Engulfed in abyssal darkness, Yushen heard the faint sound of waves striking some unseen surface—gentle, yet eternal.
A clock ticking from bygone days.
He found that his eyes simply could not open. Within the blackness that enveloped his vision, he shakily reached forward, trying to touch something—anything.
What met his hand was a smooth surface. But his fingers could not trace the features of his own face. No nose. No eyes. No mouth. Just skin.
'Where… am I? What? My face… I can't feel it—
I can't see.
I can't see!
I CAN'T—WHERE—!!!'
"You've finally awoken."
The voice pierced through the void. Earthy. Calm. Terribly inhuman.
Yushen froze.
"You should be thankful," low and coiling, the words were spat out.
"Had I not intervened, your soul would have shattered."
The serene and solitary voice slithered into Yushen's ears, like eternal mist finding cracks in stone only to create posionous and infectious dew.
Gasping, his chest heaving within the deep and intricate nothingness, Yushen whispered..
"Where… am I?"
A deep and measured suffocating silence returned.
A silence reminiscent of a surgeon appraising a tumor before slicing.
The voice spoke again, colder. Dispassionate, distant.
"You are a thing that is not supposed to be here. You do not belong."
The words rang through Yushen's being, and the nothingness as a decree.
"This threshold...
This liminal space between what is cessation and continuation...
It was not prepared for you."
Yushen could feel the slow rotting decay of something beneath the words. He began feeling his body, but such a sensation is seldom physical.
A being that is rejected.
"You, son of soil, who were bound to return to dust. You will return to where you belong.
And it will be so forever.
Winter will remain winter.
Spring will be spring,
and it's summer will be like it was, before, like it is now.
All have architectures. A mere slip in the aperture."
The limbo shifted-- imperceptible.
In recalibration.
Yushen's presence was being evaluated like a splinter in a divine machine.
A cosmic mistake.
Something cracked.
Not around him.
A hairline fracture—silent at first, then thunderous in the hollowness of the limbo.
Yushen did not understand. Much eluded him. The meaning was too vast, too otherworldly. But his soul—the remnants of whatever he still was—understood perfectly.
He began to breathe.
No, not breathe—hyperventilate.
There was no air here, but the motion came anyway, automatic and primal. A ghost of lungs trying to function.
His chest convulsed. His thoughts spiraled.
"Not supposed to be here."
"Slip in the design."
"A thing that does not belong."
A mistake.
A mistake.
His non-body curled into itself.
His arms—if they were still his—gripped where his stomach would be. He felt weightless and unbearably heavy at once.
He choked on a sob that made no sound.
He gasped, again and again, sucking in void where air should be.
His soul trembled.
Not in fear.
Not in grief.
But in the agony of being seen by something that would never allow him to be real.
"Why… ?" he whispered.
His voice was small. A child's voice.
"I don't want this. I don't want to be here."
All didn't answer.
The ticking from before returned—closer now. Louder. A clock counting down to the erasure of what should never have lingered.
Yushen's gasps grew shallower, more frantic. His very being shuddered against the decree—against the cold, perfect law of a world that had no space left for deviation.
He clutched at memories, images bleeding through the panic.
His father's rough and calloused hands.
The smell of morning dew, while holding it.
The scent of burned rice.
A broken lantern in a winter storm that nearly killed him.
Flickers.
Fragments.
But the darkness reached for them, too. Not to consume. But to nullify.
He screamed.
Not aloud.
Inside.
And the scream sounded like tearing paper. Like a page being ripped from the story of the world.
A soul screaming not for mercy—but for a primal permission to be, to exist.
And there was none.
Only the waves.
And the ticking from bygone days.