Something shifted. Not loud. Not violently. Just wrong.
She didn't know how to explain it, but something was wrong.
Very wrong.
A quiet distortion, like the world had inhaled and forgotten how to exhale.
The walls appeared farther away than they should have been and the shoji screens seemed slightly too tall.
The shadows on the tatami stretched a fraction too far, bending at angles that didn't belong to the room.
The lantern in the corner flickered, not dimming, but hesitating, as if unsure whether it should exist.
The tea in the cup she was holding rippled in unnatural ways, and the steam that rose from the cup abruptly scattered, unraveling into thin strands that drifted upward in geometric shapes her eyes struggled to follow before dissolving entirely.
Wren blinked.
For the briefest moment, Wren became aware of a sensation she couldn't describe.
Not a sound.
Not a touch.
Not a sight.
Something else.
It happened between one breath, and on the inhale of the next.
For an unknown amount of time Wren tried to think of well, anything. Her thoughts tried to rise, but they snagged on nothing. Like they thinned and then drifted away. This would originally cause her great panic, but she couldn't think well enough to panic.
Not fully. Not clearly. With the few strands that stuck, a faint awareness flickered:
Something is wrong..very wrong.
But even that thought felt distant, muffled.
Wren didn't feel herself vanish. She didn't feel anything.
It was just one moment she was there, and the next she wasn't.
No sound.
No pain.
No warning.
One moment she was sitting in the tea-house enjoying a cup of tea, and the next she wasn't, her body vanished. Erased so cleanly that even the memory of weight felt foreign.
Then everything went dark.
Not black. Black was a color, a presence, a thing, it was something.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
This, this was nothing. It was the absence of all things, all senses, everything.
A vast expanding void, without shape, color, depth, or direction. A place where "up" and "down" had never been invented and would never would. A place where her senses were not taken from her, they simply did not exist.
She floated. Or maybe she didn't. She couldn't tell, movement meant nothing here.
Time meant nothing here.
Her awareness flickered again, a bit sharper this time.
Something was wrong.
Not merely wrong.
Fundamentally wrong.
She wasn't breathing.
The realization arrived before the fear did.
There was no rise and fall in her chest. No beating heart marking the passage of time. No pulse thrumming beneath skin that no longer existed.
No skin.
No bones.
No blood.
The countless sensations that had once defined her existence had vanished so completely that she could scarcely remember what they felt like.
A contradiction suspended in nothingness.
Slowly, cautiously, her awareness turned inward.
Toward herself.
Toward the faint glow now was surrounding her.
It pulsed softly within the colorless expanse.
Fragile. White. Beautiful in the way a solitary candle is beautiful when surrounded by endless darkness.
Wren stared at it. Or perhaps the orb stared at her.
The distinction was becoming increasingly difficult to make.
A strange sensation washed over her.
Not movement.
Not touch.
Recognition.
She felt condensed.
Compressed.
As though every part of her had been gathered together and folded inward.
Her thoughts quivered.
This isn't my body.
The orb pulsed.
This isn't my body.
A little brighter this time.
She searched for fingers and found none.
Searched for lungs and found none.
Searched for the familiar weight of existence and found only silence.
The realization settled over her slowly.
Like snowfall.
Like grief.
That light wasn't merely near her.
It wasn't surrounding her.
It wasn't something she possessed.
It was her.
And then the fear arrived. Not all at once. Not loud.
Not the fear of pain.
Not the fear of death.
But the fear of becoming something unrecognizable.
Of looking at herself and no longer finding a person there.
The tiny orb trembled as it pulsed.
It seeped in like cold water through cracks of a broken vase.
What's happening to me?
The thought echoed inside her, thin and trembling.
Where am I?
There was no one here to answer her question.
No voice. No sound. Just void.
She tried to move, the instinct of a mind that remembered having limbs.
But nothing happened.
The glow around her flickered weakly, like a dying star.
Hello? Hello! Is anyone there? Please help me!
Help! Please! Anyone...please..
The light that made up her, or at least what she thought made up her new form, pulsed again, frantic.
Please...
There was no response.
I'm alone.I'm alone.I'm alone.
The void did not respond. It did not care.
Her thoughts went haywire, slipping between static and clarity.
Did I die?Is this dying, am I dead?I thought I had more time..didn't I?
The light around her trembled violently, her panic radiating outward in faint ripples that dissolved before they reached anything.
Because there was nothing to reach. There was nothing. Just void.
Her awareness stretched, desperate, searching for anything. A sound, a surface, a boundary, but the void remained perfectly void of anything and everything.
Perfectly indifferent.
Perfectly empty.
And Wren, glowing faintly in the center of it, felt herself unraveling.
Please… someone…
...
Am I dead...I died didn't I...I'm dead...
I dont want to die...please...I still had time...I should have had more time..
Is this the afterlife...Hell? Heaven? Some other afterlife?
Please...someone must be out there...please answer me!
The void swallowed the plea whole.
And continued to hold her.