A/N: Long story short, I have had an severe fever last few days due to traveling and spent them in hospital. Way to spend holidays yay....
Hope you enjoy the chapters, goes a bit in legends lore.
___
I was eight years old again.
Small. Weak. Hiding in the dark.
The hallway stretched out in both directions, impossibly long. The walls looked like brushed metal but rippled when I wasn't watching, expanding and contracting like the inside of something alive. Like lungs.
I didn't know how I got here.
The thought arrived like that. Simple. Factual. But underneath it was something else. A void where understanding should be. I reached for the memory—any memory of before—and found nothing. Just empty space.
My hands were tiny. I held them up in the dim light, turning them over. Child hands. Soft. Unmarked.
These weren't right.
Were they?
What were my hands supposed to look like?
The question dissolved before I could answer it, leaving only a sick feeling in my stomach.
Thud.
The sound came from somewhere far down the corridor. Heavy. Deliberate. The kind of footstep that promised weight and intention behind it.
My heart kicked against my ribs. I pressed my back against the wall, the metal warm and pulsing against my shoulder blades. A heartbeat. The whole place had a heartbeat.
I needed to hide.
The certainty was absolute, even if I didn't know why. Something was coming. Something that couldn't find me. Ever.
I ran.
My legs were too short. The hallway stretched ahead of me like it was expanding with each step I took, the end receding into shadows that moved on their own. The floor gave slightly beneath my feet—not solid, more like membrane. Like skin pulled taut over muscle.
Thud.
Thud.
The sound was closer. Regular. Patient.
The temperature dropped all at once. Not gradual. Just there. My breath came out in visible puffs that hung in the air too long, frost creeping along the walls in crystalline patterns that looked almost deliberate. Almost like writing.
I kept running until the hallway branched. Three directions, each one identical to the last. I took the left path because... because why? I didn't know. My body just moved.
"Alex..."
The voice drifted from somewhere behind me. Soft. Gentle.
I stumbled, catching myself against the wall.
That voice.
I knew it.
The certainty was there, but the connection wasn't. Like a word on the tip of my tongue that I couldn't quite speak.
Father.
The label appeared in my mind, floating disconnected. Just a sound. But underneath it was something warmer. Safer. The ghost of a feeling I couldn't name.
"Alex, where are you?"
The voice was patient. So patient. Like whoever it was had all the time in the world to find me.
My chest hurt. A tightness that made it hard to breathe.
I forced myself to keep moving.
The hallway opened into a massive space. The ceiling disappeared into darkness above, and scattered throughout were shapes—workbenches, crates, machinery, furniture—all piled haphazardly like someone had emptied a dozen different rooms into one.
I found a workbench near the far wall and crawled underneath it, pulling my knees to my chest.
The silence pressed down. Thick. Suffocating.
I tried to slow my breathing. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. But my lungs wouldn't cooperate. Each breath came too fast, too loud.
Thud.
The footsteps entered the room.
I clamped my hands over my mouth.
Thud.
Slow. Methodical. Moving between the scattered debris like whoever it was knew exactly where everything was, even in the dark.
I squeezed my eyes shut and counted. One. Two. Three.
The cold was back. Seeping through my clothes, settling into my bones.
Four. Five. Six.
"Ezra."
A different voice. Sharper. An accent that curled around the syllables in a way that felt... familiar. Wrong and right at the same time.
Seven. Eight.
The name resonated in my skull. Was that me? Was I Ezra?
Or was I Alex?
Both names felt like they belonged to me. Both felt like lies.
Nine. Ten.
"Ezra, please. Come out."
The voice was laced with something that made my chest constrict. Not anger. Something worse. Disappointment. Grief.
I knew that voice.
The certainty was absolute. But when I reached for the why, there was nothing. Just a tangle of feelings I couldn't untangle—warmth and safety and something sharp that might have been pain. Or loss.
What was loss?
The word sat in my mind like a foreign object. I understood it conceptually but couldn't connect it to anything real.
The footsteps moved through the room. I could hear them circling, getting closer, then moving away, then closer again.
Testing. Searching.
I held perfectly still. Even my breathing I tried to stop, holding it until my lungs burned and black spots danced at the edges of my vision.
The footsteps stopped.
Right next to the workbench.
I could hear breathing now. Wet. Labored. Like lungs pulling air through water.
Seconds stretched. Each one lasting an eternity.
My legs cramped. I wanted to shift, to move, but I didn't dare.
The breathing continued. In and out. In and out.
Then it stopped.
Complete silence.
I counted to thirty. Then sixty.
