Darkness swallowed Lunar whole, and the ground vanished beneath his feet. One moment, he was walking across his college campus, hands in his pockets, mind drifting through pointless thoughts. Next, the ground simply wasn’t there.
Not just the ground. Nothing remained. The darkness surrounded him, thick and suffocating. A place devoid of light.
A feeling of dread enveloped him. He tried to scream, but nothing came out.
An eerie numbness spread through his body, starting at his fingertips and crawling inward like frost. He tried to move, but his body did not respond. His legs felt distant… like they no longer belonged to him.
He tried to curse, but even the thought collapsed before it formed. What was there to curse? The void? Himself? God?
Did I just die?
The thought came quietly.
He had sensed no danger. Just a normal step forward, and then this.
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He lay there, if “lay” even meant anything in this void, for what felt like an eternity. Time stretched thin. His thoughts slowed. His heartbeat… was it still there? He couldn’t tell.
The darkness pressed down on him. As if it was peeling something away layer by layer.
Am I disappearing into nothing?
Panic sparked in his mind. He didn’t want to die yet.
He tried to breathe deeper, but his chest barely moved. The numbness crept higher, enveloping his neck and jaw. Even his sense of self began to fade at the edges. Memories flickered and then dimmed, like lights being switched off one by one.
Somewhere far away, he heard a rumble.
Like mountains collapsing.
Like the sky itself cracking open.
The darkness trembled faintly, as if something unimaginably large had broken. For a brief instant, Lunar felt a strange certainty.
Something vast was collapsing somewhere beyond sight, beyond sound.
Not just for him.
For everything.
Then, a tiny flicker of light trembled at the edge of his vision.
Small, weak.
Then another appeared.
Then more.
A swarm of pale lights drifted toward him through the void, swimming slowly through the darkness. Several panicked voices whispered inside the swarm.
“Are you sure?”
“There is no other choice.”
The numbness stopped.
The lights circled him, enclosing him in a dim halo. His fading thoughts steadied slightly, as if something had decided not to let him vanish just yet.
The rumbling in the distance grew louder for a moment.
Then stopped.
The swarm tightened around him.
And the darkness began to move.
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