Evan fell, but he never landed.
The whiteness that swallowed him was not an ending, but a reprieve. The searing pain in his chest, the feeling of blood pouring out onto the wet grass, the terror of the girl's face, everything just dissolved.
There was nothing. No darkness, no light, not even silence.
The world felt erased, just a soft, weightless whiteness stretching forever, like someone had left the final sketch unwritten.
Am I dead?
The question echoed, not as words, but a single, pure spike of intent.
He stood, or he thought he did. There was no ground, yet something held him. There was no air, and yet he still breathed. His hands looked normal enough, although their edges seemed to feather at the boundaries, wavering slightly.
The first thing he noticed was the door.
It radiated warmth, the same warmth he had felt all his life beneath his ribs, that constant, unexplainable pull. Only now it wasn't a pull at all.
It was a presence.
A soft, golden glow bloomed in the endless white, it pulsed with a slow, steady rhythm, as though it were breathing.
He drifted toward it, a moth to an irresistible flame, without even thinking. Yet the moment he imagined actually grasping the handle, a sickening wave of revulsion hit him. It wasn't simple fear; it was a refusal so profound, so absolute, it felt embedded deep in his bones.
The glow pulsed once more.
The he awoke.
He slammed back into his body, lungs dragging in cold, raw air. A hard mattress dug into his spine. The heavy blanket felt like a slab of cold marble after the weightlessness of the void.
The white was gone, replaced by the dim, gray light of a neglected room.
Evan shot upright and frantically grabbed at his chest.
There was no wound, no blood, no torn flesh.
Just skin— bare, unblemished skin
He sucked in a shaky, desperate breath, already knowing the truth. He tried to tell himself it was just a dream, but that lie... it shattered in less than a second.
Because then he felt it.
The same everything he felt under the crimson moon.
His heartbeat. His blood pressure. The electrical hum of nerves down his arms. The sheer volume of the world was threatening to drag him under, just as it had before.
No. Not this time.
He somehow pushed the senses down. He closed them off, layer by layer, slamming the doors in the long, echoing hallway of his mind.
The roaring quieted.
But not completely.
Two sensations remained.
The warmth in his chest. It was steady, alive, it felt almost welcoming.
And beneath it, threading through his veins like cold, invasive mercury, was dread. There was something else., something foreign and utterly wrong, it was like a slow, pressurized current that strained against the warmth, recoiling as though irritated by his attention.
Evan swallowed hard.
"What… is this?"
The room around him gradually came into focus: peeling wallpaper, cracked tiles, an old metal desk littered with dusty papers, and a boarded window letting in pale strips of morning light. The place felt abandoned and smelt heavily of disinfectant.
His phone lay on the table next to the bed.
He grabbed it.
03/03/2019
11:39 PM
Still the same day.
He swung his legs off the bed, wincing as the cold floor bit into his bare feet. His body felt unnervingly aware, odd in a way he couldn't name.
As he scanned the room, footsteps approached from beyond the door.
The door creaked open.
The girl from the hill stood there.
Her hair was tangled, her clothes were rumpled, and her eyes were wide and cautious. She looked younger up close, but carried the weary burden of someone who had watched too many people die.
"You're awake," she breathed, relief clear in her voice. "Good. I...I honestly wasn't sure you'd make it."
Evan stared at her, the warmth in his chest pulsing gently, like it recognized her.
"You," he said quietly. "You were there. On the hill."
She nodded once.
"And you… you dragged me here?"
"Carried," she corrected with a tired shrug. "saying 'dragged' makes it sound like you were heavier than me."
He almost laughed—almost.
His eyes narrowed. "You were watching me the entire day. weren't you?"
Her breath caught.
She closed the door behind her and leaned against it as if bracing for impact.
"I was," she admitted. No hesitation. "I was watching you."
"Why?"
She lowered her gaze, fingers curling around the edge of her sleeve.
"Because I'd seen you before," she whispered. "Not in person. Not in any conventional way. But I saw you… and the flash of light."
Evan's skin pricked with coldness. A sharp thread ran down his spine.
"You knew what would happen."
She flinched, not at the accusation, but at the memory.
"That's what I thought," she said softly. " But now I realize, I didn't know. I have never known enough." She pushed off the door and took a step toward him, expression tight with sorrow. "All I had was a fragment—a vision of you falling, the bolt of light tearing through your chest."
He stepped back, eyes widening in disbelief.
"You're... supposed to be some sort of prophet then?"
She didn't confirm, but she didn't look away either.
"And all the times you disappeared," he added, voice tightening. "Is that part of your power too?"
"Yes," she said. "It it also part of what I have been given."
"So the feeling that I was being watched was..."
"Yes… I was hiding from you." She confirmed
His breath hitched. "From me?"
She nodded "I didn't know who you were yet. I only knew that you were like me. I saw you at school, and then I saw a vision of myself watching you from the top of the stairs that lead to the old humanities wing. When I felt the pull, the connection, I went there."
Evan blinked, remembering that strange moment when he brought himself toward the old building for no particular reason. The sense that something was calling him.
"That was you," he murmured. "You were the reason I went there."
"No," she said softly. "We were the reason. Fate ties us together. I don't know how but... when I get close to someone I am meant to find, the world nudges both of us in the same direction."
"Hold up," he said slowly. "What do you mean 'like you'? I'm just a normal person."
Her expression softened, almost pitying.
"No, Evan. You're not."
He felt his stomach drop.
"I didn't know what you were at first," she continued. "I only knew you weren't ordinary. I felt the pull before I even saw your face. Back then, I knew that you had a gift, like me."
He shook his head, instinctively rejecting the idea.
"I don't have abilities. There's no way..."
But the memory of the day surged forward: the flash, the pain, the impossible return.
Her gaze passed over him, lingering on the spot where the bolt had struck him.
"That hole in your chest, it healed." she said. "I saw it happen. The light, the way you were pulled back together."
Evan swallowed hard, pulse hammering against the warmth in his chest.
"So whatever this is… whatever I felt… you're saying it's real?"
"It is," she said. "And whether you wanted it or not, you're part of this now."