There was nothing.
The emptiness had swallowed everything.
Lican's expression twisted. He grabbed his own arm and dug his nails into his skin, pressing harder and harder until the pain became unbearable. He wanted to feel something strong enough to drown out the silence. He wanted proof that he was still alive, that his body belonged to him, and that he had not become some forgotten thing drifting through an existence without meaning.
But the pain did not help.
He released his arm and seized his hair, pulling at it with both hands. Strands came loose between his fingers, yet he barely noticed. He pulled harder, his breathing breaking into uneven gasps as tears gathered in his eyes.
"Let me out..."
His voice cracked.
"Please..."
The word sounded foreign coming from his mouth.
He had begged before, but never like this. Even when he had been chained inside that metal cell, there had been a door to escape through. Even when the woman had hunted him, there had been a direction in which he could run. Every desperate moment of his life had contained at least one possibility, however small.
Here, he had nothing.
He lowered his head, his fingers still tangled in his hair. His shoulders began to shake, but the tears that rolled down his cheeks brought no relief. They simply fell into the darkness, disappearing without a sound.
How long had he been here?
An hour?
A day?
A year?
He couldn't tell.
The thought made him raise his head abruptly. He looked down at his hands, then at his arms, searching for some sign of change. For a moment, he imagined that his skin had become thinner, that his fingers were longer, and that his body had begun to wither while he sat there. He blinked, and the illusion disappeared.
But the fear remained.
What if time worked differently here?
What if he had already spent years wandering through this darkness without knowing it?
What if his body could survive while his mind slowly fell apart?
Lican clutched his head.
"No... no, no, no..."
He shook his head violently, trying to drive the thoughts away. His mind refused to listen. Every possibility became another image of himself trapped here, wandering until his legs could no longer carry him, screaming until his throat could no longer produce a sound, and eventually lying motionless in a place where no one would ever find him.
Would he die here?
Would anyone know what had happened to him?
Would anyone even notice that he was gone?
His thoughts drifted towards his father, but the memory only made his chest tighten. He remembered the man's voice, the weight of his words, and the jade hairpin he had entrusted to him. He had survived because he had held on to those memories, because he had believed there was still something waiting for him beyond the suffering.
But what was he supposed to hold on to here?
There was no sky to challenge, no enemy to defeat, and no fate he could see or understand. There was only darkness, stretching endlessly in every direction, and a silence so complete that it seemed to erase the very idea of another living soul.
"I..."
His voice cracked.
Lican swallowed, but his throat felt too tight to form the next word. He tried again, forcing the sound out through trembling lips.
"I don't..."
He stopped.
He couldn't even finish the sentence.
He lowered himself onto his hands and knees, then began to crawl.
At first, he moved slowly, dragging one hand forward before pulling his body after it. His knees scraped against the unseen ground, and his arms trembled beneath his weight. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know whether he was moving towards an exit or deeper into the endless void.
He crawled anyway.
Stopping meant accepting that there was nowhere to go. Stopping meant allowing the silence to settle over him again, filling every corner of his mind until he could no longer remember what it felt like to hear another person's voice.
So he kept moving.
His fingers spread across the ground, searching for cracks, stones, or anything that might tell him where he was. Every time his hand met nothing, he shifted forward and searched again. His movements became clumsy as exhaustion took hold, and more than once he collapsed against the ground, unable to support himself.
Each time, he forced himself to rise.
His lips moved constantly, forming words that barely reached his own ears. Sometimes he called for help. Sometimes he repeated his father's name. Sometimes he muttered nonsense, clinging to the sound of his voice because it was the only thing that made the emptiness feel even slightly less complete.
But as he continued crawling, something terrible happened.
He began hearing his own words after he had finished speaking them.
At first, he thought they were echoes. He would whisper something, and a moment later, the same words seemed to return from somewhere ahead of him. Yet there was no direction to the sound. Sometimes it seemed to come from behind his head. Sometimes it seemed to rise from beneath the ground. Other times, it sounded as though someone were lying beside him, repeating his words in a voice that was almost, but not quite, his own.
He stopped crawling.
His breathing caught in his throat.
"Who's there?"
The question slipped from his lips.
A moment later, the words returned.
Who's there?
Lican froze.
The voice sounded like his own, yet something about it was wrong. It was thinner, emptier, stripped of the little warmth that remained in his exhausted voice. He stared into the darkness, his fingers curling against the ground.
"Stop."
Silence.
He waited, trembling.
Then the word returned.
Stop.
This time, it sounded closer.
Lican scrambled backwards, his hands slipping as he tried to put distance between himself and the unseen voice. His heart hammered violently. He knew he had spoken those words himself, yet hearing them repeated in that hollow tone made his skin crawl.
He clapped both hands over his ears.
"Stop it!"
His voice broke into a scream.
The darkness gave his words back to him.
Stop it!
The returning voice seemed to stretch the words, making them sound like a desperate plea uttered by someone who had been screaming for years.
Lican shook his head violently.
"No! That's not me!"
But even as he spoke, he could hear his own voice answering him.
That's not me.
He began to cry again.
The tears blurred his vision, though there was nothing to see. He pressed his forehead against the ground, trying to escape the voice, but it followed him into his thoughts. Every breath, every whisper, every broken plea seemed to return from the emptiness, distorted into something that mocked his fear.
He could no longer bear it.
Lican dragged himself forward, scraping his palms against the ground as he crawled without direction. His arms shook violently, and his knees could barely support him, but he refused to stop. He didn't care where he was going anymore. He only wanted to find something different, something that would prove this place was not endless.
"What if I die?"
The question escaped him in a broken whisper.
He kept crawling.
"Why should I die?"
His voice trembled, and his fingers dug into the ground.
"WHY SHOULD I DIE?"
The scream tore through his throat, raw and desperate. He waited for an answer, his entire body shaking as he stared into the darkness.
But the only response was his own voice returning to him, repeating the question with the same desperation, the same grief, and the same helplessness.
Why should I die?
Lican's mouth fell open.
For a moment, he couldn't breathe.
He had asked the question because he wanted an answer. He wanted someone to tell him that he would survive, that this was temporary, that there was still a way out. He wanted to hear a voice that wasn't his own, a voice that could promise him that his suffering would end.
Instead, the darkness had given him nothing but himself.
And he had never felt so alone.
His hands went still.
He remained on his knees, his head bowed, his shoulders trembling as the final remnants of his strength drained away. Tears continued to fall from his eyes, but his expression had begun to change. The frantic desperation that had driven him forward was fading, leaving behind something far more frightening.
Emptiness.
He stared at the ground beneath him, his eyes bloodshot and unfocused. His lips moved, but no words emerged. He had spent so long searching for an answer that he had forgotten what he was asking.
He had forgotten why he was crawling.
He had forgotten where he wanted to go.
For a long time, he remained motionless in the darkness, his fingers resting against the ground.
Then, very quietly, he whispered, "I..."
His voice faded.
He couldn't remember what he had wanted to say.
He couldn't remember what he had been searching for.
And as the silence closed around him once more, Lican realised that he was beginning to forget something far more important than the way out.
He was beginning to forget himself.