Lord Of The Perished

I woke up to nothing but darkness.

It wasn't the comforting kind you could close your eyes to and escape.

This was suffocating, eternal.

It pressed down on me like a physical weight, the sort of void that made you feel as if you were falling forever.

My body or at least what I thought was my body felt cold, numb even.

I blinked, trying to adjust to the absence of light.

It was futile.

My first instinct was to move, but the ground beneath me was hard, cold, and unfamiliar.

No sounds, no warmth, nothing to indicate where I was, or what I was.

My chest tightened. Or it would have if I had a chest.

My thoughts began spiraling.

The last thing I remembered was my mundane, unremarkable life.

I am Kael, just an average college student trying to get by.

A nobody.

After my parents died, my cousin Mira had stepped in, becoming the only family I had left.

She had this way of making everything feel less lonely, less suffocating, even when the weight of the world seemed unbearable.

But my escape had always been games. Souls-like games, to be specific.

They were punishing, brutal, and somehow exactly what I craved.

Self-consolation, maybe? Or self-destruction.

I never really stopped to think about why I liked them so much.

I just did. Who would think of why souls like games where already a hook.

Then there was that day no, the day...

The day I died.

It was mundane at first.

I'd gone out to buy something nothing special, just the usual necessities.

I remember walking back home, my mind lost in its usual haze, when someone came out of nowhere.

I didn't see the person face.

Just a flash, a cold sting spreading across my body, and then… darkness.

Which brought me here.

I clenched my hands, needing to feel something real.

But as I did, a chill shot through me.

My hands no, bones.

My hands were skeletal.

No flesh, no skin.

Just stark, pale bones that gleamed faintly even in the darkness.

My breath or whatever was left of it hitched.

Heart racing, I reached up to my face, but there was nothing there.

No skin.

No muscle.

Just the hollow structure of a skull.

"What… the hell?" The words echoed in the void, hollow and empty like the world around me.

I was dead. That much I knew.

But why… why did I still feel alive?

As I tried to piece together what was happening, a sudden, deafening bang shattered the silence.

It tore through my skull literally.

Pain lanced through me, raw and agonizing.

I doubled over, clutching my head, wishing it would stop.

When the pain subsided, I looked up, and my nonexistent heart nearly stopped.

They surrounded me.

Dozens of figures, cloaked in black, looming over me like ancient statues.

They were massive, their forms stretching into the void like shadows without end.

I couldn't see them but thanks to their eyes, Their eyes...

Blazing purple eyes stared down at me, burning with an intensity that made my very bones ache.

They didn't blink.

They didn't move.

They just… stared.

"Who… who are you?" I tried to ask, but my voice was barely a whisper, swallowed by the endless dark.

The figures didn't answer.

Their silence was more suffocating than the void itself.

Thoughts raced through my mind.

Was this Hell?

Purgatory?

Some twisted afterlife?

Or was I trapped in one of those damn games I used to play?

No, that is ridiculous, being trapped in a game or series are all fantasy.

I clenched my bony fists, trying to steady myself, but their gaze pinned me down like a physical force.

"What do you want?" I demanded, louder this time.

No response.

But I felt something, a shift in the air, a weight pressing down on me, as if the void itself was alive and watching.

I didn't know who or what they were.

But one thing was certain, I wasn't alone in this darkness anymore.

And whatever they wanted, it couldn't be good.