The Voice in the Dark

Then, all at once, Pieran was nowhere.

There was no rain.

No asphalt beneath his cheek.

No growl tearing through the street.

No girl screaming from somewhere too far away to reach.

There was only darkness.

It did not feel like night. Night had shape. Night had air, distance, sounds hiding inside it. This darkness had none of that. It stretched in every direction without walls, without sky, without ground. It was not a place he had entered. It was a place that had swallowed everything else.

Pieran tried to breathe.

At first, he could not tell if he had lungs.

Then the sensation came slowly, piece by piece. A chest. A throat. A heartbeat, weak and distant, like something knocking from the other side of a locked door.

He was still there.

Somehow.

He tried to move his fingers. He felt them respond, or at least he thought he did. A faint pressure ran through his hands, then his wrists, then his arms. But when he looked down, there was nothing.

No hands.

No arms.

No body.

Pieran froze.

He lifted one hand toward his face. He could feel the motion, the invisible bend of an elbow, the trembling shape of fingers passing in front of his eyes. But he saw only darkness.

His body was there.

And it wasn’t.

A cold panic spread through him.

“What…?”

His voice did not echo. It simply disappeared, swallowed by the black around him.

He turned, or tried to. There was no ground beneath his feet, yet he felt himself shifting. No up. No down. No distance. Just the sickening sense that he was floating inside something endless.

The last thing he remembered was the beast.

The girl.

The rain.

The impossible burst of speed.

The impact.

Then that voice.

Once again…

Pieran’s invisible hands clenched.

You arrived too late.

The words returned with a weight that made the darkness seem colder.

“Who’s there?” he called.

Nothing answered.

He turned again, searching for anything: a wall, a light, a shape, even the reflection of his own body. There was nothing. Only black, thick and absolute.

Then he saw it.

At first, it was only a blur in the distance. A deeper shadow inside the shadow, standing where nothing should have been able to stand. Pieran narrowed his eyes, and the figure slowly became clearer.

Someone was there.

A man, perhaps.

Or something shaped like one.

He stood wrapped in a dark aura that moved around him like smoke, slow and heavy, as if the darkness itself refused to let go of his body. His clothes were black, but not simple. Even from a distance, Pieran could tell they were expensive, tailored with an elegance that did not belong in a place like this.

The coat clung tightly to his shoulders and chest, built almost like formal clothing and battle gear at the same time. Around his waist, the fabric narrowed sharply, then fell into layered strips designed for movement rather than decoration.

His trousers were fitted at the waist, then loosened toward the ankles, wide enough to move in, but controlled, deliberate, almost ceremonial. Everything about him looked refined. Precise. Made for someone who had learned to fight without ever needing to look desperate.

But the blood ruined that elegance.

It stained his sleeves. It darkened the front of his coat. It had dried in patches along the folds of his clothes and splashed across the fabric near his hands. Pieran could not tell if it belonged to him or to someone else.

That uncertainty made it worse.

A long black cloth was wrapped around the figure’s neck like a scarf, but it was too wide, too heavy, almost like a torn mantle. It rose over the lower half of his face, hiding his mouth, his jaw, everything below his eyes. The ends of it drifted slowly behind him, though there was no wind.

Pieran could not see his face.

Only his eyes.