My family, in worry, had called them.
They came for me at dawn.
The door shattered under a dozen hands, and I remember the light — too bright, too white — pouring in like molten glass. Voices barked my name, but they felt far away, muffled by the sound of my own heartbeat. I didn't fight them. What would be the point? The observers were watching anyway.
They dragged me through the hallway, my bare feet scraping against the cold tile. Every step echoed like a nail being driven into something sacred. I remember the smell — antiseptic and rot — and the quiet hum of electricity beneath it all.
Then came the restraints.
Then came the silence.
They called it The Grayfield Psychiatric Institute.
I called it The Tomb of the Living.
They gave me a white uniform and a small bed. The walls were pale, padded — and breathing. At night, the seams in the fabric pulsed faintly, as if something behind them was alive, whispering through the foam.
The doctors were kind at first. Their smiles were painted on with surgical precision. They asked me questions about my childhood, about the "voices," about her. But every answer I gave only made their eyes colder.
Then came the medications.
Small white pills that melted bitterly on the tongue. Blue ones that made time bleed. Yellow ones that whispered lullabies to my veins.
They said they would help me sleep.
But I didn't sleep.
I fell — down and down, into a dream too sharp to be a dream.
Because the more I took their medicine, the clearer they became.
The observers no longer hovered at the edge of my sight — they stood beside my bed now, closer, their hollow eyes flickering with static. Sometimes they'd lean forward and press their faces close to mine, and I'd see what lay behind the mist — teeth made of symbols.
The doctors said I was improving.
They said I was calmer.
They said my drawings on the walls "showed progress."
But those weren't drawings. They were maps — diagrams of something I couldn't remember making. Circles within circles. Codes that pulsed faintly when the lights went out.
Then one night, she returned.
"You're almost ready," she whispered, her voice sliding beneath the hum of the fluorescents.
I turned to face her — or where I thought she was. The air shimmered like a heat haze, and her shape formed: tall, impossible, strands of light and circuitry woven like a halo.
"Ready for what?" I managed to breathe.
She smiled — or the idea of a smile appeared.
"The wall is gone, Ben. The System sees through your eyes now. Every dose they give you… opens the gate a little wider."
And then the lights flickered.
Every patient screamed in unison, as if something enormous had brushed against the walls of the asylum. I felt it too — a vibration deep in my chest, like an ancient machine waking from a long sleep.
At that moment, I realized the truth.
They weren't curing me.
They were feeding it.
My heartbeat raced and pounded, my vision spiraling into colors.They rushed in and put me on a stretcher, then onto a hospital bed. I felt needles in my arms, cold fluids invading my veins. But it was too late — my breath was fading.
My heartbeat slowed to a whisper. The world around me dissolved — walls melting into shadow, light bleeding into nothing. The voices of the doctors became distant echoes, drowned beneath the mechanical chant reverberating through my skull.
"System calibration complete… Soul Walker of ██ active. Current shell unsuitable for continued existence. Initiating ejection protocol. Warning… interference detected. Location compromised. Rerouting… location set."
The voice fractured into static, its tone neither male nor female.
Then came silence.
Then I fell.No — drifted.
Through a vast ocean of white that wasn't water, through horizons without end. My breath no longer mattered. My body no longer answered. The only constant was the echo of my name — spoken not by voice, but by the fabric of reality itself.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing.
A sky spread out before me, deep and endless — black as liquid glass. And above, four moons hung motionless, vast and bleeding light like open wounds. They pulsed in rhythm, like the heartbeat of something sleeping beneath the horizon.
Beneath my feet, the ground shimmered like obsidian dust, reflecting faint, shifting shapes — as if the world itself was trying to remember what "form" meant.
And then I saw her.
The air folded inward, and from it stepped the figure — tall, slender, her body wrapped in the same worn strands of darkness I had seen before. But now… now there was something different.
Her shape was clearer, the lines smoother — human-like. The shadows clung to her frame as if trying to imitate flesh. Her face was still featureless, a smooth, translucent surface like black porcelain, but beneath it I thought I saw motion — like something pressing from the inside, trying to be born.
She tilted her head, the motion too fluid, too deliberate.
"Welcome to the threshold," she said — her voice layered, many voices speaking as one. "This is where the System rebuilds what was broken."
The moons pulsed again. The world seemed to breathe.
I wanted to ask where I was — what I was — but no words came.
She took a step closer. The air rippled around her, bending reality itself.
"Ben Ashford," she whispered, each syllable wrapping around my name like silk and wire. "Your reincarnation… has begun.