.
So what happens now?
When you fainted I managed to crawl further into you, and when I did that place also disappeared.
Hao's mind went rigid.
You crawled in me?
The sentence sounded brittle even if it only echoed inside his skull.
Do you think I had any other choice?
But why me?
That is also hard to explain. You can say I just had a feeling that you would survive.
Hao hated that the answer felt honest.
He tried to rotate his wrist. It was all futile. Everything still felt distant and weightless, like he had lost his body and kept only the idea of it.
But he could still think clearly.
That meant he was still something.
Still someone.
You said the cabin was what remained of you. So how did it happen? How did you turn into that place and… into that thing.
The voice didn't answer immediately.
When it did, the words came slower.
Because anchors don't dissolve the way you know humans do. Humans die. But for anchors? Anchors can't fully die.
A pause that felt like old resentment.
What awaits a dead anchor is a fate worse than hell.
Hao's stomach twisted.
So am I going to turn into a cabin too? Or an apartment room? Or some other weird monster that eats people?
Only if you die the wrong way.
That was worse than reassurance.
What's the right way?
Another anchor consumes you.
Consumes me?
When an anchor dies by another anchor, the remnants of the dead anchor becomes fuel for the winner.
Hao stared into a darkness that wasn't visible, trying to imagine a world where his death could become a place others would wake in. A place that would repeat him. A place that would turn his habits and fears into rules.
The thought made his skin crawl.
So you're not a system.
No.
You're… a dead anchor's leftover thoughts.
Yes, that's what I think.
Hao latched onto the uncertainty.
That's what you think?
I'm not an anchor anymore. Also I haven't fully broke into remnants. A small part of me managed to keep its sanity somehow.
Then why are you talking to me at all?
A pause.
Because you heard me.
That means you are compatible with that small part of me that survived in a way.
That means maybe there is a way you can help me.
Hao's breathing hitched.
Help you?
The voice didn't soften.
I practically also saved you. That's the least you could do.
Hao wanted to be angry. All he had was exhaustion.
Ugh, how would I even help you?
By becoming stronger. Once you become strong enough you'll find a way.
Hao's mind flashed with images. The party. The too-perfect warmth. The empty phone slot. The feeling that his life had been running on automatic for years.
He remembered the exhaustion.
The sense of floating through days as if someone else was doing the walking.
He remembered thinking, once, that dying would be simpler than choosing a future.
A shudder went through him.
Will I have to go through stuff like that again?
Yes. You will go through even more painful and bigger trials.
Hao hated how the whole conversation felt like he'd never had a choice to begin with.
Trials, remnants, what's the difference?
The voice answered without hesitation this time.
Remnants are what's left of anchors. Or even worse, but it's too early for you to know.
A trial is the process you go through to consume a remnant.
And once you consume a remnant you become stronger.
So I already consumed a remnant?
He didn't feel any different.
Maybe because he could barely feel anything.
Yes. My remnant.
So what do I do now?
You wait. Hopefully we drift right towards the Veil. Even if it's unlikely.
Hao held onto the word like a rope.
And what is the Veil?
The Veil is the place where anchors live. The center of the Dark Mass, the least sane place in this fragmented world.
But what about my life? Can't I just go back?
The answer came cold enough to sting.
Your life didn't really exist to begin with.
A blunt honesty.
A kindness, if he lowered his standards enough.
What do you mean by that? Why can't I go back?
Because it didn't exist. Your real life begins as an anchor.
The statement felt impossible.
It also felt like something his bones already knew.
And what if I don't want to be an anchor?
Then die, see what happens.
So I have lived a lie until now? Were all those memories for nothing?
Hao swallowed.
What memories?
The question struck like a trapdoor opening.
He reached for his past and found nothing.
All he remembered were the cabin, the trial, the remnant, the stupid thing.
And seeing himself in the reflection of his phone before going to sleep.
Everything else had been erased so thoroughly he couldn't even tell where the holes started.
What memories…?
He couldn't remember anything.
I… I don't remember.
Of course you don't. No anchor really does.
His breathing eased as if the internal hand had decided to loosen its grip.
The pull in the darkness grew clearer. Not light. Not sound. A direction that felt like instinct being reassembled.
How many other anchors are here?
The voice was quiet for longer this time.
They don't really fit in a number. Anchors came and go. Very few last a while.
Hao felt something fracture inside him.
Not grief exactly.
More like the realization that grief might now be optional, and that terrified him more than the deaths.
Will I have to fight others like me?
The response came with unsettling simplicity.
Yes. You will.
The pull sharpened into a corridor of intention.
The darkness thinned.
Not into light.
Into another shape.
A new pull forming in the distance of his mind like a bruise swelling under skin.
Hao clenched his jaw.
He didn't have a plan.
He didn't even have certainty.
But he had a body again, returning in fragments.
And he had the ugly, surviving kind of will that kicked in only after everything else died first.
The voice spoke one last time, quieter now.
You might be a little different when you wake up.
You won't exactly be just like that old corrupted remnant of mine.
But you'll be similar.
So use that to your advantage. Don't perish.
The thought was quiet.
Steel wrapped in exhaustion.
Hao tried to hold onto the voice.
To the explanation.
To anything that could feel like a rule instead of a storm.
It was already thinning into static.
Maybe it was fading.
Maybe it was listening.
Maybe it was becoming part of the Black Mass that had failed to swallow it whole.
The last thing Hao felt was the remnant's presence dissolving into noise.
And then the drift became a fall.