I halted my steps.
A figure, pale — no, white, so white it seemed to glow even in the dark — stepped into my vision.
It looked like an unfinished human, as if someone had tried sculpting a body out of wax and forgotten to give it a face.
Its limbs were uneven and fragile, twitching slightly as though uncertain they even belonged to it.
No texture, no features, just the rough outline of something that wanted to be human but never was.
The air around it distorted faintly, bending as though it couldn't bear the thing's presence.
A faint rasp followed its movements, like dry paper brushing against stone, scraping, uneven, grating in rhythm that almost hurt to hear.
And then, it tilted its head toward me.
I held my breath. The Skin-Stealers couldn't see, but their hearing more than made up for it.
The faintest breath, a heartbeat too loud, or a movement too sharp could draw them closer, heads twitching and tilting like starving predators sniffing out life in the dark.
I stood perfectly still, every muscle locked, praying it hadn't heard me.
But then, out of fucking nowhere, I crackled my fingers out of habit.
The sound snapped through the air, sharp and dry, loud enough to echo across the darkness.
The Skin-Stealer shuddered once, almost imperceptibly, as if tasting the sound itself.
Then, with that same twitching motion, it took a step forward — slow, deliberate, and heavy with intent.
I froze, not out of fear, but because stillness was the only action left that made sense.
That was fine, until I heard it — faint at first, then rising — a chorus of dragging, like dry leaves being scraped across stone.
The sound multiplied, folding over itself, until it became a wall of noise. Something was moving.
No, many things were.
The silence that had once felt suffocating now shattered under the weight of hundreds of disjointed steps, uneven and jerking, echoing endlessly through the dark.
It was like the entire abyss had woken up from a restless dream.
A stampede of Skin-Stealers was rushing toward the sound... my sound.
The air trembled with their frenzy, each vibration crawling along my skin.
From every direction, pale figures emerged from the dark, their bodies peeling out of the black like half-formed silhouettes.
The more I looked, the less I could tell where the darkness ended and they began.
Their shapes flickered in and out of sight, crawling, dragging, rising until it became impossible to tell how far any of them truly were.
But despite their competitiveness, their aim was clear.
They were all bolting toward me.
And for me, well, running wasn't just a bad choice.
It was suicide wrapped in desperation.
It wouldn't have been that big of a problem had it been physical attacks they inflicted damage through. I could've personally managed to take down a couple hundred or so of those, honestly.
But they didn't attack physically. They attacked mentally — emotionally.
They fed on the strongest emotion within their victim.
For reference, if it was fear, they would twist the surroundings, crafting hallucinations out of everything that embodied that fear until the victim broke completely.
And once that happened, once the mind surrendered, the Skin-Stealers would slip inside, claiming the body as their vessel to venture out of the Eldoinir Line.
In the novel, each one that managed to slip into reality caused a mass extinction.
Though I had lived most of my life suffering through fear, I doubted only several of those things would be enough to break me.
But there were hundreds, if not thousands.
And more would gather after hearing my screams.
Not to mention, I'd be facing my limiphobia in its purest, most violent form.
Just the thought of it was enough to make my stomach churn violently, like something was twisting deep within.
Ultimately, not desperate enough to go through my fear, there was only one choice left — the owner's choice.
Rael too had been stuck in a similar situation, cornered by his own foolishness, and he took a step no sane person would ever think of.
It wasn't just foolish, it was exaggerated — absurdly so.
But this time, it was me in his body. And I wasn't as foolish as him.
So naturally, I decided to take the exact same step he did.
"Wisdom, Voice of the Existing..."
As soon as those words dared to leave my mouth, my surroundings convulsed.
My vision blurred, the edges folding onto themselves until the abyss beneath me dissolved into geometric repetition, forming patterns I could neither follow nor understand.
Then everything stilled, suddenly.
All around me, mirrors hung in space — infinite mirrors suspended in some invisible structure. Each one reflected me, yet none of them looked quite right.
Some stood tall and unbothered, others writhed in agony, their surfaces blistering and cracking, while a few screamed voicelessly, hollow mouths stretched wide, eyes glassy and empty.
There was no horizon, everywhere I looked, there were mirrors, infinite mirrors, each reflecting me.
It was disorienting, like staring at all the possibilities of myself layered into one endless reflection.
In the center, a singular, endless symbol hovered, rotating through shapes faster than my eyes could register, each shift producing a faint hum that vibrated through my bones.
Gathering up my mind after being dazzled by the sight — something I had only read about abstractly in the novel — I spoke in a plain voice, steady but faint.
"Law Formation: The sleepless dreamer, Thaal'Ruun will no longer be able to feel my presence . Ever."
As those words escaped my mouth, oddly rusted metallic chains spiraled out from the symbol, intertwining with every reflection of me.
"All things that are seen, are recorded. All that are recorded, are found."
A voice resounded through the vicinity — deep and endless — the voice of existence itself, the so-called Wisdom.
The filaments tightened. The reflections convulsed. One by one, each reflection of me dissolved into the pattern, folding back into the center until only I remained in the vast mirrored silence.
The Law had been sealed.
And with it, the fate of Rael was rewritten.