The lights above flickered—once, then again—before stabilizing into a dull, cold glow. Yuuji stood frozen in the hallway, breath held, pulse hammering. The air had shifted. Subtly, but enough to notice.
There were no signs of life. No nurses, no machines, not even the faint buzz of electronics. Just the hush of a vacuum-sealed world pretending to be real.
He took a step forward. The linoleum didn't creak. His footsteps made no sound.
Something was wrong with his shadow.
It lagged behind him, just a fraction slower than it should've been, like a puppet uncertain of its strings. He turned sharply. The shadow twitched to catch up.
His throat tightened. He wanted to speak—to call out, even if just to break the silence—but instinct screamed don't.
The walls pulsed. Subtle. Breathing.
Then, somewhere far ahead down the endless white corridor, a figure turned the corner.
Not walking. Gliding.
Tall. Humanoid. But too slender. Its movements smooth like oil on glass. And its head—wrong. There were no features, only a blurred smear, like memory failing to recall a face.
Yuuji stepped back.
The lights overhead buzzed louder.
The figure began to move toward him.
Slowly. Purposefully.
He turned to run—
And smashed straight into a wall of glass that hadn't been there a moment before.
Pain exploded across his face. He staggered back, dazed, blood on his lip. He looked up—
On the other side of the glass was himself.
No, not himself.
It wore his face, but the eyes were empty pits leaking black vapor. The same crooked smile from the dream twisted his reflection's lips.
It raised a hand.
And mouthed something he couldn't hear.
Yuuji's vision blurred. The world tilted sideways.
And then—
The hallway, the figure, the glass—
All of it shattered like smoke in the wind.
Darkness again.
The world shattered like smoke in the wind.
Then—darkness. But not silence. Not nothing.
This was a darkness that moved, that breathed, that remembered.
Yuuji didn't fall. He simply stopped being. Or maybe he had become something else.
Weightless. Thoughtless. Unmade.
But still aware. Still there. Somehow.
Shapes passed around him—not real shapes, not of geometry or logic. They were thoughts with edges, memories with teeth, feelings that glowed like dying stars.
Each one brushed against him, testing, tasting.
One of them spoke.
No sound—just the idea of a voice, pulsing like pressure behind his eyes.
"You are seen."
It was not comforting.
The presence behind the voice wasn't kind. It wasn't cruel either.
It was vast. Old. Incomprehensible.
A thing that knew the difference between atoms and intentions.
Yuuji tried to think, to scream, to understand. But his thoughts unraveled like ribbon caught in a gale.
His name—what was his name?
Why did it matter?
There was only the pull now.
A flicker of motion.
Something—someone—approached.
Not by walking. Not by flight.
By… unraveling the space between them.
It was the woman.
Or what had worn her shape.
She hovered, half-formed, bleeding light and smoke. Her face bent around itself, reshaping every moment Yuuji tried to focus on it.
"We saw you." she said—or maybe the void said it through her.
"The thread snapped. You should not be. And yet… here you are."
He tried to speak. His mouth was gone. He tried to move. His limbs were memory.
"Do you mourn what was?"
Images flickered—Tokyo's skyline, vending machines at 3AM, soft rain on the window, his sister's quiet snore from the next room.
A laugh. His own, awkward and small.
"You carried no anchor." the voice murmured. "No binding to that world. You were always… hollow."
That word.
Hollow.
Yuuji felt it settle inside him like truth.
And suddenly—he was falling again. Not through space. Not through time.
Through meaning.
Flashes struck him like lightning:
—A city of obsidian towers
—A cathedral where stars wept blood
—A battlefield where soldiers fought with echoes
—A girl with silver eyes whispering, "Don't forget who you were."
The void shook.
"A vessel."
"An opening."
"One who is not remembered cannot be unmade."
Symbols blazed into existence—no, not symbols. Echoglyphs.
They etched themselves into Yuuji's mind: spirals, fractures, mirrored letters that spoke in concepts too large for language.
"The Hollow Enclave accepts."
He screamed. Or dreamed of screaming. The echo of it folded inside itself, infinite and terrible.
And then—
A light.
Small. Distant. Pale as moonlight on old bones.
It pulsed in rhythm with something ancient.
A heart?
A promise?
A door?
He reached for it—not with fingers, but with will. With the last scrap of Yuuji he had left.
The void blinked.
Everything collapsed.
The light burned without heat, gentle and pale—but in its heart, something writhed.
It wasn't salvation.
It wasn't escape.
It was invitation.
Yuuji didn't hesitate. He didn't have the capacity to. His will was a flicker, a dying spark. But the light—
It wanted him.
Or needed him hollow enough to fit.
As his mind brushed its edges, the void cracked.
Not like glass.
Like a shell.
Out poured echoes. Not memories—reflections of memories, scavenged and stitched from countless lives.
He saw:
—A child burying a toy beneath a tree.
—A soldier carving tally marks into his arm.
—A woman whispering to her reflection until the mirror answered.
—A robed figure with no face, reading from a book made of skin.
The light pulsed again. Closer now.
A hum threaded through it, low and resonant, vibrating across dimensions like a chord struck on the bones of forgotten gods.
Then—a hand.
It extended from the light. Not made of flesh.
Not made of anything he could name.
It was the idea of a hand, shaped from memory and promise and void.
Yuuji hesitated—not from fear, but from awe.
"What am I becoming?"
The thought was not his own, but it wore his voice.
The hand answered by reaching deeper, into him, not to pull, but to carve.
Lines etched themselves across his soul. Words without sound, language without breath:
"You are the wound."
"You are the whisper."
"You are the boundary between was and will be."
Pain bloomed, but it wasn't physical. It was the ache of identity rearranged.
He remembered his own face—and then forgot it.
He remembered his sister's name—and then felt it instead, deep in his chest like a heartbeat made of grief.
Then everything turned inside out.
Not the world—him.
Like a chrysalis collapsing backward, Yuuji was undone and rebuilt, not as a boy from Earth, but as something else.
A container.
A cipher.
A Voidbound.
The hand let go.
And in the final instant, just before the light consumed him—
He heard it.
A voice so distant it might've been memory. Or destiny.
"Yuuji… remember the name Erisen."
And with that, the light surged—
—And the void was gone.
To be continued in next chapter stay tuned 💖🫶🏻