Chapter 1 - When There Were Stars

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

…

It was dark as I walked my way down the street. I had left my house to get something to drink from the store.

I was up late gaming and decided that I needed a refill on supplies to keep me awake. I threw on a black hoodie over my white t-shirt and black sweatpants.

There were occasional cars that went by, their lights illuminating the dark streets they went down.

Only after I left the store with an Arizona, some candy, and a bar of chocolate did I feel something was off.

It wasn't a "Something's off" that could be equivalent to feeling as if someone was watching me, but a supernatural feeling.

Something was seriously off, so as a car passed by, I blinked. Opening my eyes, I realized that the car that I had just seen going past me had disappeared.

It was weird; the car that passed me shouldn't have gone far enough that I wouldn't be able to see it after only blinking once.

As I looked around, I noticed that it was way darker than before. It was not dark enough to be pitch black, as there were still lit street lights, but something had changed.

In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the black sky. I half-heartedly looked around, a bit spooked.

Looking at the sky, I froze. The sky was black, not blocked by clouds. Completely pitch black.

'Where are the stars?' I thought as I blinked.

The second I reopened my eyes, the sky was bright once again, with numerous and uncountable numbers of stars that looked like dots of light in the night sky.

'Am I going crazy?' I scoffed at the thought and accidentally closed my eyes.

Once again, when I opened my eyes, the stars were gone. That's when reality set in; I was getting supernaturally taken somewhere.

I was being Re: Zero'd, and it wasn't looking good. I immediately blinked once more; the sky was once again bright, and the surroundings looked a little brighter around me.

At that moment, I began to run while at the same time making sure I didn't blink. This was it; I was being taken somewhere that I knew was bad.

I didn't really watch or read anything with Isekai in it, but I was a fan of anomalies and cryptids.

But in the corner of my mind, I remembered what one of my friends had told me: he was a fan of eldritch beings and all their weirdness. The one thing he said to do in any situation involving eldritch creatures was to look at the sky.

Eldritch entities, mostly the gods, would eat the stars due to their instinctual hunger. The way to know if you've been transported to an eldritch-owned world is by looking for the stars.

If there were only a handful of stars, then that universe was being eaten, but if all the sky was pitch black and people didn't know what stars were, then you were fucked.

My eyes were starting to tear up with an intense feeling of wanting to blink, but I held it. I was close to getting home.

As I continued running, I thought about what my friend had talked to me about. Yet my brain kept bringing up blanks as I tuned him out whenever he went on a tangent about eldritch beings.

As I ran across the street, a car suddenly turned its blinkers on with full brightness blasting.

The car wasn't directly in front of me but was to the right of me, and as I turned away, I instinctually closed my eyes.

Instantly, I opened my eyes to the mistake I had made. The sky was once again pitch black, with not a star in sight.

The car that had blinded me was gone, yet I was still crossing the street. I looked around quickly before looking back at the sky and blinking.

There were still no stars.

I rapidly blinked over and over with hope, a sliver of chance. But my hopes were crushed, as after blinking over twenty times, the night sky was still pitch black.

'I'm so fucked! What do I do? Do the people I know even exist anymore? What happens if I run into some sort of entity?' My thoughts were rapid as my hands grasped my face.

My eyes widened, and I instantly slapped my own hand away. Only when I slapped it did I realize it was my hand.

"Wh—whose hands are these?" My shaking voice came out as I looked at my equally shaking hands.

My hands were of a darker skin color, but my hands were now white. They were the whitest and near-palest hands I have ever seen.

I grabbed my hair next; my hair color and texture had changed. I now had white hair that went down to around my chin.

I don't mean white, as in old-person white, but pure silvery white, as if it were an actual color someone would have.

But my house was right across the street. As I ran across the street, the bright street lights staying lit as I did so, I momentarily froze once again.

I felt it again, that feeling.

Something's off.

At that moment, my whole body shivered. Not at once. It was a shiver that slowly ran down my entire being.

My head slowly turned to look behind me, and my eyes slowly turned, even though I really didn't want to look.

*Crack*

Right as I opened my mouth, I covered it. Not too far down the street was a creature I was all too familiar with. It was one of the creatures I had heard of due to my own search of the horror genre.

Its body was long, wrapping around the lampposts on the street and turning at impossible angles that looked as if it had broken its body to do so.

It made a cracking sound, and the head had again turned.

I say body, but this creature was actually all neck. Its head looked like the top of a horse skull, with black strands of hair running down the skull.

The neck that stretched infinitely in the sky and blocked the entire street also had black hair running down at different points.

*CRACK*

In another sharp turn, the head of the creature turned toward me. This was,

The Bearer of Bad News, the Bad Omen, the Long Horse.

In an instant, a near-deafening amount of cracks sounded out as the horse's head shot in my direction.

Turning my head back toward the direction of my house, I ran. I ran as fast as I could, but the cascade of cracks always seemed right behind me.

Reaching my house's steps, I ran up, opened the door, and shut it hard behind me. I locked the door as quickly as I could.

My breathing was erratic, but I didn't stop moving as I tried to catch my breath. Going to the kitchen, I grabbed two knives before quickly running up the steps to the second floor.

The second I made it to the top step, I momentarily froze and turned to look at the bottom step.

The horse was there.

Truthfully, I knew the horse couldn't do anything to me, as it was supposedly a benevolent creature. But I wasn't scared of the horse; I was scared of the omen it brought.

Wherever the horse shows up, a very bad thing is guaranteed to happen, and I couldn't allow myself to be caught out in the open by any creature that may show up to fulfill that omen.

The long horse made its way up the steps slowly. Bringing itself close to myself, I could smell cinnamon. It was funny in hindsight, as eldritch creatures were said to stink, so Long Horse smelling like cinnamon was acting as a double check.

"Sorry, buddy, I don't have an offering with me," I said as I softly brought my hands up to rub its neck. "Thanks for the warning; though, maybe next time I'll have something I can give you."

I quickly stopped stroking Long Horse's neck and went into the bathroom. Checking the mirror, I frowned slightly.

What was in front of me wasn't a dark-skinned man. I had skin so fair that it looked as if I were fake; my face was without blemishes and impossibly handsome. I looked like someone I knew did not exist in reality.

Dante Sparda.

It was obvious, no matter how I looked at it. With this silvery white hair, handsome face, and skin so fair and pure, all women would be jealous.

Icy blue eyes stared back at me from the mirror. I seemed to keep my height of 6'2, and I could smile at that.

Quickly, I took a bit of toilet paper and left the bathroom. Long Horse seemed to be gone as if it never existed.

Looking down the steps one last time, the light that I had left on before I left the house was turned off, leaving the first floor of the house a black void of unknown.

However, my heart stopped for a second as I noticed a twisted face at the bottom of the step.

A doppelgänger.

That's the only thing I could call it because it had my face. Only my face was distorted. It looked as if someone had added a bunch of jagged teeth and deleted my lips.

I also noticed that the smile seemed to be at an angle; the entire facial structure was just wrong. The teeth were going across the face at an upward angle that shouldn't have been possible.

'I need to run.' I thought as I broke into a sprint.