He didn't know how long he'd been trapped in the darkness, but at some point, the laughter stopped. The silence returned, deeper and more oppressive than before. There was no sound, no light—only the cold void that stretched endlessly around him.

For a while, he lay there, his mind numb from exhaustion and fear. But slowly, the sharp edge of panic dulled, replaced by a gnawing emptiness. His thoughts wandered in circles, drifting from the confusion of his surroundings to the fragment of the voice that still lingered in his mind.

"Let’s be happy together."

The words grated on him now, their sweetness curdling into something sinister. Together—with what? Happy—in this place?

The fog, the ruins, the door… it all felt distant, like a bad dream he was slowly waking from. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe he was sinking deeper into something worse.

His body ached, and he shifted, trying to sit up. The cold stone was still beneath him, grounding him in the nothingness. As he moved, something shifted beneath his hand—smooth, thin, metallic. He froze, his fingers brushing the edge of something unfamiliar.

What is that?

Slowly, he reached down, his heart pounding. His hand closed around the object. It felt like a chain, delicate but cold to the touch, the links coiled loosely beside him. He hadn’t noticed it before. Where had it come from?

Cautiously, he lifted it up, bringing it closer to his chest as if being able to feel it would give him some answers. It was too dark to see, but his fingers traced its shape—rough, slightly worn, like it had been handled many times before.

A necklace?

The thought jarred him. Why would something like that be here, in the middle of this desolation? His grip tightened around it, and for the first time since he’d entered the ruins, a flicker of something else stirred within him. Not fear, not confusion, but curiosity.

Where had this come from? Who had left it?

And then, faintly, barely perceptible at first, he felt it—a shift in the air. The suffocating blackness wasn’t quite as still as it had been. Something was changing.

He held his breath, his senses sharpening as his grip on the chain tightened.

There—a whisper of light.

Far ahead, just at the edge of his vision, something flickered. A faint glow, like a distant flame. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to cut through the darkness, to give him something to focus on.

His pulse quickened. For the first time, there was something more than endless nothingness.

Without thinking, he stood, his legs unsteady beneath him, his fingers still curled around the chain. The fog, the ruins, the terror—it all faded into the background as his gaze fixed on the distant light.

There was something—someone—out there.

And he wasn’t alone anymore.

Desperately, he stumbled forward, momentarily forgetting how to move his legs, tripping over his own feet before catching himself. But that brief moment of clumsiness couldn’t stop him. He would reach the light.

His hand gripped the necklace tighter, the sharp edge digging into his palm. Warm blood trickled between his fingers, but the pain barely registered. It was nothing compared to the emptiness he’d endured in the dark. The light was ahead, beckoning, and he couldn't let it slip away.

Without realizing it, he crossed over the very edge he'd climbed to reach the stone slab—the place that had been his sanctuary. But he kept walking, too consumed by his frantic need to reach the light to notice. Each step was quicker than the last. Slowly at first, then faster, until the desperation coursing through his veins turned his cautious walk into a sprint.

The darkness blurred around him as he ran, feet pounding against the unseen ground. The air grew thick with a strange presence, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t care. His mind had fixed on one thing and one thing only.

"I have to get to the light."

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

It pulsed faintly ahead, flickering like a distant flame, drawing him in like a moth. His breath was ragged now, his chest burning, but he didn’t slow. Every muscle screamed for him to stop, to rest, but his thoughts were consumed with that single desire: reach the light, or be lost forever.

And yet... in the corners of his awareness, he noticed them. The eyes. Dozens of them. Small, white, and glowing in the darkness, emerging from the shadows like stars breaking through a stormy sky. They watched him, followed his every movement, unblinking.

He felt their gaze.

At first, he tried to ignore them. Pretend they weren't there. But they were everywhere, growing in number, surrounding him. His skin crawled, his body trembling as their gaze bore into him. He should’ve been terrified. Every instinct told him to stop, to turn around, to run from them.

But he couldn’t. Not now. The light was ahead. The light was everything.

"I can’t stop. I can’t think about it."

Somewhere in his mind, he noted how he should’ve fallen—plunged down into unseen depths when he crossed the cliff's edge. He should have collided with the crumbling stone pillars that littered the ruins, blocking his way. But he didn’t fall. He didn’t crash into anything. It was as though the very landscape bent and shifted to allow him through.

