Clues
"Cel..."
A whisper, so faint it could have been imagined.
"Cel..."
It was closer this time, curling around his ears like a breath from behind.
"Cecilion!"
His eyes snapped open.
Sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves above him, casting dappled patterns on the grass where he sat. A soft breeze rustled through the air, carrying with it the familiar sounds of laughter and shouting. Cecilion blinked, his heart still hammering, but everything looked... normal.
He was sitting beneath the old tree behind their school, the one by the fence that bordered the untamed forest. The school grounds stretched before him, lively and familiar.
His classmates were playing soccer, their shouts and laughter echoing in the afternoon air. On the sidelines, his section cheered, their voices blending into an excited hum of encouragement and teasing remarks.
"Cecilion! Come on, man. It's your turn!"
He turned toward the voice and found Mateo standing near the goal net, casually balancing a soccer ball on one foot. Harith was squatting nearby, watching the game with a small, amused smile. Everything was as it should be.
But something gnawed at the back of Cecilion's mind, a creeping unease he couldn't shake.
Slowly, he pushed himself up, brushing the dirt off his uniform. His eyes wandered through the crowd, scanning faces, searching for her.
Zixuan.
Where was she? She's supposed to be standing between Mateo and Harith.
Of course he knows—because this happened exactly two months ago during their practice for the school soccer competition.
Cecilion's chest tightened as he searched the sidelines, the laughing spectators, the players on the field. He knew she had been here earlier—he was sure of it. But no matter where he looked, there was no sign of her.
His classmates carried on as usual, running, calling out plays, joking around. The teachers supervising the game stood by, chatting. Everything was normal. Everything should be normal.
But Zixuan... where is she, really?!
Cecilion didn't even remember why he was looking for her in the first place— perhaps, I am forgetting something.
Slowly, the warm sunlight suddenly felt colder. The laughter around him sounded slightly off, as if coming from somewhere distant.
He turned back to the field.
Mateo was still standing by the goal, smiling. The soccer ball rolled slightly under his foot. But the way he stood—it was too still. Too rigid.
Harith was still squatting, but now his fingers were pressed into the dirt, dragging lines—no, symbols—into the ground.
Cecilion's breath hitched when the cheering around him had become hollow, repeating the same few phrases over and over, as if stuck on a loop.
A static buzz filled the air, creeping into his ears, worming into his skull.
"Cel..." The whisper came again.
He turned toward the sound and froze. The fence at the edge of the school grounds stretched impossibly high now, rusted and jagged like the teeth of a beast.
The sun, once bright and golden, had dimmed to a strange, sickly hue. The shadows of the trees seemed to twist, reaching toward him.
Suddenly, the cheering around him seemed... strange. The same words were repeating over and over.
"Go, go, go!"
"Pass the ball! Pass the ball!"
"Nice shot!"
At first, he thought it was just the usual excitement of the game. But as he stood there, a chill crept up his spine. The voices weren't natural. They were looping.
"Go, go, go!"
"Pass the ball! Pass the ball!"
"Nice shot!"
The exact same tone. The exact same rhythm.
He turned back to the field, his heartbeat echoing in his ears. Mateo was still standing by the goal, the soccer ball rolling slightly under his foot. Harith remained squatting, his fingers dragging strange lines into the dirt. But their movements were... wrong.
Mateo's foot hadn't shifted an inch. The soccer ball wobbled but never actually moved. Harith's fingers traced the same patterns again and again, yet they never finished.
And then, the muttering started.
At first, it was soft, just beneath the cheering. A hum of voices, murmuring something too low for him to understand.
Then it grew.
Louder.
More urgent.
The students on the sidelines began rocking back and forth. Their lips moved, but their words were garbled, like a broken record.
"Go, go, go..."
"Pass the ball... pass the ball..."
"Nice shot..."
Over and over.
Cecilion's breath hitched. His feet felt frozen to the ground.
The voices rose, clashing together in an eerie, discordant chorus. And then, as if following some unseen cue—
Everyone stopped.
The field fell silent.
Every single person—his classmates, the teachers, the cheering students—turned toward him in unison.
Their heads jerked in his direction too quickly, too mechanically.
Cecilion's stomach twisted.
Their faces—oh god, their faces—their eyes were hollow now, gaping black pits that swallowed the light. Their mouths stretched unnaturally wide, too wide, their teeth gleaming like polished bone.
Some had twisted limbs, their arms bent at unnatural angles, their spines arched backward as if their bones had been rearranged. A few students still sat on the grass, but their necks had twisted completely around, their faces staring at him upside-down.
Then—
They all spoke at once.
"Cel..."
The whisper returned, but now it was a chorus of voices—distorted, overlapping, rising in volume.
"Cel..."
Their bodies began to twitch, jerking like puppets on invisible strings. Some lurched forward in slow, staggering steps. Others convulsed where they stood, their heads tilting side to side like broken dolls.
"Cecilion..."
The sound of his name stretched and warped, turning guttural, inhuman.
His breathing came in ragged gasps.
The soccer ball at Mateo's foot finally stopped rolling.
And then—
It burst.
A wet, sickening sound filled the air as something spilled out. A severed hand, fingers twitching, nails scraping against the dirt.
Cecilion stumbled back, his pulse hammering.
A sharp giggle erupted from somewhere in the crowd, high-pitched and unnatural. Then another. And another. The laughter spread like wildfire, twisting into something awful, something wrong.
