Elias' eyes shot open.
The light surrounding him was blinding, making it extremely hard to see.
[Elias] "Where–?"
His confusion was short-lived.
[???] "Good morning."
The voice was playful, filled with amusement—almost… mocking.
Elias's blood ran cold.
[Elias] "Who are you?"
A hint of fear could be heard in his voice—no, not a hint. It was fear, raw and pure terror.
[Elias] "Why are you following me?!"
He yelled with raw anger; it was that damn voice.
The voice that had scared him into running, the voice that had made a mockery of Elias, was standing near his bedside.
All he wanted to do was get a glance.
Elias wanted to see who his tormentor was. He wanted to shut whoever it was up once in for all. No matter what, though, his body wouldn't move. It was paralyzed by fear. Fear of what? Elias didn't know.
'So this is how it feels, huh? Fear in its purest form.'
Even his thoughts felt shaky; this was new, a foreign and incredibly unwelcome feeling.
In reply, the voice began to laugh. It was a terrible, cruel laugh.
After a long time—which felt like hours—his tormentor, that voice, seemed to get bored with him. Elias finally heard footsteps retreat away.
Looking to get a glance at his tormentor, Elias sat up quickly. When he did, a rushing sense of hypotension greeted him, barraging him with colors until blindness.
His gaze caught nothing apart from a fleeting wisp of smoke.
Elias sat there for a while, doing nothing but processing the things that had happened in such a short time.
Before he fell unconscious, he was running. Elias was running from something. Whenever he slowed down, that terrible voice followed him, urging him to run faster.
The voice was simply infuriating; it was as if his panic was all but a game—that the chase was all but a game.
Still, Elias could not let blind rage dictate his mindspace; he had to figure out his situation.
Speaking of that, where in the world was he?
When he had passed out, it was the dead of night, and he was running through a long alley. There was no chance that anybody would find him.
So how did he get here? Wherever "here" was, of course.
[Elias] "––––"
Silence stretched on for a while, and Elias sat there still. It was like that for a few minutes.
That was until Elias finally noticed something.
Whether he was seeing things or not, his vision of reality began to distort; it seemed as if the world was breaking apart.
He wasn't seeing things. Upon further inspection, Elias saw everything clearly.
.
The world wasn't breaking apart; it was creating itself anew.
The sight both amazed and terrified Elias. Reality was being twisted and contorted, only to end up with a completely different shade. The sight would be called beautiful in many cases—and it would be. That is, if the floor beneath him wasn't also falling as well.
At this point, he may have lost count of the number of times his body began trembling; this time, though, it was violent.
Betrayal hit hard, especially from your own limbs. No matter what, his legs refused to move from the spot they so desperately clung to.
Screaming internally, Elias begged his legs to move, but they didn't. Elias watched helplessly as the floor beneath him began to crumble and reform.
Finally, one part of his body seemed to work; his vocal cords did, allowing Elias to scream.
.
And screaming was all he could do as he fell into the darkness that the crumbling floor left.
Elias's terror wasn't there for long, though. It was actually rather short-lived. Not so long after, the pitch-dark place that Elias had fallen into began reforming, taking the shape of something new.
A city—the pitch-dark place was becoming a city.
It wasn't the alleyways; no, this was a nicer city, somewhere only the most decorated of beings would reside.
It had been at least a minute before the city was made, and at least two since his feet had felt solid ground beneath him.
Finally, Elias was allowed some time to breathe.
[Elias] "–––––"
In the dark place he could only describe as a void, Elias was devoid of oxygen. Now that he was on land, he gasped loudly, trying to savor every bit he could get.
[Elias] "What the… hell."
Between words, Elias sucked in air, still clearly lacking oxygen.
Finally, Elias caught his breath and was able to scan his surroundings. There were crowds of people; each one looked incredibly wealthy. His earlier suspicion was correct—he was indeed in an important city.
To someone who lived in the alleyways, these people were relative to royalty. That is why we call them beings.
Their wealth expanded vastly, but they lacked something simple to be considered a fellow human. What they were missing was rather simple, really—it was humanity.
These beings had the anatomy of a human, sure, but they didn't act like humans.
In Elias's eyes, humans were desperate. They were messy. They were imperfect. After his life as an alleyway rat, he came to such a belief.
These wealthy men and women—if you could even call them that—were leisurely, they were clean, and most importantly, they were perfect.
No human being could be perfect; it was something that someone told him a while ago.
Elias began walking toward the crowd. At first, his steps were timid; among royalty, shouldn't he have more decorum while he walked?
The thought did stumble Elias for a while, but his own desperation to figure out where he was drowned that sense of restraint.
[Elias] "Excuse me, sir."
He tried tapping the man on his shoulder, but to his shock, his hand went through the man.
Elias flinched back in shock, passing through another person.
[Elias] "W-what?"
Stunned, Elias stood still. There was no mistaking it; he had gone through someone. Was he dead?
Again, Elias tried touching somebody, but his hand kept passing through them.
[Elias] "A ghost…"
It was the only conclusion Elias could come to. Sometimes, in his days as a memory dealer, wealthy clients would express their fear about such things lurking in the alleys.
Every time, Elias would brush it off—sometimes even scoff at his buyers—because such a thing existing seemed impossible.
Right now, it didn't seem too impossible. Actually, it seemed to be the only probable conclusion he could come to.
Deep in his thoughts, Elias wasn't able to notice a minor change in the crowd—the crowd was beginning to split around him.
His pupils widened. It wasn't splitting around just him; there was another directly ahead of him.
What he saw there made his blood run cold. It was an anomaly; what he saw shouldn't even exist.
[Elias] "Wha–"
A clear voice rang from directly in front of him.
[???] "Hello, Elias. I'm glad we finally met."
The irregularity he was staring at was himself.