I hear a faint voice coming from the corners of my mind. At first, it feels like the scream of someone I once knew, trying to grab my attention, calling my name amidst a crowd of hundreds of other silent sounds. Or is it my name? I can’t really tell. It feels like it should be—I recall hearing it before, but at the same time… I don’t recognize it as my own.

  My eyes open, yet darkness lingers. I can’t tell whether they somehow are still shut, if I’m actually seeing what’s in front of me, or if I’m even opening them at all. It’s disorienting.

  The voice grows louder and more desperate, while still maintaining a sense of dignity. It’s getting closer to me, but I cannot move; I cannot turn to answer their call.

  My thoughts are hazy, my memories absent. It’s dark, freezing cold, and even though I feel myself trembling, I can’t move voluntarily. Where am I?

  A familiar taste creeps its way into my mouth. Every inch of my tongue seems to be activated and fired up at its intensity.

  My body is repulsed by it, like it’s recognizing it to be something that does not belong, yet it’s incapable to eject it out of me.

  “You are not Kenzie.”

  Whoever was shouting had finally reached me.

  Their words felt so gentle, yet so close to me that they vibrated through the insides of my cranium, moving around erratically, seemingly unable to fit themselves anywhere.

  “You shouldn’t be here. What have you done to Kenzie?”

  Again, their words shoot their way inside my head, as if they were trying to directly imprint their meaning into my consciousness. So grand, so stern, I couldn’t possibly do anything but give them my full concentration.

  I try to reply, but just like earlier, I simply can’t. The sound gets stuck in my windpipe, trying to push out of an opening that has been closed, failing to escape.

  “You will be given one chance.”

  The creature behind me says, his voice even more imposing than before, as it echoes in the deepest, most unknown chambers inside my mind.

  I feel a burning sensation from where my throat is—no, was supposed to be. The muscles and ligaments of my neck sear with an indescribable pain, I feel them moving together, writhing and wriggling their way around where they once belonged, until they’re finally locked in place, and the sensations disappear just as hastily as they came.

  “Speak.” I’m commanded.

  “W-Who is Kenzie?” My voice shakes, any one letter quivering and hurting, like I’m swallowing dozens of broken glass shards with each word.

  “Don’t dare think you can be so insolent as to feign ignorance, son of Arthur.”

  Yet again, the words deposit themselves straight into my brain. Even without the eyes to see or the ears to hear, I know exactly what the person is saying and where it’s coming from. Who are they? How do they even know? Though I ask myself, something tells me that I already know the answer.

  “Do not test my patience. I will ask one more time, and this time you—will—answer.” The voice spoke once more, with even more fervent irritation at my supposed lack of cooperation.

  “Where is Kenzie?”

  “S-S-She’s dead. I-I have—” I gasp for air like a fish out of water, but the oxygen just goes straight through me. The familiarity of that name finally dawns on me; he’s referring to that woman, the angel I had killed in that forest.

  Even though one could come to that conclusion given the circumstances, a lingering feeling told me I actually knew who this ‘Kenzie’ was. It wasn’t a mere lucky guess, I somehow remembered.

  “I have taken her life.”

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  The utter silence of wherever I am makes itself known anew, giving me a moment of respite, before the creature replies.

  “...Amusing.”

  My throat closes with a raucous crush. A sudden loud noise, one that surprises me enough to delay the shocking agony that follows shortly after.

  I try in vain to breathe, but of course, it doesn’t work. I instead feel myself suffocating under the great pressure of an abnormal, instantaneous force closing my trachea from the inside.

  Panic settles in.

  Fight or flight floods my brain with ever-growing thoughts of survival, of the need of trying to open up my throat. The overdose of distressing primal instincts shouting at me to do something is downright maddening. It feels as though I’m living a night terror impossible to wake up from.

  I try to cough, to move my head up—any direction possible, even ripping my own neck apart would be an option at this point, but alas, I stand motionless, unable to do anything but stare into nothingness, not feeling any less conscious than I did before.

