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Chapter 1 - Prologue

The abyss is empty.

Not just quiet, not merely dark—empty. A hollow void where time forgets to pass and even the stars are too afraid to shine. There is no wind here, no sound, no heartbeat but my own. It is a place untouched by life, unmarked by memory, and unknown to everything but me. I don't know how I came to be here—whether I was cast into this place or chose it in some distant moment I can no longer recall—but now, I am all that remains.

There is a saying, one that echoes from the world I once knew: "When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." I used to believe that meant something—that the void could see you, that it knew you. But in all my time here, in all the countless ages I've drifted through this formless dark, the abyss has never gazed back. The only thing I have ever seen staring at me from within the shadows… is myself.

A reflection—not in water or mirror, but in memory. A fractured image of the person I once was, flickering like a candle guttering in the wind. Sometimes I wonder if I'm still real, if I'm anything more than a dream the void forgot to erase.

I sigh. The sound barely stirs the silence around me. It vanishes, like everything else, into nothing.

I cannot remember how long it has been—since I last felt the warmth of sunlight on my skin, since I heard another voice, since I was touched by anything but darkness. Time is meaningless here. It stretches, folds, disappears. The concept of "days" or "years" holds no weight. All I have are fragments—flickers of memory, of a world with sky and stone and laughter. Of people. Of purpose.

I cling to those fragments. They are the only proof I have that I was once more than this.

But even memories fade in the abyss.

And soon, I fear, I will too.

Who am I

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