Nothing.
Maybe it was gone.
Maybe—
The workbench above me exploded.
Wood and metal shrieked as they tore apart, scattering across the floor. Something sharp grazed my shoulder, hot pain blooming across my skin.
I didn't think. Just moved. Scrambling backward on hands and knees, then lurching to my feet and running.
"Alex!"
"Ezra!"
"Sweetheart, where did you go?"
The voices overlapped. Three. Four. More. Each one pulling at something inside me, tugging on threads that led nowhere.
Mother.
The word appeared. I almost recognized the voice. Almost.
And another. Younger. Higher pitched.
Sister.
I didn't have a sister.
Did I?
I burst through a doorway into another corridor. This one was different—narrower, the walls not metal but something that glistened wetly in the dim light. When my hand brushed against one, it was warm. Yielding. Like touching raw flesh.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
The footsteps echoed behind me.
Never faster. Never slower. Just constant.
I found an alcove carved into the wall—barely wide enough for my shoulders—and wedged myself inside. The walls pressed against me from both sides, warm and slick.
My heart hammered so hard I could feel it in my throat.
The voices kept calling.
"Buddy, come back!"
A flicker. A memory? A face laughing at something I'd said. Or done. The details wouldn't come into focus.
Friend.
But the label felt hollow. Empty.
"Where are you hiding?"
"We just want to talk."
"Please don't leave us."
The voices were changing. Distorting. Like they were being played through water, the words stretching and compressing at random.
Thud.
The footsteps entered the corridor.
I pressed myself as far back into the alcove as I could, the walls squeezing against my ribs.
The breathing started again. Wet. Rattling.
It moved past my hiding spot.
Through the narrow gap, I saw it.
Tall. So impossibly tall it had to hunch to move through the corridor. Its limbs were wrong—too long, joints bending in places that shouldn't exist. Shadows clung to it like a second skin, writhing independently.
My breath caught.
The thing stopped.
The breathing ceased.
Silence pressed down, absolute and suffocating.
Then it turned. Slowly. So slowly.
Looking directly at the alcove.
At me.
I ran.
Pure instinct. No thought. Just the overwhelming need to be anywhere else.
The corridor twisted back on itself. I took a corner and found more doors. Dozens of them lining both walls, stretching into the distance.
I tried the first one. Locked.
The second. Locked.
Behind me, the wet breathing was getting louder. Closer.
"Ezra."
That voice again. The one with the accent.
"Ezra, why are you running from me?"
My hands shook as I tried another door. Locked.
"Did I do something wrong?"
Another door. This one opened.
I threw myself through and slammed it shut, pressing my full weight against it.
The room was small. Circular. Symbols covered every inch of the walls—flowing script that hurt to look at, making my eyes water and my head throb with a pain that felt like it was coming from inside my skull.
There was no other exit.
I'd trapped myself.
Thud.
Right outside.
I slid down to the floor, pulling my knees to my chest. My whole body was shaking.
The door handle rattled. Once. Twice.
Then stopped.
Silence.
I waited. Counting my heartbeats because I had nothing else to count.
One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred.
The cold began to fade. The temperature crept back up degree by degree.
Maybe it was gone.
I pressed my ear against the door.
Nothing.
I reached for the handle—
"Why did you let them take me, Ezra?"
I jerked my hand back like the metal had burned me.
That voice.
Oh gods, that voice.
It came from right outside the door. Close enough that if the door wasn't there, we'd be face to face.
"You were supposed to protect me."
The accent. The way certain syllables were emphasized. The slight rasp underneath.
Vasha.
The name arrived with a cascade of feelings so overwhelming I thought I might drown in them. Love and guilt and terror and grief all tangled together into something I couldn't separate.
"I waited for you," the voice continued, soft and terrible. "I called out for you. Where were you?"
My throat closed up. I couldn't speak. Couldn't breathe.
"You promised you'd keep me safe."
Had I? I didn't remember. But the guilt that came with those words was crushing, absolute. Like it was carved into my bones.
"Alex would have saved me. Alex wouldn't have hidden like a coward."
Alex. That was me too.
Wasn't it?
Or was I Ezra?
The confusion was nauseating. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know anything.
"Open the door, Ezra. Let me see you."
Every instinct screamed at me to stay put. To not move. To not even breathe.
But that voice.
If there was anyone—anything—in existence I would open a door for, it was that voice.
My hand moved toward the handle without conscious thought.
"That's it. Just open it. I miss you so much."
The grief in those words made my chest feel like it was caving in.
I wrapped my fingers around the handle.