The students didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
Didn't move—
Then, all at once—
They rushed toward him.
The world seemed to slow as they moved.
At first, it was just a step. A synchronized lurch forward, their bodies jerking like broken marionettes. Their hollow eyes never left him, their too-wide smiles frozen in place. The giggling continued, sharp and unnatural, spreading like a disease through the air.
Then—
They ran.
Cecilion's breath caught in his throat as a wave of bodies surged toward him. Their movements were wrong—some sprinted with their arms hanging limp at their sides, others crawled on all fours like feral beasts. A few bent backward as they moved, their heads upside-down, their gaping smiles never faltering.
He turned, his legs stiff with terror, and bolted.
The earth beneath his feet felt unsteady, the grass twisting into something slick and writhing. The sky above had dimmed to an unnatural hue, the sun a pale, lifeless orb that cast no warmth. The fence loomed ahead, impossibly tall, stretching upward into a void of shifting shadows.
The voices followed him.
"Cecilion..."
They were right behind him, too close, too many. The sound of bare feet slapping against the ground, of joints cracking and popping as they moved, filled his ears. He didn't dare look back.
But then—
A cold hand clamped onto his wrist.
A scream ripped from his throat as he twisted violently, yanking himself free. His gaze snapped downward—
It was Harith.
Or what used to be him.
His fingers dug into the dirt, his body half-buried in the ground as if he had been dragged beneath it. His eyes were gone, nothing but cavernous voids dripping something thick and black. His mouth was open, whispering something too fast for Cecilion to understand, his lips moving in a blurred frenzy.
Beyond him, Mateo stood at the goal, unmoving, still balancing a soccer ball on one foot. But the ball was no longer a ball.
It was a head of a familiar woman.
Her lifeless eyes stared at him, lips parted as if she had been caught mid-sentence. Blood dripped onto the field, pooling beneath Mateo's foot.
Cecilion choked on a scream. His knees nearly buckled, but he forced himself to keep running.
The fence.
If he could just reach the fence.
His legs burned, his lungs screamed for air, but the voices grew louder, clawing at the edges of his mind.
"Cecilion..."
"Cel..."
"Cel..."
The fence was so close now.
But just as he reached it—
A hand shot out from the bars and grabbed his ankle.
It was ice-cold, too strong, too real. His body crashed to the ground, his scream swallowed by the deafening laughter that surrounded him.
He clawed at the dirt, desperate to break free, but the grip on his ankle tightened, pulling—
Dragging him backward.
The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him whole— was a woman. A freaking familiar woman he couldn't remember who.
Cecilion thought it was the end.
A void without sound, without light, where time and existence unraveled. His body floated, weightless, as though he had been ripped from reality itself.
Then...
BANG!
A gunshot.
His eyes snapped open just as another shot rang through the air.
BANG! BANG!
The darkness peeled away like a torn curtain, revealing a scene so wrong, so suffocatingly real, that his breath hitched in his throat.
He was no longer outside.
He was standing in a grand dining hall, one he somehow recognized. The long table stretched before him, adorned with crystal glasses, silverware, and plates of half-eaten food. A chandelier hung above, its golden glow flickering uncertainly. The scent of roasted meat and wine lingered in the air, mingling with something metallic—something wrong.
Blood.
Cecilion's stomach lurched.
Slumped over their chairs, sprawled across the floor—bodies. A family. A father, still clutching a fork in his stiffened fingers, his face frozen in shock. A mother, her head tilted back unnaturally, an empty stare locked onto the ceiling.
A man close to his age on the floor, covering who seems to be his sister. They're both dead, eyes wide open but void of life. And then chills ran through Cecilion's body when he recognized the woman protected by the man.
It's Zixuan.
Cecilion's body trembled as he forced himself to sprint towards her but then, the voices stared again.
"LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID."
It was a whisper at first.
Then a murmur.
Then a chant.
"LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!"
"LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!"
The words slammed into his ears, crashing like waves, overlapping and multiplying.
The bodies moved. Their heads—slowly, agonizingly slowly—turned toward him.
Their necks twisted too far, bones creaking, their empty eyes locking onto his. Their lips, stiff and bloodied, cracked as they spoke in unison.
"LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID!"
Cecilion stumbled back, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. His hands trembled as he grasped for something, anything, to anchor himself to reality.
His wobbling eyes landed back to Zixuan. Her face was peaceful, her hair fanned out around her like a dark halo. Blood pooled beneath her, seeping into the fabric of her clothing. His vision blurred, a sharp pain piercing through his chest.
This wasn't real.
It couldn't be real.
But then—
A sharp crack.
His head jerked up just in time to see it.
The corpses—every single one—snapped upright.
Their spines bent as if strings had yanked them into place. Their jaws unhinged, eyes wide and wrong.
A woman on the floor twitched. The mother's lips peeled back into a grotesque smile.
Zixuan's body shifted and then, they all opened their eyes extremely wide.
Every single one.
Black pits of endless void, soulless and consuming.
They turned their heads toward him in perfect unison, their movements sickeningly slow, unnaturally controlled.
And they spoke. But it wasn't a scream. It wasn't a chant. It was a sentence—calm, rhythmic, damning.
"Six claimed, six you owe.
Choose who stays, fate will show."
The words slithered through the air like a curse, sinking into his skin, into his bones.
His vision swam. His heartbeat pounded so hard it threatened to crack his ribs. Then, Zixuan smiled. The smile he used to watched.
"Find me, Cel."