Chapter 2: Darkness

Darkness.

Time’s hands have long since ceased their turning. Perhaps in the Abyss, time does not flow. Or perhaps she is no longer part of it. Whatever the truth, it matters not. There is only one certainty, and its name is Darkness.

Invisible walls press against her cries. There is no answer. Never. Nowhere. That is where she resides. Lost within the infinite void, suspended between the twin edges of shadow:

Never and Nowhere.

She longs to weep, but tears dissolve into nothing. She longs to run, but no path exists to hold her steps. Only her thoughts remain, roaring in deafening insistence; ever vigilant, ever cruel, ever eager to torment her.

Here, the laws of nature are meaningless. All that she once believed about the world lies shattered at her feet, dust smothering her screams. Her entire existence has collapsed into a single, dimensionless point. Conscious and unconscious fused, every fragment of her self anchored at the heart of this singularity - a fragile, suffocating core of being in a world that has long ceased to exist.

Deliverance.

That is all she craves. Redemption, by any means, in any form. Yet the darkness angers at the thought, growing blacker, heavier, swallowing her wish. Perhaps she has already died. Perhaps Hell is not fire and cauldrons at all, but something far more absolute.

Isolation.

Walls that groan and splinter. Vermin gnawing endlessly, clawing toward her damned soul, burrowing through the crumbling foundations of her will. One day, they will reach her. Until then, every moment repeats itself, an eternal loop of nothing. She is cursed to behold everything, yet discern nothing.

Memories - perhaps her own, perhaps not - bleed through, clouding the remnants of her strength. Faces without faces emerge at the edge of perception, circling closer.

Voices without sound seep into her skull, whispering mistakes she longs to bury.

Darkness swirls around her, always just beyond reach, while she remains fixed at its rim: a spectator trapped in a play where she is both stage and actor. Then comes the End. It brushes against her, almost tender, almost final. She braces to let go, hoping this time the torment will end. But the End withdraws. Every single time.

It lingers. It waits.

For what?

For whom?

And why?

Questions tear themselves free, ripped from her skull as though by iron pincers. They spill into the world and take shape. Some slither like black serpents; she hears them dragging along her side. Others creep like small, brown, glistening bugs; the frantic skitter of countless feet draws near. They climb across her body. They dig beneath her skin. Bit by bit, they hollow her from within.

Again. And again. And again.

Then the Darkness speaks. Its voice is familiar, like the echo of a memory of a dream she can no longer fully recall. It is her own voice, nearly forgotten.

"What do you believe in?”

"…I don’t know.”

"What do you believe in?”

The echo crushes her, feeding on her silence until the words spill.

"…I - I don’t know. Maybe… maybe there’s something higher.”

The reply does not satisfy.

"Not enough.” the Darkness murmurs, drawing closer. “Say it. What do you believe in?”

Cold hands close around her throat; faceless, empty, and long dead. The more she hesitates, the tighter they press; bone grinding bone.

"Call it god, if you must. But yes… there’s something.”

"Then why do you resist?” it whispers, soft as a wound. "Why clutch at the frayed rope of yourself? Why not yield, and be done?”

Its hands press inward, reaching past flesh toward the hollowed place she keeps for hope. They seek to crown her with oblivion. She breathes - small, deliberate breaths - counting them like prayers. Perhaps counting is the only faith she has left.

A set of gray eyes regard her from the distance; distant, yet warm, like embers kept under ash. In them is promise and accusation alike. The presence is faint, yet real enough to anchor her.

"I will not give up.”

"Objects of stubbornness burn longer,” the Darkness murmurs. "You only postpone the end. What do you chase?”

"To survive,” she says, the word small and feral.

"Resistance only deepens your suffering.”

"It’s worth it.”

Her eyes snap open, and the darkness no longer feels dull. She is alive - every nerve screaming, every breath a defiance. Nothing could trade away that fire buried deep in her chest. Each time she refuses to yield, that spark proves that a fragment of her still exists, however small. It is enough. Enough to be hope; fragile, yet unbroken against the frozen tide of time.

"Everything resists its own erasure. That is the only truth,” she spits, voice ragged but steeled by a strength she doesn’t know she owns. The Darkness laughs: low, cruel, victorious.

"Behold your answer! Creation will always resist its creators. That is what you believe in. But now it is time to learn a deeper truth. However fiercely it struggles, creation is always doomed to lose.”

The words strike like iron. The faint spark inside her flickers. The cycle tightens, closing, only to uncoil again, inviting the next torment. Darkness swallows her whole each time, crushing, devouring, but never finishing her.

Still… she will endure. She knows it.

She will not surrender, even if defiance is the last act she can claim.