With a weary, ragged sigh that seemed to drain his last precious bit of energy, Aaron glared at the stained ceiling.
It was entirely too late—dreadfully late—to deal with a roof leak, especially with a busy school day looming.
Rainwater was already steadily soaking his mattress, forcing him to shove the heavy bed away from the relentless, dripping abyss, toward the center of the room with a frustrated, strangled grunt.
He dragged a hollow-sounding metal trash can from the corner, placing it precisely under the drip-drip-drip that now echoed with a monotonous, infuriating rhythm.
After roughly stripping the bed of sodden, heavy sheets, he piled on fresh, dry blankets and collapsed on top of them, letting the frantic, metallic clanking lull him into a forced, uneasy sleep.
***
Rykker’s eyes fluttered open, but he saw nothing.
He felt nothing.
Heard nothing.
Instead, his essence floated in a sensory vacuum where nothing existed.
The “air” was neither warm nor cold, but a numbing neutrality that felt like being submerged in thick, invisible ink.
There was no floor to stand on, yet no sensation of falling—only a nauseating stasis that stripped away his sense of up and down.
When he reached out, his limbs didn’t displace the air.
His hands were mere mist, a translucent outline of the person he used to be.
He was a silhouette, a ghost of a memory.
His phantom lungs burned with the instinct to breathe, yet there was nothing to inhale but the smothering weight of the silence.
He fumbled about blindly, his hands passing through each other as he tried to grasp reality.
But there was no “there” there.
Panic, cold and sharp, set in—no hands, no breath, no body.
He wasn’t just in the dark; he was gone.
What kind of terrifying place was this?
A sudden, paralyzing dread gripped Rykker, not in his chest, but in his mind—an icy, piercing fear left him wondering if he was already dead.
“Hello?” Rykker howled into the void.
“Is anyone there?”
***
The voice didn’t just vibrate the air; it felt like a sickening physical intrusion into Aaron’s skull.
It began as a static-filled, unnatural rasp, similar to dry leaves skittering on pavement, before erupting into a desperate, hollow cry that seemed to come from directly beneath his own skin.
This was no fleeting dream; it was a haunting voice that jolted Aaron upright, now entirely awake and petrified.
His chest heaved with shallow breaths, surging adrenaline flooding his system as his eyes frantically scanned the deepening shadows, but the room was utterly, disturbingly empty.
He sat frozen, straining to hear the voice again, but there was nothing—only the retreating thunderstorm and monotonous drips of the rain into the trash can.
He sat for a few, agonizing minutes more, yet the voice remained gone.
It was all in my head, he told himself, trying to quiet his pounding heart as he forced himself to lie back down, though he kept his eyes wide open.
The room felt…
occupied.
An ominous, heavy presence lingered just out of sight, watching him. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
A few moments later, the voice spoke again.
This time, it was a quiet, almost pleading whisper, entirely unintelligible—before it bellowed again, “Hello?
Can anyone hear me?”
The sharp sound of his own racing pulse was the only reply until Aaron sat up again, his voice catching in his throat.
“Who’s there?”
Finally, Rykker breathed.
The voice broke the silence, like a stone shattering frozen glass.
“Thank the Gods—might you be willing to assist me?
I cannot…
I do believe I am ensnared.
My last memory is that of an exchange of battle incantations; my enemy spoke his spells in a serpent’s breath and I answered in kind.
And then…
this.
I am in this place, that is not a place of substance, rather it is a place of nothingness.
I am—tethered here.
Or, perhaps not truly here at all.
Am I— have I passed the veil?
Is this my fate?
Am I a shade, a spirit trapped between worlds?”
Aaron sat petrified, the words the entity spoke were profoundly archaic and formal; A way of speaking that carried the weight of generations steeped in timeless tradition.
“What is this?” Aaron thought.
“Why was the voice speaking so… so old-fashioned?”
“Who are you?
Where are you?” Aaron barked meekly into the empty air.
“Are you a ghost?
Are you my ancestor trying to reach out?” He asked, hurriedly spinning his head around, his eyes straining to see through the darkness.
“I can hear you, but I can’t see you.
Come out so I can see you!”
***
“Ancestor?” Rykker wondered.
Did that mean he was dead, speaking to a relative from the far future?
How long had he been gone?
And what did the voice mean by “ghost”?
Despite the strange words, the young voice wasn’t terrifying—it sounded normal, even a little scared and friendly.
It definitely wasn’t an enemy, nor a god, though he had to admit he didn’t actually know what a god would sound like.
Searching the void, Rykker considered his surroundings.
A darker thought then emerged: was the voice also a prisoner, trapped in this realm of nothingness along with him?
Aaron waited for an answer, but the voice had gone silent again.
“Okay, Aaron, breathe.
Think this through,” he whispered to the empty room, trying to ground his wandering mind.
He began to tally the facts.
First, he had clearly heard a voice.
Second, there was no physical body in sight.
Third, the entity spoke his language, though with an archaic way of speaking that felt extracted from ancient times.
Pausing to steady himself, Aaron began to cycle through the possibilities.
Perhaps this was a dream—the most vivid he’d ever experienced, but a dream nonetheless.
Or, more disturbingly, he was losing his mind, his psyche shattered by some unseen trauma.
He dismissed the thought as unlikely but kept it on the list.
Then his mind turned toward the physical: what if the speaker wasn’t absent, but merely invisible?
Aaron swept his arms through the air, desperate for contact, but his hands sliced only through the stagnant, heavy atmosphere.
If no one was standing beside him, could they be beneath him?
He glanced down, an absurd thought taking root: was the entity microscopic, shouting up from the shaggy forest of the carpet fibers?
It seemed impossible, yet no more so than his final theory—that this was an interdimensional traveler, a regal yet disoriented soul who had taken a wrong turn and ended up shackled to his subconscious.
***
Rykker was completely overwhelmed by the tumultuous turn of events, trapped in an utterly unknown chasm of hollowness, suffocated by absolute darkness and paralyzed by a sudden, intense immobilization.
He found himself conversing with a mysterious, unseen entity whose voice carried a strange, jarring accent.
Desperately, he struggled to recall how he had transitioned from the brutal battlefield to this desolate, void-like space.
Rykker clawed at the edges of his memory, trying to bridge the gap between the battlefield and this… nothingness.
The memory was a blur of violence: Feroz, smiling, his staff humming with a menacing tone.
Skeletons shattering, only to knit themselves together into an abomination of bone and chitin.
The spider was unrelenting; every blow sent Rykker backpedaling, his shield arm numb from the multiple impacts.
A second of distraction meant death, but he had to keep an eye on Feroz and the spider.
Unable to remember at first, what was Feroz doing?
Then it clicked.
The soul tether.
Feroz’s staff had locked onto his consciousness like a parasite.
“Is that it?
Am I trapped inside his damned stick?” No—he used a geokinesis spell to cause the ground beneath Feroz to turn to mud, forcing him to lose focus and snapping the connection.
It worked.
He broke the link.
So… what happened after?