Aarav didn't know how long he had been falling.
Time stretched, twisted, lost meaning. The blue glow that had swallowed him flickered around his body like threads of lightning, weaving symbols he couldn't understand. His scream had died somewhere above him, stolen by the void.
Then—suddenly—he stopped.
Not with a crash.
Not with a landing.
But as if the darkness itself had caught him.
A soft surface formed beneath his feet—warm, alive. Aarav staggered forward, gasping for breath as the glow dimmed. The world around him was no world at all. It was an endless black expanse, its floor made of shifting light, its air humming with invisible voices.
"Hello?" Aarav whispered, his voice trembling.
The darkness answered.
A ripple moved across the void, like someone unseen had brushed their hand through water. From that ripple, shapes emerged—faint outlines of people, their bodies made of light and memory.
Aarav froze.
They were not strangers.
He saw his mother's silhouette, exhausted but still standing. He saw his two brothers—one holding his schoolbag, the other laughing as he played with friends. Their figures flickered like candles in a storm.
"Maa?" Aarav stepped forward. "Rahul? Kabir?"
But their shapes dissolved the moment he reached out.
Aarav dropped to his knees. "What is this place…?"
Again, the voice from before whispered—not in his ears, but inside his bones.
"The world chose you."
The ground pulsed with blue light as the voice continued:
"Link In was not an accident."
"You were called."
"Because you are the one who can rewrite what has been broken."
Aarav's breath hitched. "Rewrite what? I'm just—just a boy trying to keep his family safe!"
The darkness shivered, almost… amused.
"Every world begins with a weakness."
"Every hero begins with a burden."
A single beam of light shot downward from far above, illuminating something in the distance—a massive door, floating in the void. Carved with symbols he had never seen.
Aarav felt drawn to it, as if it recognized him.
"What's behind that?" he asked.
The voice answered with something like a sigh:
"Truth. Power. And danger."
"But choose carefully, Aarav."
The void trembled.
"Because once you step through… your story can never return to what it was."
Aarav stared at the door—the beginning of something unknown, something terrifying and extraordinary.
His hands were shaking. His heart was pounding.
But he remembered his mother's tired smile.
His brothers' innocent faces.
Their small home, their struggles, their hopes.
He stood up straighter.
If this place had chosen him… then he would choose them.
Even if it meant walking into the dark.
Aarav took a slow, steady breath.
And stepped toward the door.
The door loomed before Aarav like a living creature.
Up close, he realized the symbols carved into its surface were not carved at all—they were moving. Twisting. Rearranging themselves like serpents made of light and shadow. Every time his eyes blinked, the patterns changed, whispering secrets in a language he wasn't meant to understand.
Aarav swallowed hard.
The air around the door was cold… but not the kind of cold he knew. This was a cold that crawled under the skin and settled into the bones. A cold that watched him.
As he reached out, the void behind him began to pulse faster—like a heartbeat losing control.
Thump.
Thump-thump.
THUMP.
The voice returned, deeper now, more distorted:
"Once you cross, the darkness will know your name."
Aarav's hand shook. "It already does."
He touched the door.
It exhaled.
A slow, shuddering breath—warm and rotten—brushed against his face. Aarav stumbled backward, choking on the sudden stench of decay. The surface of the door rippled like flesh.
Then it opened.
Not with hinges.
But like a wound tearing itself apart.
Aarav stepped through.
Immediately, the world snapped into a new shape—twisted, broken, wrong.
He found himself standing on the edge of a vast ruined city. Skyscrapers bent backwards like snapped ribs. Streets cracked open into bottomless pits. Shadows moved across the rubble, slow and purposeful, as if searching for something… or someone.
The sky above was a violent red, swirling like infected blood.
Aarav whispered, "Where am I?"
A whisper slithered behind him:
"Inside the fracture."
Aarav spun around—and froze.
