Chapter VIII

3:47 am

Hope, what all may think is of good things, but it isn't of all good things---but both a sign of good and bad omen. Now I am both your prisoner and captor.

It felt like I was walking on a tight rope, I see no footing yet there my feet were---hovering in mid-flight. My stomach went to churn, I felt nauseous, light-headed in fact. Then there it was again, the gnarling sensation, this time it whispered behind my ears.

My feet were slowly sinking as sweat now crowds my face. It felt weak and soft all of a sudden, till I fell on both knees with both my hands touching the surface of this enchanted path that I now crawled upon.

A scream came crashing on my eardrums while I struggle. That voice is all too familiar, my eyes shifted further down below, Xiao was screaming almost to the top of his lungs.

with haste---I exchanged glances between Reins and Rio who seems to also be looking at the same thing, they both shared a common expression behind their look---"impotent flux of pity"

Dreadful wails continued to play melodies between my ears. Something small and heavy rolled out of my back pocket as I was about to stand, it gave a crashing sound upon landing the path of tiny glittering light. It rolled and expanded as it does---until it was about the size of my palm.

It was the sphere...the orb...the artifact. My eyes scattered towards Reins and Rio with great haste, they didn't seem to notice the loud crash. A wave of relief came over me but I can't help to notice that something was...off. I was dead sure that something loud as that would certainly catch their attention.

Let alone, the fear of being seen by others magnetized me towards that sphere. It slowly radiated as it rolled forward, and where it goes I followed---scrambling to the path ahead, it seems that the sphere was rolling faster as I did too.

I was limping as fast as I could with one good leg but it seems that the sphere could not be outrun. I fell on one knee as exhaustion took over my body, it took me this exact moment to see---that the path that was laid out for me was in a spiral yet still in a straight line.

From afar there stood still the sphere that glowed in a radiant light. So very still---are my eyes making a fool of me? the line between deceit and truth wore thin, wishing I could say the same for reality---for my...reality.

Again, I stood up, upon taking a step the sphere also moved forward and then froze in place like it once did. "What is this!?" a question that was merely the tip of an iceberg, a question so simple yet so complex.

A growl shivered from the back of my neck and waved all the way down my spine. My sense of sight crippled in the smoke of haze. My eyes shimmered in crystal fog, it flickered once, twice, then trice.

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3:47 am

I drifted in a place where my heart sunk just by feeling the floorboards. I crumbled from where I stood. Somehow, I lay upon the carpet of a living room where memories of old came to past.

Mere fragments of reality came to my sensation as for other parts of the house were filled with grey buzzing lines, similar to a television on a stormy night. Missing pieces of ceiling, floor, wall, and furniture were everywhere.

Fragments were all that was left of this "happy-reality" once it was, but now...fantasy would replace reality quite well.

Grey buzzing lines covered most of the house's interior from the ground up. I placed my hand in front of the grey lines, slowly wanting to touch. As I did, the buzzing lines come for my hand, it was warm, I felt its energy.

I began to understand that the missing pieces were real but are not there. It took its shape and being, therefore, manifesting the missing fragments in a form of grey buzzing lines.

Hence, making this a cut out of the once bigger picture. This is---a distorted version of my reality, I understand that now.

I stood up, confidence bulging within me, I closed my eyes tight as my hands clenched into a fist. "You're here... you're here... you're here..." I kept on repeating.

Slowly my eyes glittered by the daylight. Nothing was missing anymore, there were no more grey lines nor empty spaces, but someone was definitely still missing.

Confidence now rolled into longing. "You're not here..." I murmured. Sunlight passed through the windows and bathed the whole living room in its glorious arrays.

I fondled with the lamps and waved my hand across the sofa, a reassurance that everything was real---and it is. For the first time in a while, I didn't felt terrified.

Next to the living room was a small hall to connect with the stairs going to the bedrooms and to the dining room which was beside the living room.

My gaze turned to the floor at the center of the small hall where the sphere lies. Whispers came out of it, whispers that I couldn't understand not because it was far away nor it was speaking too fast, I couldn't recognize one word or letter that came out of it.

A step after another, I was drawn to it. I crouched as my hand tries to grab it, louder and faster the whisper got. Then a giant scream so great that it pushed me away, slamming me to the wall.