  “What is this?” The voice of the creature intrudes upon my thoughts, somehow still being the focus of my attention despite the torture I’m enduring.

  “You should have ceased breathing. How come you still live?” It continues, confusion starting to seep through the facade of perfection it had instilled until now.

  “This is… an impossibility.”

  The pressure that had been sealing shut my windpipe finally releases, allowing me to breathe like I’d never done before. I gasp, I pant and I wheeze, then I cough, and then the overwhelming urge to vomit overtakes me, yet nothing comes out.

  Shortly after, I feel wet round objects slowly making their way towards me, inlaying themselves into my sockets, making me realize the cold air that had been blowing into their empty spaces.

  They move and jitter uncontrollably, searching for the precise place where they’re meant to fit inside of, until they finally find it.

  My vision recovers bit by bit, focusing the cloud of now blinding colors back into recognizable shapes and silhouettes.

  I see Kaytlinn, a few steps in front of me, unmoving, her body frozen, almost looking like it’s locked in time, along with the grains of dust suspended mid-air.

  Her hands are positioned in front of her, to be embracing something, or someone, her dim lantern still softly illuminating our surroundings.

  Behind her, the only thing visibly moving, just barely covered in the darkness beyond the lamp’s reach, are the terrifying, but still mesmerizing eyes of the creature that had been communicating with me until now, staring at me, judging, its head tilted almost entirely to the side. They have no color, yet they’re not absent of it, it’s just a dark so pure and vibrant that I had failed to ever witness before, darker even than the shadows that hide his figure.

  “Adria.” He speaks with no sound, yet I’m still able to understand his words clear as they can be. “That is your name, isn’t it?”

  His head shifts and twitches, like a curious dog trying to analyze whatever strange new thing they’ve just discovered, although with unnatural, mechanical movements.

  “I-I-It.” I deeply inhale, already out of breath. “It is not.”

  “Hmm, how curious. You choose to relinquish it?” His head straightens up, and gets ever-so-slightly closer, the burning oil of the lantern revealing what appears to be a mask made out of thousands of unsaturated, gray chips of wood, intertwined against one another with surgical precision, each individual one helping the whole delicate structure hold itself together.

  “Oh, but of course. Of course you would, wouldn’t you?” He says, a few puffs of breath audibly hitting against the solid surface of the mask, sounding almost like the laughter of someone who’s trying to stay quiet.

  “The anguish you felt towards your father wouldn’t have it otherwise. Ah, but you wouldn’t stop at just your name, no, all ties had to be severed, didn’t they? All or nothing, as they say. Needed a ‘clean slate’, as they say, didn’t you? Yes. Yes. Simply riveting.”

  The creature’s head retreats back into the darkness, hiding his appearance once more, shaking side to side like a bouncing spring, before abruptly stopping, tilted to its left.

  “Hmm, how intriguing. You seem to not recognize me. Interesting. You don’t recognize me, do you?” He asks, straightening his head once again, but he cuts himself off before I can reply. “Oh, apologies, I’ve gotten a bit carried away. I’ve gotten a bit too excited, you see. Yes. I should introduce myself, or else this wouldn’t be much fair, would it?”

  The creature’s head lowers down. From the shadows, an open hand emerges, slowly reaching its way forward, in an almost flawlessly straight motion. Its fingers are slender and without nails, but the joints lack the semblance of any bone structure. The appendages just… are. Its skin eerily smooth, devoid of any protrusions, of the same unsaturated dark gray as its mask.

  Its arm stops just underneath my gaze, right next to me.

  “Ah, apologies. A thousand apologies. One moment.”

  Searing pain suddenly emerges on my side. I see levitating objects just outside my field of vision start to appear and accelerate into contours of bones, muscles and veins, wrapping and weaving immaculately into place to form my right arm.

  As the pain starts to fade, I feel the creature grabbing my hand, squeezing gently.

  “I’m T’Salla, but humanity has given me oh so many names. Yes. It’s a great pleasure to meet again.”