The figure standing there was tall, impossibly tall, its body draped in black strands of something that was not cloth, not shadow, but something in between. Its face was smooth, no eyes, no mouth… no features at all.
Yet Aarav felt its smile.
"You were chosen not because you are strong," the creature murmured without a mouth.
"But because you break beautifully."
Aarav's chest tightened. "Stay away from me."
The creature tilted its featureless head.
The red sky thundered.
The shadows in the ruined city stopped moving, as if listening.
"You care for them," the creature hissed.
"Your mother. Your brothers."
Its voice sharpened like a knife.
"Do you think this place cannot reach them?"
Aarav's blood turned to ice.
He lunged forward and grabbed the creature's arm—if it even was an arm—but it slipped through his fingers like smoke.
A single sound echoed across the broken city:
A child crying.
Aarav's heart dropped. "Kabir…?"
He ran.
Through the rubble. Over shattered asphalt. Into the choking red fog.
The crying grew louder.
Then suddenly—it cut off.
Silence swallowed everything.
Aarav skidded to a halt.
There, in the center of a crater, stood a small figure with its back turned to him. Two short shoulders. Small arms. Hair ruffled by the wind.
Aarav's voice cracked. "Kabir?"
The boy turned slowly.
It was Kabir—
But his eyes were pitch black, hollow, endless.
And when he spoke, it was not his voice:
"You can't save anyone."
Aarav stumbled back, terror ripping through him.
The shadows closed in.
The sky roared.
The fracture had chosen him.
And now, it wanted to break him.
If you want, I can continue with Chapter 7, make it even darker, or shift into a more emotional or action-heavy tone.
You said:
But the world chose you.
Instead, the fall simply… stopped.
One moment he was plummeting through a tunnel of blue light, the next he was suspended in complete darkness—weightless, breathless, soundless. The air around him throbbed like the inside of a living creature, each pulse vibrating through his bones.
He tried to speak, but the void swallowed his voice before it could escape his lips.
He wasn't alone.
Something was breathing in the darkness.
Slow. Deep. Ancient.
Aarav's heartbeat quickened. He reached out blindly, and the world responded—not with ground, not with air, but with shapes. Shadows moved across the dark, forming faint outlines that flickered like broken reflections on water.
One shape drifted close.
Aarav froze.
It was himself.
Not as he was now—but younger. Smaller. Wearing his old school uniform, the one with the torn pocket he had stitched himself. The boy stared at him with hollow, shimmering eyes.
Aarav whispered, trembling, "What are you?"
The younger reflection opened its mouth.
No sound came out—
Only blue light.
The surrounding void pulsed faster.
thump
Aarav staggered back.
THUMP
The darkness shook.
THUMP-THUMP
A voice rose—not from the boy, not from the void, but from every direction at once.
"The world chose you."
Aarav covered his ears, but the voice was inside him, burrowing through his thoughts.
"Falling is not the end."
"It is the doorway."
The younger reflection began to break apart—cracking like glass, shards of glowing blue light peeling away from its body. Each fragment floated upward, forming patterns in the air—circles, lines, symbols he couldn't read but somehow felt.
The voice whispered again:
"Link In… is only the beginning."
The light shards spiraled around Aarav, faster and faster, until they fused into a single beam shooting downward. The void beneath him split open like a second wound.
A platform of light rose slowly from the abyss, forming under his feet—solid and warm, as if the void itself was choosing to hold him, but only for a moment.
Aarav looked around, breath shaking. "Why am I here?"
The darkness answered, colder this time:
"Because all stories begin with a fall."
"But yours begins with what you must face next."
In front of him, a path of floating blue steps materialized, stretching into an unseen distance.
Aarav felt the air shift.
Something was waiting for him at the end of that path.
Something that knew his name…
Something that had always known.
He wiped his trembling hands on his shirt, took a breath that felt too heavy for his lungs, and stepped forward.
The void whispered:
"Welcome, Aarav."
"Your trial begins now."