She kept falling..
Deep and down into that same void filled with an endless strech of water. With the last fragment of consciousness that she had left in her.. she forced her eyes open into narrow slits and tried looking towards the sunlight that broke through the dark blue waters and was growing fainter by the second just like her consciousness...Miko reached out, a slow-motion gesture that felt like pulling through lead.
Her fingertips brushed against a stray beam of light, but it was like trying to catch smoke. The silence down here was absolute—a heavy, ringing hum that vibrated in her chest. Just breathe, a voice whispered, though whether it was her own mind or the tide, she couldn't tell. She closed her eyes, letting the cold embrace of the deep claim her, waiting for the moment the water would finally turn into a floor.
So, this is it, she thought, the thought sluggish and heavy. The end is blue. The end is silent.
She stopped fighting. Her arms drifted above her head, swaying like kelp in a phantom current. She waited for the final darkness, for the lungs to give out and the heart to stop its frantic, muffled drumming.
But the darkness didn't come. Instead, the pressure began to feel... familiar.
A spark of lucidity flickered in her mind, sharper than the fading sunlight. She stayed still, noting the way the water didn't sting her eyes and how the crushing depth felt less like a grave and more like a heavy wool blanket.
Wait, she realized, her pulse slowing not from death, but from recognition. Not again.
This can't be...
She reached out and pinched the skin of her forearm. There was no sharp sting of pain, only a dull, muffled sensation, as if her nerves were wrapped in cotton. She shouldn't be able to think this clearly while drowning. She shouldn't be able to track the way the light refracted into geometric patterns above her.
It was a dream. It had to be.
Yet, as she dragged her hand through the water, she felt the grit of salt against her skin and the terrifyingly real chill of the deep. If it was a dream, why did the cold feel like it was sinking into her very bones? Why did the fear still taste like copper in the back of her throat?
"Wake up," she tried to command, but the words only tumbled out as a cluster of perfect, shimmering spheres that drifted toward the surface, mocking her.
This was the "Void" again, but it had grown stronger. The boundary between the world of sheets and pillows and this endless blue abyss was thinning, and Miko was caught right in the tear.
The sudden, piercing scream of the alarm shattered the silence. it felt like a physical blow that sent a sharp spike of pain directly behind Miko's eyes.
"Ugh... goddamn... stop it," she groaned, her voice a dry friction against the back of her throat.
She rolled over, the movement sluggish and heavy, as if her bones were still made of lead. Her right arm felt disconnected from her body as she blindly lashed out toward the bedside table. Thwack. Her palm found the plastic casing, fumbled for the button, and finally—blissful, silence returned.
Miko didn't get up. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the way the bedsheets were knotted around her ankles like a snare.
It was just a dream, she told herself, her pulse finally slowing down. Just another one of those stupid, vivid tricks my brain plays.
She closed her eyes, trying to shake the phantom sensation of the abyss. But even with the alarm finished and the morning light creeping in, the memory wouldn't dissolve. She could still feel the ghost of the pressure against her chest and the way the oxygen had felt a thousand miles away.