Fragments of Delusion

When the lights went out, the first thing Triton noticed was not the darkness but a sudden realization—

He was not alone.

He was not the only one suffering.

The red glow that had filled the room faded slowly, as if being absorbed into the walls. For a moment, it felt like the entire world had stopped. The silence was heavy, suffocating—not the ordinary kind of silence, but something more unnatural, as if even the air had frozen, as if time itself had stalled, trapping everyone in this black void.

But the silence did not last long.

Soft sounds began to emerge, barely audible in the darkness.

Ragged breathing.

The rustling of clothes shifting slightly.

Faint tremors, as if someone was trying to suppress an overwhelming force within.

And then—

— "Why can't I see?"

The voice was shaky, weak, as if the speaker was trying to confirm they still existed.

— "What's happening…?"

— "I… I'm not alone, am I?"

Then came the first voice that was not human.

— "Listen to us."

Triton froze. The voice did not come from anyone in the room. It was not spoken aloud but rather… planted directly into his mind.

— "Be one with us."

— "Do not resist."

A shiver crawled down his spine. No one had spoken, and yet the words were there, whispering inside his head, bypassing his ears entirely, slipping straight into his thoughts.

Then… the world began to change.

Faces in the Void

In an instant, the room was gone.

The red glow had completely vanished. There were no walls, no metal chairs.

He stood in nothingness.

And around him… were faces.

Faceless faces.

Dozens—no, hundreds of them, surrounding him in all directions. They moved slowly, creeping toward him, drawn by some invisible force, even though they had no eyes to see him, no mouths to speak.

Yet still, they whispered.

Their voices slithered into his mind, wrapping around his thoughts, blending with them until it was impossible to tell where his own thoughts ended and theirs began.

— "Everything is under control."

— "There is no need to resist."

— "We will take what you do not need."

A pressure settled over his head, as if his very mind was being reshaped.

He tried to lift his hand to his head, but he couldn't.

He tried to scream, but no sound came out.

He was trapped, surrounded by these shifting voids of nothingness, forced to listen to whispers that were not his own.

Then… amidst them, he saw something different.

Among the countless faceless figures, one stood apart.

A girl.

Dark-haired, standing still amidst the moving crowd, staring at him.

She was familiar.

She was… his sister.

But not as he remembered her.

She should have been seventeen. Yet he saw a twelve-year-old girl, gazing at him with wide, empty eyes, devoid of emotion.

"Is this… real?"

He tried to step toward her, but the moment he moved—she vanished.

As if she had never been there.

— "Do not trust your eyes."

The voice came from nowhere, distinct from the others.

He turned sharply, searching for the source—

But there was no one there.

— "What you see is not the truth."

Then… the darkness cracked.

Reality itself seemed to fracture.

A Puppet in Their Hands

What he saw was not real. Nothing here was real.

Yet the pain in his head was real enough to make him groan.

The voices around him were no longer whispers, no longer vague murmurs. They had become words—fragmented, broken sentences, spoken by a hundred voices at once, layering over each other like a chaotic chorus:

— "You have no name."

— "You are nothing but an experiment."

— "You do not think. We think for you."

— "Everything is reconstructed."

— "You are a thread between two worlds. Do not forget that."

Each voice carried a different tone—some cold, some soft like a child's whisper, others sharp like a military command.

The ground beneath him felt unstable, as if he were standing on a glass surface that was slowly cracking beneath his weight.

— "Triton."

The voice was different this time.

It was clearer.

He turned—and saw her again.

She stood there, amidst the chaos, amidst the darkness that was devouring everything.

— "You are walking on a thin rope, and below you is a sea of hungry mouths."

Her words did not belong to this place. They felt older, as if they had existed long before he did.

Triton tried to speak, but he couldn't find his voice.

— "Do not try to understand, because the moment you do, you will cease to be yourself."

She stepped closer, her footsteps making no sound, as if she were gliding rather than walking.

— "They have tampered with you… reshaped you… dug into your mind until you became something else."

His head pounded, each of her words crashing into him like a memory he was never allowed to keep.

— "I am you, Triton. But the truth is… you were never you."

He clutched his head, squeezing it as if trying to stop the pain, but nothing changed.

— "If you do not remember… you will become just another piece in their puzzle. No identity, no will—just an empty shell walking on two legs."

Breathing heavily, he stared at her—only to see her features begin to shift, dissolve, as if she had never been there at all.

— "How do I know you're real?"

This time, she smiled.

But it was not a reassuring smile.

It was something else.

Something that sent a chill through him, despite the suffocating heat in the air.

— "Nothing here is real."

Then—

She vanished.

And the entire world collapsed around him.