The world started to fall silenced as I drifted apart like some deliberately doing it like a teacher in a class shushing everyone.
Not that it matter afterall, all that was left to me was darkness all around and I closed my eyelids as I couldn't tell the difference.
I was trapped inside this darkness drifting away endlessly, so I tried to move my body.
But no matter how hard I tried to move them, the result were same - nothing.
Trapped inside my own body, I kept on trying to summon even the smallest movement but results were always a naught.
This was the second time today that I had been paralysed by terror, the fear of being forever imprisoned within myself—a sensation so raw that words seemed inadequate to even explain it.
After what felt like an eternity, I finally managed to move. I took a deep breath and calmed myself down that tiny bit of relief gave me the courage to open my eyes after this traumatising experience.
I blinked multiple times to only realise...
Everything around me was dark.
Not nighttime-dark.
But completely, absolutely dark.
Slowly, sensations began returning to my body. My feet felt something solid was beneath them which was a huge relief than third person view.
Seeing all this nearly confirmed my suspicion—I had truly died. I realized this after falling in front of the train, which had ended me but I truly believe it was dream and when I wake up I would be in my bed.
So I curled up like a ball and cried.
Yeah. I cried.
Because dying is one thing…
But accepting your own death? That's a different battle.
Memories of the time when I was alive began to surface, along with the many simple pleasures I missed by dying too soon—a reality I couldn't accept.
I don't know how long I sat there in that endless void, but eventually collect myself and come to terms with what had happened.
Once I calmed down, I did the only thing I could— I stood up and walked forward into the darkness.
My first instinct was to find a wall, a boundary, anything.
Even a tiny obstruction would've been comforting.
But there was nothing.
No wall.
No object.
No end.
Just sound of my footsteps and an infinite, endless, empty void.
After hours of wandering, my legs grew tired.
Hunger and thirst crept in, forcing me to lie down for a moment.
Everything had happened too fast—
I was just eighteen, and yet in one day I died and ended up in this… whatever this place was.
How pathetic I must've looked.
I laughed at myself while tears ran down my face.
And I cried once again that now I even don't have those luxury of thinking how I looked.
I didn't want to admit it, but the stories I'd read—mythology, fantasy, reincarnation novels—everything pointed to one possibility.
If I piece everything together from all my knowledge this place was either a the Void…
Or I was exiled from the cycle of rebirth entirely.
Maybe after death, all that's left is endless wandering for the soul.
Not knowing what else to do, I stood up and walked again.
With a motivation even if it took days, I would keep walking until I died a second time from starvation… or until my feet finally gave up.
But then I noticed something strange.
The sensations of hunger and thirst were growing… but they weren't weakening my body.
I could still walk as if nothing was wrong.
It was like those feelings were piling up inside my mind without affecting my strength.
So in that sense I was quite happy but soon I reverted that happiness.
It was torture.
A week passed—at least it felt like a week—and I crossed the natural human limit.
But the thirst didn't kill me.
It just grew worse… and worse… until it was unbearable.
At least in normal state I would have ended and died the second time but that was not possible on this stage.
That's when I realized,
This place wasn't a void.
It wasn't rebirth.
It was punishment.
An endless punishment.
And then it finally clicked.
I had entered the Abyss.
With the realization settling deep down within me—I had entered the Abyss—a chill shot down my spine.
For a moment, I even forgot the unbearable thirst clawing at my throat.
If this place was truly the Abyss, then the torment I was enduring finally made sense.
And yet… something about it didn't sit right.
I hadn't lived some grand life, but I hadn't committed some world-ending sin either.
I was just… 18. I died too early to deserve eternal punishment. So why was I here?
I couldn't make sense of anything, so panic was the only thing I could do. I moved around blindly, stumbling through the darkness with no end in sight.
But once the realization really sank in, a new problem rose—the hunger and thirst grew worse as time moved on.
Every step felt painfully deliberate and slow.
Even if I knew these sensations were fake, my mind didn't care. It kept piling them on until they drowned everything else.
Desperately, I scratched myself.
Even though I couldn't see my body in this pitch-black void, I felt my nails tearing skin.
Tiny stings that didn't help at all.
But it lessen the imaginary sensations as that's what's I decided to call it.
At some points, My own footsteps were annoying and I bite my own legs while some other point I learned how to do tap dances to distract myself.
At another instances I dropped to the ground and began digging.
Maybe—just maybe—there'd be moisture underneath.
But the earth was solid, unbreakable.
Not a drop.
Frustration ate at me until I couldn't take it anymore.
I ran.
Pointlessly.
Aimlessly.
But nothing changed.
The darkness remained, infinite and empty.
By the 12th day, my legs finally gave out.
I crawled forward like a dying animal, clinging to a stupid hope that maybe—somewhere out there—this void had an end.
It was futile.
On the 14th day, I curled up, surrendering to the exhaustion.
But in a place like this—with nothing to do and nowhere to go—staying still only made the torment worse.
What bothered me the most was this:
After half a month of suffering, I expected hallucinations. Madness.
Anything.
But nothing came.
Shouldn't I have lost my mind by now?
Shouldn't the Abyss be filled with horrors and whispers?
But it was silent.
Even insanity refused to approach me.
I kept moving, even when crying became impossible. The pain was too much.
By the 18th day, I found myself comparing my suffering to everyone still alive—ranking pain like some twisted game—while I barely managed to crawl forward by inches.
On rare moments, I would sprint like a lunatic, driven by some leftover instinct to survive.
Time stopped meaning anything.
Days bled into weeks.
Weeks into months.
And the torment never stopped.
Eventually, I understood:
This was my future.
Endless wandering.
Endless pain.
Eternal loneliness.
Many times, I cursed the heavens.
I hadn't been given a proper life—and even in death, I wasn't granted peace.
My grief kept growing, but somehow, I still kept moving.
Then—after what I counted as three months—something finally changed.
A light.
In the distance, a glow pierced the suffocating darkness, gentle and warm in a place that knew neither.
Without thinking, without hesitation, I forgot all the pain.
And I sprinted toward it with everything I had left.