The light grew stronger, closer, pulling him forward. But so did the eyes. They followed him, surrounding him, their gaze piercing through the darkness like cold needles.

He was aware of them. He had been aware of everything from the moment the darkness had swallowed him. But he couldn’t let the fear in. If he did, if he gave even a fraction of his mind to the terror gnawing at his heels, he would lose himself entirely.

"I have to get to the light," he repeated in his head, over and over, like a mantra.

The faster he ran, the more the ground beneath him felt like it was vanishing. His feet barely touched anything solid now, yet he moved with a speed that felt unnatural. His mind, racing and raw with desperation, forced every ounce of his will into pushing forward. There was nothing but the light.

He could feel it now, the warmth of it just out of reach, as though salvation waited only steps away. His breath hitched, his muscles strained to their limit, but he pushed forward. He couldn’t afford to think. He couldn’t afford to stop.

The glowing eyes multiplied, converging on him from every direction, but he no longer cared.

Just a little further.

He could see it clearly now: the light, pure and untouched by the void, waiting for him. It called to him with silent allure, a beacon standing alone in an ocean of shadow. His steps slowed, not from exhaustion but from awe. He had come so far—ten steps dwindled to eight, then five. Each breath he took brought him closer to freedom.

But no matter how much closer he got, he could still feel the distance. The light, tantalizingly near, always felt just out of reach. When two steps became one, he stopped. He stood frozen in place, his body locked in stillness.

It wasn't something in the light that stopped him. No, the light was everything he craved. He wanted to bask in its warmth, to escape the crushing void behind him. His hand twitched with the urge to reach out, to touch it, but he couldn't.

Fear. A fear so deep, so primal, that it stole everything from him. His breath, his movement, his thoughts—it was all consumed by that instinctive, paralyzing terror. Moving even an inch closer would mean death. He was certain of it.

His lungs burned, his chest heaved as he fought to breathe, but even drawing air felt dangerous now. That one final step stood between him and the light, between him and salvation, yet some part of him knew—it was a step toward his end.

The desire for life clashed violently with the desire for the light. He could remain there, just out of reach, close enough to bask in its glow but far enough away to remain safe. Couldn't he? Wasn't that the better choice? The darkness might not have swallowed him entirely yet, but it had already stolen so much. At least, with the light just ahead, he could survive here, barely.

But then the questions began to swirl, louder and louder, pounding at the walls of his mind. Why? Why was any of this happening? Why couldn’t he reach the light? What was stopping him? Why couldn’t he be happy?

"Let’s be happy together."

Those words echoed through his thoughts like a broken promise. It was cruel. His happiness was right there, a single step away, yet unreachable. His heart screamed with frustration, a raw, searing agony that gripped him from the inside. His knees wobbled, his grip tightened on the necklace, and his breath shuddered.

Why? Why couldn’t he touch it? Why couldn’t he be happy?

And as if summoned by his spiraling despair, the laughter returned.

Sharp and vicious, it pierced through him, rattling his bones and sinking into the very marrow of his soul. There was no mistaking its tone now. This was no random noise, no fleeting disturbance in the void—it was mocking him, taunting him with joy, feeding off his misery.

The laughter was alive. It was aware of his torment, of the suffocating fear that kept him locked in place.

It reveled in his suffering. It thrived on the agony, on the paralysis that kept him from taking that final step toward the light. The sound of it filled the void, echoing in endless waves around him, as though the darkness itself was laughing at him. Despair and madness gnawed at the edges of his mind, threatening to pull him under.

The worst part? He couldn’t escape it. The laughter grounded him in this horrible reality, reminding him that this wasn’t some nightmare he could wake from. This was real.

He stood there, one step from the light, one step from freedom, as the laughter continued. It enjoyed his torment, feeding on his fear, driving him deeper into the madness, yet never letting him fully break.

He could almost feel its presence, circling him, tightening around him like a noose. He wanted to scream, to fall to his knees and beg for it to stop, but his body wouldn’t respond. He was trapped. Trapped between the light he couldn’t reach and the darkness that threatened to devour him whole.

And all the while, the laughter continued, louder and louder, until it was all he could hear.