The radiance that overflowed in this house and the very rooms itself diminished. The hue of grey slowly crawled from all corners of the house like fleeting plagues.

And it didn't stop until everything is its own shade. This place, doesn't look and feel anything like home. It rather felt someone else's house than of mine...

Everything bathed in black and white, the sphere still in the middle of the small hall---shined and glittered. There was no sound, I took a step forward and that also bore no sound, even my breathing was mute.

A feeling that's all to known for me quickly sank their fangs into my bones---fear, yet again we meet, and it seems to me that this won't be the last time. Footsteps came after another, a sea of nausea came crashing, in this gut-wrenching silence.

The sphere gleamed like the silhouette of the sun beneath the ocean, a faint grey light. I was a finger away from touching it when I felt something heavy on my torso. In front of me were this huge, outstretched black and absurd arm.

Something big sent me flying back across to the living room. I bit my lip as the pain surged all over my body. Adrenaline pulsated my veins as I stood up as quickly as I fell. Its arms dangled on the floor sickening as it looks, the creature somehow tries to fit itself in the living room with its head nowhere to be seen yet.

It was a long grueling black creature that was riddled with lines all over, it has this absurd long arms with sharp and pointy fingers that touch the floor, it's feet were also long and grueling, its body was thin but tall, shoulders mangled, and the head---had no face or what so ever but was twitching in great intensity.

It finally fitted in front of the living room, with its back almost bent to the bone if it had one. It was standing still as both its arms dangled while the head twitched repeatedly in a disgusting manner. The horrifying creature looked surreal, it looked like a creature that only comes in a children's nightmare. A creature that children describes as a "monster" hiding under the bed---or hiding behind the closets.

The black disfigured creature was nerve-racking even if it was very still. I didn't know what was killing me, it's either this unnatural fear---or the fact that everything bore no sound, even my thoughts have no sound.

I looked at it from top to bottom then bottom to top repeatedly. All of a sudden it began to ooze this black lingering lines all over its body, it crawled on the wall then ran after me from there.

I ran towards the kitchen which was just next to the living room and eventually connects back to the small hall where it came from. This bulk thing crashed itself in anything that came its way, cutting even from walls. It crashed towards the kitchen leaving nothing but floating rubbles in its path, but still, everything was dead silent.

It climbed all the way from the walls to the ceiling and ran as dismantled as it looked for me. I ran and didn't look back, whether it was close or far was unknown to me for the sense of hearing no longer exist.

I popped off the back end of the small hall and ran towards the sphere, A growl yet again stroke the skin that hid my spine. I felt its claws drawing near, I see the sphere---it's an arm away, desperation is not new to me---we are rather well introduced as it embraces me, so, I jumped, the glittering sphere shined in both my palms as I held it tight.

My back slammed into the door as I now face the opposite from where I was before---and there I thought everything would end, in this empty house, a house that I once called home. The creature of dark was no more, there was nothing but floating rubbles and pieces of wooden planks, even broken utensils and silverware. Everything is a mess.

The sphere faded its light---slowly sound came in front of me, a tear in the fabric of space bore a huge gaping hole where no light could have lingered. It echoed and cried so intense that I felt a vibration on my chest, I quickly shoved the sphere inside my uniform as the tear started to engulf everything---and I for one, didn't escape that fate.

I was sucked in without even starting to struggle. I drifted away from the house and fell into the unknown, yet again I find myself in a very familiar predicament. "Deja Vu" As I fell deeper into nothingness yet again, I thought so would my consciousness, but I was wrong.

My body started to stiffen as did my limbs and eyes, then suddenly my whole body came ablaze. A fire of blue sparked from my clothes all the way to my skin. I struggled in shock but actually felt cold rather than hot.

Every part of me was shivering, my clothes started to tear off including bits of my skin, I had a good grip at the sphere before it could fall off my uniform and there I started to coil up feeling the freezing tundra that enveloped my body.

My eyelids were close as my lips quiver from the cold breathes.

"Summer, I've been ready---to see you for a long while, that I finally tire from it. Forgive me. I now see that death must be earned, for it is not easily given. Begging isn't enough for me to ask you to wait, no words can express my longing for you."

I imagine myself as a falling angel who burned in glacial flames---I picture a phoenix who is neither virtuoso nor of greatness. My consciousness slowly fades, blue butterflies rested at my chest as everything finally goes dark.