Neila's eyes went wide. Her heels scraped against the linoleum, arms pinwheeling, mouth opening to form words that never came. She crossed the threshold of that wooden door in less than a heartbeat.
The darkness swallowed her whole.
"Fuck off."
There was nothing.
No sound. No light.
No sense of up or down or left or right. Neila existed in a void so absolute that she couldn't even feel her own body, couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed, couldn't distinguish between thought and reality.
Then the breathing started.
It came from everywhere at once. Slow. Rhythmic. Heavy. Each exhale carried a faint whistle, like air passing through damaged vocal cords. Each inhale sounded wet, sticky, wrong.
Neila's hand shot up instinctively, mana gathering at her fingertips. The familiar crackle of sound magic. But the darkness swallowed that too. She felt the energy dissipate before it could form, absorbed by the oppressive nothing around her.
"Okay," she said, and her voice came out flat, deadened by the space. "This is getting kind of annoying."
She took a step forward. Her heel hit something solid. Wood, maybe. Or stone. She couldn't tell. The darkness made everything the same texture, the same temperature, the same terrible presence.
Another breath. Closer now.
"Who's there."
Neila's hand shot out, fingers closing on empty air. She spun, trying to orient herself, but there was nothing to orient against. No walls. No floor. No ceiling. Just the breathing and the dark and the growing certainty that something was watching her.
The darkness was absolute.
For a long moment, she didn't move.
[The best thing to do in a scenario like this is to do nothing]
...…
She pushed herself up slowly, her hands finding no purchase on the surface beneath her. It wasn't floor. Wasn't ground. Wasn't anything she could name. Just... beneath. Supporting her weight but offering no texture, no temperature, no resistance.
"Seraphina," she said. Her voice came out wrong. Muffled. Swallowed. Like speaking into a pillow. "I'm alone now, no wonder she'd hate me, I'd hate myself too."
[No response. Of course no response. I'm alone.]
She shook her head.
"The darkness is getting to me, I really can't stand isolation, it's as if it is stripping me bare. I hate it."
She stood, her heels making no sound against the nothing beneath her. The darkness wasn't just dark, it was thick. Total emptiness. She blinked and felt no difference. Open or closed, it was the same.
"Okay," she said to herself, slapping herself to wake herself up. "This will be fine, I've always been alone, I can handle this, this is just another pebble in my way."
She took a step. Then another. The darkness didn't thin, didn't change, didn't do anything except exist in that same oppressive, velvet way.
"Or maybe the darkness is forcing me to open up."
No walls. No ceiling. No floor she could feel. Just the strange surface beneath her feet that gave slightly with each step, like walking on a drum stretched over an infinite well.
The darkness was absolute.
She sat back down onto the floor.
[I've read it somewhere before. Probably in one of those tactical manuals the family keeps in their unnecessarily big ass library. I've got no frame of reference, I can't see shit, I'm better off conserving what little mana I have and waiting for the painting to come to me instead]
She waited.
The breathing continued. Slow. Rhythmic. Heavy. It came from everywhere and nowhere, a presence that surrounded her without ever touching her. Each inhale sounded wet, like air being drawn through damaged lungs. Each exhale carried that faint whistle, that wrongness that made her teeth ache.
Neila counted the breaths.
The darkness wasn't empty.
She waved her hand, feeling the darkness with her palm.
"This is odd, the darkness feels more like a viscous liquid than anything else."
[It's not like I can see anything, it's rather that there's nothing to even see. It's like I'm under the ocean, it feels heavy.]
"Rather than the absence of light, it feels like water."
The darkness rippled.
Like something was moving through it.
A soft sound, barely audible over the breathing. Like fabric dragging across a rough surface. Like dry leaves skittering across pavement. It came from her left, then her right, then behind her, always just at the edge of perception.
Neila's hand came up, fingers curled, ready to snap. Mana gathered at her fingertips, a familiar warmth in the oppressive cold. But the darkness seemed to drink it in, to absorb the energy before it could coalesce into anything useful.
Shiver.
She turned slowly, trying to track the sound. It moved like nothing she'd ever encountered, no pattern, no rhythm, no predictable path. One moment it was close, close enough that she could almost feel its breath on her neck. The next it was distant, fading into the velvet dark.
"You know," Neila said, and her voice came out wrong, flat, swallowed, like speaking into a pillow, "this is really starting to annoy me."
The breathing paused.
For one perfect moment, there was silence. Absolute, complete, terrifying silence.
Then it laughed.
The sound was dry. Cracked. Like old paper being crumpled. Like bones grinding together. It came from everywhere at once, surrounding her, pressing against her from all sides. And beneath it, beneath that awful dry rattling, she heard something else.
A whisper.
A sound so distorted she couldn't make it out.
She spun, her heel scraping against the nothing beneath her. The whisper came again, closer now, right at her ear.
"Devil."
"One who hides behind a mask."
"Jester."
Her hand shot out, fingers closing on empty air. She stumbled forward, caught herself, spun again. The whisper was everywhere, a chorus of voices chanting in that same dry, cracked tone.
"Shut up," she hissed, and the whispers stopped.
Silence. Heavy. Pressing.
Neila's hand snapped up, mana flaring. The darkness rippled, like water disturbed by a stone, and for one brief, terrible moment.
The painting.
It had the same basic shape, a rectangle, tall and narrow, but its edges rippled, shifted, refused to stay still. Its surface wasn't flat anymore. It bulged outward in places, sucked inward in others, moved with a slow, organic pulse.
And from that impossible surface, things extended.
Limbs. Long, impossibly long, emerging from the canvas like branches from a tree. They had no consistent shape, sometimes thin as threads, sometimes thick as ropes, always shifting, always moving. They ended in things that might have been hands, might have been claws, might have been something else entirely. Fingers that bent in too many places. Joints that rotated wrong ways. Nails that caught the nonexistent light and gleamed wetly.
Neila snapped her fingers.
It should have destroyed anything in its path.
The darkness swallowed it whole.
She felt the energy dissipate, absorbed by the void around her, gone before it could reach its target. The creature didn't even flinch. Its limbs kept moving, kept reaching, kept growing.
[I have no other choice do I?]
She ran.
But she moved, her heels finding purchase on that strange surface, her small frame weaving through the darkness. Behind her, she heard the creature move, dragging something across the empty floor. Not running. Not chasing. Just... following. With that same slow, deliberate pace, as if it had all the time in the world.
Neila's lungs burned.
[I haven't ran like this.]
Her legs ached.
[Since I was a child]
[I never had the need to run, why would I have ever needed to run except now]
[I'm smart, I am the person that will change this world, I will shape everything in my image, so witches aren't beaten down anymore, treated like tools anymore, I will be above everyone damn it! I will reach level 10. So think damn it! Think!]
The creature's limbs reached for her. She felt them pass close, close enough to stir the air against her skin. They were cold. So cold. Like touching a window in winter. Like pressing your hand against ice.
"Run damn it!"