Luke bid Jason a hollow farewell, his footsteps heavy with dread for what little slice of home awaited. In a bombed, out city where even memories crumbled to ruin, Jason was the sole flicker of warmth remaining from Luke's past, before madness had claimed his parents. Whenever Luke thought of his parents, the memories seemed to shift and change, as if multiple versions of their fate existed simultaneously. Luke's refuge loomed ahead, less home than tomb. The sagging walls exuded menace, liable to entomb him beneath rubble without warning. Toxic air crept in through bullet holes, spreading its poison tendrils into his fragile sanctuary. Sometimes, in the depths of night, the tendrils seemed to form patterns that hurt his eyes to look at, suggesting shapes that shouldn't be possible. He sealed off rooms to stave off the corruption, but it always found a way in. Venturing outside was to cheat death but hide he must. For other hollow, eyed squatters roamed these parts, ready to kill for a crust of bread. The community center still stood, its oxygen scrubbers and warm beds beckoning. But Luke carved out this life in squalor to chase that mythical fare, working bone, breaking hours, praying it might transport his emaciated body from this hellscape. And yet he starved all the same. For any crumbs he gathered were fed straight back to the great corporate machine, buying nothing but the faintest glimmer of false hope. So into the scarred skeleton of a building Luke slunk, the closest imitation left of home. He wrapped tattered blankets tight, more barrier against despair than the cold, and surrendered to fitful nights where dreams of blissful oblivion taunted from afar.
Lately, his dreams had taken on a strange quality, as if he was seeing through the cracks in reality itself. That wretched fare haunted Luke's dreams, its value inflating ever beyond reach. He'd collected what flimsy comforts he could to distract from reality's decay. The moth, eaten blankets, this decaying haven braced by bullet, ridden walls. Even the ominous upper floors where nameless souls had leapt to their demise now served as his makeshift AC. The harsh cold wind would howl in from above the decrepit structure and between fits of sleep Luke could swear he heard the voices of those who leapt carried along the wind. But lately, the voices seemed to speak of impossible things, of realities beyond the veil, of vast cosmic forces moving in the spaces between worlds. Few places in this corpse city lacked such macabre utility. Death clung to every surface, seeped into every crack. Those who still drew breath rarely kept it long. Yet the fare's mythical promise of deliverance from this open, air tomb mesmerized the masses into compliance. And so Luke surrendered precious hours of rest to toil, believing that fare would surely rescue him if he offered just enough flesh and blood to corporate overlords in sacrifice.
Sometimes, in his darkest moments, he wondered if the fare was about more than just money, if perhaps the corporations were collecting something else entirely. Three stories up this derelict hovel of housing creaked, but few dared summit higher. Suicides had long since claimed those crumbling levels as their mausoleum. And what were a few more restless spirits when despair already stalked the living here so relentlessly? When not if but when the next collapsing wall or misplaced step sent Luke hurtling to his end, they could share ghost stories of better times. Though lately, their stories seemed to speak of different histories, as if each spirit remembered a slightly different version of the world that was.
So into his burrow of tattered blankets, Luke collapsed, fully dressed and shoe-clad as always, the insidious cold already gnawing through the thin layers. He dared not expose skin to the hostile air, not with the sicknesses that festered and the ever-present threat of booted feet kicking through weakened plaster. Rest came not as relief but as surrender, exhaustion pulling him down into fitful darkness, the distant, mocking glimmer of the fare the last thought to fade.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The darkness wasn't empty. It breathed with the shallow rasp of the wind through bullet holes, a sound that slowly twisted, layering into whispers that felt ancient and cold. The chill deepened, settling into his bones not like the night air, but like the touch of something vast and uncaring. His refuge dissolved around him, the familiar decay taking on a malevolent awareness. Walls warped, perspective bending sickeningly; the floor seemed to tilt, threatening to spill him into an unseen abyss. It was the world he knew, but sharpened, peeled back to reveal the wrongness underneath.
Movement flickered at the edge of his perception, not rats, but threads of faint purple light skittering through the dust motes like fractured veins. They traced the impossible angles of the shifting walls, vanishing before he could truly focus. The air prickled, charged with a static that carried the scent of ozone and something else, something like bruised time. Tiny violet sparks snapped and died in the gloom.
He felt watched. Not by squatters or gangers, but by the oppressive weight of the dark itself. A pressure mounted, a sense of scrutiny that pinned him beneath his ragged blankets. Fragmented images flashed behind his eyelids: scales balancing unseen weights, paths splitting and collapsing into nothingness, the echo of Jason's sacrifice, a choice, resonating like a struck bell in the void. The whispers intensified, swirling echoes of consequence, debt, falling, fate. The purple traces in the air seemed to coalesce, drawing closer, weaving a momentary, terrifying pattern like a web, or an eye.
Then the flimsy reality of his shelter thinned further, the crumbling plaster becoming translucent, smoke revealing glimpses of a battlefield beyond reality itself. He saw, not with eyes but with a deeper sense, an encroaching void, an absolute nothingness that swallowed light and thought, pressing against a barrier of impossible energies. Colossal forces clashed in utter silence, yet the impact resonated through his very being. Vast waves of raw blue power solidified into shimmering, crystalline walls, only to crack and buckle under the relentless pressure of the void. Ropes of vibrant green energy lashed out like cosmic vines, attempting to weave shut the rents in existence the Maw created, or actively push back questing tendrils of non-being, fraying and retreating under the assault. Brilliant gold flared, not as attacks, but as anchors, solidifying moments, creating islands of stable time against the chaotic erosion. Stark white light pulsed rhythmically, a defiant heartbeat of consciousness pushing back against the void's psychic weight, a shield against mental annihilation. Fierce crimson streams erupted like sacrificial pyres, burning with impossible intensity to cauterize wounds in the barrier, fueled by unseen costs. Deep within the defense, a different, spatial blackness folded space like origami, creating pockets of warped reality, swallowing intrusions, or redirecting the void's advance onto itself. And weaving through it all, those purposeful purple threads spun and darted, severing the Maw's connections, redirecting devastating energies, orchestrating the desperate, intricate dance of defense, sacrificing sectors of the ethereal battlefield to reinforce others, a constant triage against oblivion.
It was a war eternal, fought without sound on a scale that defied comprehension, shrinking Luke to less than a mote of dust. An exhausting, desperate struggle against total annihilation, the defense constantly yielding, reforming, barely holding. The sheer, crushing magnitude of it pressed down, threatening to extinguish his fragile awareness like a guttering candle. A cold dread, absolute and profound, stole his breath. The pressure reached an unbearable peak, the whispers rising to a deafening internal roar, the clashing energies flaring unbearably bright. The final pulse of violet light seemed to sear itself onto his soul—
Thrum.
