『 Irvar, Nothran, Children's Bedroom — 20 Everi, 4:20 AM 』
"N-no... No..."
Itoî groaned in his sleep. He seemed trapped in a nightmare, twisting restlessly in his bed.
A horrible, twisted, and flayed voice drifted through the darkness:
"Kid, you can't run from me forever."
"W-Who are you? What do you want from me? W-Where are you?" Itoî frantically replied, horrified.
"Desire, envy, achievement, success... You want all of that, don't you?" the voice continued in a monstrous tone.
It kept whispering indescribable words. Its speech and the entire situation carried a deeply unsettling violence.
Itoî seemed plunged into a room devoid of the slightest light. Everything was pitch black. He desperately searched for an exit, his gaze darting frantically left and right.
"Why resist? Come to me... Come to us. You are nothing. We are everything."
The voice kept drifting back and forth, as if it were everywhere and nowhere at once.
The situation terrified Itoî. He couldn't understand what was happening. Questions chained endlessly in his mind:
What does he want from me? Who is he? Why is this room so dark? Why is the floor pulling me down? Why?
The walls began to move. The room, which had initially seemed infinite—Itoî hadn't touched a single wall until now—was closing in on him.
Itoî dropped to his knees and pressed both hands flat against the floor. He felt something like faces beneath them. The texture was pasty and viscous. Then he felt hard pieces—skull fragments, surely.
Itoî panicked. He flipped onto his back, scrambling backward, his breath suddenly caught. He hyperventilated, his breathing turning ragged. He was convinced his heart was going to give out and he was going to die.
The hallucinations grew increasingly violent and realistic.
"S-Stop, please... Stop! I'm begging you, stop!" Itoî sobbed, practically choking.
The fear, the suffocation, and the sickness never left him. The walls kept creeping forward with a grinding screech. Noises and whispers persisted, but this time, it was no longer a single voice. It seemed to almost fade away, drowned out by the multitude of accumulating sounds.
Breathless, broken voices petrified with terror screamed, asking what was happening. They belonged to people of all ages. The only thing they had in common was absolute terror.
"Help! I don't want to die!"
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"What's happening?!"
"Are we dead?"
"Mommy, I want to go home!"
"Where are we? I have to go to work!"
"It hurts! Dad, stop!"
"The war is over, right, big brother? I'm coming to join you."
"I'm sorry. I should have listened to you, Grandpa."
"God! God! Have you forsaken us?"
A strong smell crept into this horror scene, where Itoî seemed to be one of the main actors. It was sickly sweet, almost sugary... But something felt profoundly wrong.
The voice chuckled all around the room, making Itoî dizzy:
"Aha, aha, ahahaha! How are you feeling?" it asked after smothering all the other voices.
"I-I..."
Itoî couldn't speak anymore. He was broken. His tears flowed ceaselessly, as if he couldn't stop them, and his mind seemed to be crumbling. His will was fraying away bit by bit.
The smell returned. Pleasant at first, it was quickly crushed by a second, far more fetid one: sulfur, overripe cheese, and rancid fat. It was accompanied by nauseating fumes reminiscent of rotten eggs and ammonia.
To Itoî, this was the ultimate signal: he had to run. But how? Everything was black, his legs felt so heavy, and the floor was starting to pull him down. Not to mention the walls, which kept inching closer.
"You like that smell? It's the stench of death... The death of hundreds, of thousands of humans," the voice said with detachment.
Itoî suddenly snapped back to reality and thrashed frantically against the floor, which had already swallowed his legs.
"Help! Help! Someone help me! Mom! Dad! Vars!" Itoî screamed, desperate, his voice broken.
"Oh? Too bad. The ceiling seems to be falling too. You're going to be a little cramped," the voice sneered disdainfully.
"Mom! Mamaan! Help me! I'm sorry! I won't cause trouble anymore!" Itoî begged, drowned in his tears.
The floor swallowed Itoî until only his head remained above the surface. The walls and ceiling sped up, as if they were about to crash into each other.
"Tell me, kid, you want to know what I am, don't you? I know everything about you: your desires, your cravings, your regrets, what you hate, what you love... Everything. It would be unfair if you knew nothing about me," the voice said with a dark chuckle.
Itoî kept screaming at the top of his lungs.
"I am a de-mon!" the voice enunciated before bursting into a cold laugh.
Itoî stopped screaming. He didn't have the strength for it anymore, anyway.
The revelation terrified him. His mother had told him about monsters and beasts before, but this was beyond him. A city boy like him... Demons? Really? So they actually existed? He had heard of dragons and creatures of that sort, but a demon?
He was completely disoriented, unable to utter a word. He tried to pull himself together anyway.
"W-What do you want from me? My life?" he asked, trembling.
"Ah... There, now it gets interesting. What do I want from you? Hmm... I can take your life if I wish, but that's not what I'm after. Let's play a game! Tell me, what do you think I want?" the demon replied with a sick enthusiasm.
"I-I don't know... My toys? My pocket money? M-My body?" Itoî stammered, terrified.
The demon burst into a laugh that echoed throughout the room.
The room had shrunk so much that Itoî's head was now mere inches from the walls and ceiling. Then the voice turned dead serious and roared:
"Your soul, kid! YOUR SOUL!"
"No! I won't give you my soul!" Itoî snapped angrily, as if standing up to this demonic voice for the first time.
"You think you can face me, human? Hahaha! And with what? Look at yourself, you're at my mercy!"
Itoî said nothing. It was true: there was nothing he could do. His entire body was trapped in a sort of corpse marsh, his head facing a wall ready to crush him.
"I don't care! I won't give you anything!" Itoî shot back, just as determined.
"Then I'll take it by force!" the demon said.
A horror appeared: a beast's head armed with hundreds of sharp teeth. Its maw opened wide, ready to swallow Itoî whole. At the same time, the boy's body was completely engulfed by the floor.
Itoî suddenly found himself in a bubble floating in the void. An absolute void, stripped of all things.
He calmed down. A sudden feeling of euphoria washed over him. It was soft, warm... as if someone were embracing him.
I feel so good...
Then the demonic face reappeared, and the bubble burst.
Itoî's mind clouded over again. He felt suffocated, unable to breathe, as if he were being sucked into the abyss.
"H... Help..." Itoî barely managed to gasp