"I forgive you, Ezra. For everything. Just let me in."
I started to turn it.
Then stopped.
Something was wrong.
The voice was perfect. Too perfect. Every inflection exactly right, like it had been studied and replicated with surgical precision.
But underneath it was something else. Something that didn't quite fit.
"Ezra?"
The patience was gone from the voice now. An edge creeping in.
I pulled my hand back.
"Ezra, open this door."
Not a request anymore.
The door shuddered. Once. Twice. Like something massive was testing its strength.
"OPEN IT."
The voice distorted. Multiple layers speaking in unison, the words just slightly out of sync.
The door exploded inward.
Splinters and twisted metal flew past me. I threw my arms over my head, felt something sharp slice across my forearm.
When I looked up, it was standing in the doorway.
It had to duck to fit, its head scraping against the frame. The shadows clung tighter now, writhing faster, and up close I could see its skin moving. Shifting. Like thousands of tiny things crawling just beneath the surface.
"There you are," it said in that horrible multi-layered voice.
I tried to scramble backward, but there was nowhere to go. My back hit the wall.
It stepped into the room, movements jerky and wrong, like a puppet being controlled by someone who'd forgotten how bodies were supposed to move.
"Why do you run?" it asked, head tilting at an angle that would snap a normal neck. "Don't you recognize me?"
I shook my head frantically.
"No?" The thing's mouth curved into something approximating a smile. Too many teeth. Too sharp. "But you opened the door. You wanted to see me."
"N-no," I managed. My voice came out small. Broken.
"Liar." It crouched down, bringing its face level with mine.
The features swam in and out of focus. Sometimes human. Sometimes not. Sometimes Vasha's face, perfect in every detail except for the eyes—wrong, so wrong, burning with that sickly greenish light.
"You've been running for so long," it whispered. "Aren't you tired?"
I was. The exhaustion was bone-deep, absolute.
"All this confusion. All this fear. Don't you want it to stop?"
Yes. Gods, yes.
"I can help you," it continued, reaching out with a hand that had too many fingers. "I can take all those fractured pieces rattling around in your head and make you whole again."
The fingers brushed my cheek.
Not cold. Worse. Absence. Like the touch was erasing the warmth from my skin cell by cell, leaving nothing behind.
"You're so broken, little one. So scattered. Alex. Ezra. Which one are you?"
"I don't know," I whispered.
"Of course you don't." The thing's smile widened. "Because you're neither. And both. And nothing at all."
Its other hand came up, fingers wrapping around my throat. Not squeezing. Just holding.
"Shall I tell you a secret?"
I couldn't answer. My voice had abandoned me entirely.
"You've always been mine. From the moment you opened your eyes in this place. From the moment you started running. You've been mine."
The hand tightened slightly.
"All those voices calling your names? All those memories you can't quite reach?" The thing leaned closer, its breath hot and rotten against my face. "They're already gone. I've been eating them one by one while you ran. Soon there won't be anything left."
Its mouth began to open.
Wider. Impossibly wide. The jaw dislocating with a wet pop.
The darkness inside wasn't just absence of light. It was active. Hungry. It reached out like tendrils, wrapping around my thoughts, my sense of self.
A sound clawed its way out of my throat. Small. Broken. But it was mine. A final, useless spark against an all-consuming void.
"No."
The thing's smile faltered, replaced by a flash of cosmic irritation. As if a microbe had dared to defy a god. Its grip on my throat became a vise.
And from that dark maw, the voices erupted. Not as a lure, but as a weapon.
All of them at once.
"ALEX!"
"EZRA!"
"SWEETHEART!"
"BUDDY!"
"MY PADAWAN!"
"SON!"
"Why did you leave us?"
"You were supposed to save me."
"Come back."
"Don't leave me alone."
"ALEX EZRA ALEX EZRA ALEX—"
They crashed over me in waves. Each one carried emotions too big to process—love and hate and terror and grief all twisted together until I couldn't tell where one ended and another began.
The cold spread from that point of contact, crawling through my veins like ice water.
"ALEX EZRA ALEX EZRA ALEX EZRA—"
The names repeated faster and faster until they became a single continuous shriek that made my skull feel like it was splitting apart.
And underneath it all, woven through the cacophony like a thread of poison and starlight, a single word whispered in a voice older than stars.
Abeloth.
The name tasted like the death of worlds.
My vision went dark at the edges, narrowing to a pinpoint of light that grew smaller and smaller.
The last thing I felt was the cold reaching my chest, wrapping around my heart.
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A/N: Throw in those stones will you? New week, new rankings.