Octavius awoke to a dense darkness that felt wet, like being submerged in ink. A velvet absence pressed against his eyelids from the inside out, humming softly, like a song only mirrors could sing.

He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or if he had been swallowed whole by something that no longer believed in light.

For a moment, he wondered if he had died mid-breath, floating sideways into an afterlife built from fog. He screamed—not out of fear, but curiosity—and his voice came back to him in strange dialects, warped and elongated, like a choir of drowned versions of himself.

Shapes began to smear across the black, dripping into place like melting wax. He was on his back, cradled by something that felt like concrete but pulsed faintly.

The world bled into focus—his neighborhood—but hollowed, bleached of meaning. Houses stood half-chewed and sighing. The night above was not quite void but not sky, more like a canvas that had rejected its stars.

Not a single sound dared exist. No birds, wind, or even the soft buzz of cosmic radiation. The power grid had quit out of embarrassment. Even the streetlamps seemed to apologize for being.

As he wandered through the mute streets, he noticed something absurd: every clock was locked at midnight—perpetual cusp, an eternal maybe. A tightness coiled in his chest like a sleeping snake beginning to stir. He didn’t know whether it was dread or awe. Perhaps both.

Turning the corner into a narrow alleyway that hadn’t existed before, he found a brick wall bleeding color—white and red graffiti, swirling like smoke frozen mid-dance. It spelled out a message:

“The key lies where the night first began.”

The letters shivered as he read them.

To Be Continued …