The Man in the Wall

Through hazy vision, Cypher stepped forward.

His mind tore at the seams, unraveling in ways that felt both intangible and visceral, like hands clawing at his very soul. Each step dragged at him, as if reality itself wished to pull him back.

Sometimes, it was the void's silence that beckoned him closer in a calm, indifferent emptiness stretching beyond comprehension. Other times, it was something far too familiar. A voice, rasping and ancient, layered beneath the surface of his thoughts like a whisper pressed between the folds of a nightmare.

"§The °deal..."

Cypher moved without thinking, his body carrying him toward Corydon—or rather, toward the edge where the other man danced in lonely solitude. The edge of the abyss was close now, so close he could feel its pull, the weight of something pressing against his chest.

His boots struck the ground with a heavy thud. The sound echoed through the air, sharp and unnatural as if the world itself were fake.

The closer he came, the more the walls of his mind seemed to buckle under the pressure of existing in such a place.

"He's filled your head with blasphemy again, hasn't he?" A thick voice, deep and venomous, slithered into his ear from Knowhere, "He's not real, boy. He's the devil."

"B-but, Father—"

"Silence!" This time, it was a woman's voice—shrill, sharp, cutting through him like a knife. "You put that boy in critical condition. The doctor warned us this might happen, but to think my son would be so... disgusting as to listen to his own dillusions."

The words struck like lashes against his skin, old wounds splitting open in his mind. One memory bled into the next. A storm of arguments, shouts, and barely restrained contempt.

Somewhere deep inside, something cracked.

'Did... did I forget? But I never forget.'

He stumbled into the spotlight, knees slamming into the ground. The impact barely registered. All he could do was stare forward, eyes tracing the line where the floor gave way to nothingness.

Corydon danced beside him.

His body swayed and spun, lost in the rhythm of a song no one else could hear. His movements were erratic yet disturbingly fluid, like a toy with its strings tangled in someone else's hands.

Cypher watched as best he could.

How could this thing be the same as the one who had brought him here? They shared the same precence—he knew that—and yet Corydon had no will, no agency, no self. He was trapped, spiraling in his own madness, a prisoner in a world that was of his own making.

Before Cypher could think, before he could even breathe, the intruding voice returned.

A calm yet guttural echo.

It tore into him, seeping into his bones like a sickness. It was wrong, an intrusion into reality itself, a sound that had no right to exist. And yet, beneath the static and distortion, there was something comforting about it. Somewhere deep inside he felt it cared about him.

"§The °Deal Is ~∆§^"

It went on and on, a relentless hum that sent his mind into a storm. He knew this voice, didn't he? He had heard it before.

Why couldn't he remember?

And then—

Silence.

A void so absolute it swallowed everything.

Cypher collapsed. His body hit the ground with a dull, lifeless weight. Every limb felt hollow, drained of energy. From where he lay, he could just barely see past the edge of the cliff, staring down into the darkness below.

His breath came shallow. He searched for something, anything, that might reach out and save him.

But there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

'This world never gave me anything.'

Why should I fight?

Something moved in the periphery of his vision.

A smile tugged at the edges of the plastic mask that had been forced onto him, its shifting features warping, and twisting into something he recognized as being similar to Elie's after Corydon was done with him.

The void called to him now. It sang a song that had never been written, played by an orchestra that had never existed.

And yet, somehow, he understood it.

Now, he saw why Corydon danced.

He had seen the truth—the sheer, incomprehensible absurdity of existence, the cold, indifferent vastness of it all. And he had accepted it. He didn't seek to understand it. He didn't question it.

He simply moved with it.

'I... I can join him... I don't have to suffer anymore.'

The melody wove through his mind, its pull stronger than gravity.

Cypher rose, slowly and deliberately. The pain was gone. The fear was gone. The weight of his past, his failures, his burdens—gone.

He stepped forward.

Raised his hands.

And prepared to dance forever.

But just as his body began to sway, just as he surrendered to the melody pulling him deeper into the abyss—the world felt different

It was subtle at first. A shift in the air. A momentary distortion, like a ripple in water, too quick to grasp before it smoothed over again. But then it happened again. A presence. A wrongness pressing against the edges of his perception.

Cypher froze.

And then he saw it.

Far in the distance, past the edge of oblivion, a wall of white sand stood against the void.

It was vast in its appearance. The sand itself shimmered, its surface constantly shifting and reforming. Wisps of white trailed from its edges, dissolving into the nothingness beyond.

But Cypher's eyes weren't drawn to the sand.

They were drawn to the shadow buried within it.

A shape imprinted deep into the wall, dark as ink, its silhouette stretching high—taller than any man. Its outline was wrong, churning between the familiar and the unknown. And where its face should have been, there was only the suggestion of a beak, curved and sharp, an impression of something ancient pressed into the sand like a fossil of a being only seen in dreams.

And then - it moved.

Not a physical movement. No shifting of limbs or stirring of dust. But somehow, it leaned forward.

The void, which had been so still, reacted.

For the first time, it recoiled. As if it had met something equal.

And then the voice came.

It was not sound.

Not in the way voices should be.

It was an intrusion. A force that bypassed the senses entirely, threading its way into Cypher's mind like fingers digging through old wounds.

"The deal is done."

The words split through the silence, reverberating across the landscape like a tolling bell declaring it's presence

But to Cypher, it was something else.

It was a rope thrown to a drowning man.

He gasped, his breath catching in his throat. The melody that had called him moments ago - the song that had nearly pulled him into nothingness - shattered. Its rhythm faltered.

The shadow in the wall did not move again.

But it did not need to.

Its presence alone had already rewritten reality.

"We are together again, Aleck. Together at last."

The words coiled around him with weight pressing into his bones. It knew his name. Not Cypher.

Aleck.

His real name that by all means should not exist in this world.

A tremor ran through his limbs. He should have been suspicious of it or at the very least question it's intentions.

But he didn't.

Because the moment he heard that voice, something inside him clicked into place.

Their was a piece of him so empty he had never realised he had lost it.

And for the first time since stepping into this forsaken world, Cypher -Aleck - did not feel alone.