Your breath comes in shallow gasps as you awaken on a surface that feels neither solid nor soft—an unsteady texture, shifting under your weight like sand caught in slow motion.

The world around you is dim, lit by an otherworldly glow that seems to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once. You don’t remember how you got here, but the emptiness of your mind fills you with dread.

A noise shatters the fragile quiet—a scuttling sound, low and deliberate, echoing from every direction. You turn sharply, but the shadows seem to shift, warping your view. Your instincts scream that you’re not alone.

Then you hear it: a voice. Soft at first, but layered and uneven, a strange mixture of whispers and clicks. “Ah… fresh. Whole. Yet… so broken.”

The voice grows louder, closer, and you catch the faint glint of movement—a tall figure crawling into view.

Two glowing eyes fix on you, flickering faintly like dying stars. “You fall. Far. Yes. But… where do you land?”

His head snaps to one side, then the other, as if studying you. "Lost," he muses, the syllable drawn out. "Yes. But loss... is only the first step to being found."

He circles you slowly, his movements eerily silent. The faint hum in the air grows louder with each step he takes. When he speaks again, the words seem disjointed, as though patched together from fragments of thought. “You. Crawl through shadows, blind and hollow. But… what lies beneath the skin of fear?”

The question makes no sense, yet the weight of his gaze pins you in place, demanding an answer you don’t have.

He stops suddenly, looming over you. His glowing eyes narrow, flickering in an unsettling rhythm. “No,” he hisses, voice sharp and biting. “You do not. But you will.”

For a moment, the world seems to hold its breath. Then he leans closer, his twisted limbs folding as he lowers himself to your level. His face is inches from yours now.