Satya ran.
He ran as fast as he could.
All his mind could think about was running.
But that thing sounded unnatural.
Its footsteps were inconsistent.
Satya looked back and saw that it was far away.
The next second, he looked ahead to see the path before him.
He no longer heard any footsteps, so he thought the thing was still far away.
Then he looked back again—
and to his horror, the thing was suddenly near him.
Satya made a narrow turn around a tree and looked back to see the thing moving.
It moved in an inhuman way.
Sometimes slow.
Sometimes fast.
The sounds of its footsteps and breathing never matched the way it moved.
It felt wrong.
But Satya didn't stop running.
The sky above was scattered with clouds drifting in the wind,
a golden glow illuminating them.
It was just like Satya's mind—
a scattering of thoughts with only one thing within them.
Run.
Run away from whatever that thing was.
He was afraid of the thing chasing him.
Afraid of the warning the Shadow had given him.
The plains stretched endlessly beneath his feet.
They were flat and not flat at the same time.
Hidden dips spread throughout the land, while raised roots tried to trip Satya again and again, forcing him to constantly change his stride.
During all this, the thing continued to chase Satya with unhurried certainty.
It seemed real and unreal at the same time.
Its features constantly changed.
At one moment, its face resembled that of an old woman.
At the next, that of a child.
Its steps were inconsistent with its speed, as if reality itself was merely an illusion before it.
Sometimes it didn't even walk.
It simply appeared closer.
As if the image from the last moment had only been a trick of Satya's imagination.
Satya's own mind seemed to be playing tricks on him.
In the distance between two trees, Satya saw an illusory figure.
He looked back again—
the figure had disappeared.
A chilling fear gripped his heart.
Then he focused on the figure once more.
He imagined it to be the thing.
And to his horror—
it was.
Near it, the branches swayed without any wind.
Its surroundings seemed as if reality itself was breaking apart.
Suddenly, Satya noticed something beside him.
An illusory figure of smoke moving behind him.
He looked back at the figure—
but at that moment, his foot slipped.
He fell into a shallow hollow.
Satya didn't try to regain his balance.
Instead, he dropped low and rolled through the depression.
He let the tall grass swallow him, hiding him from whatever was chasing him.
He hoped—
imagined—
that the thing wouldn't notice him and would simply walk past.
So that's what it did.
It passed nearby.
Satya hid within the grass for a long time.
Until the sun neared the horizon and the sky slowly became covered by the curtain of night.
Eventually, Satya stood and walked out of the hollow.
But to his terror—
the thing still lingered in the distance.
It had never left.
As if it had merely been waiting for Satya to emerge.
Satya looked at its back.
Its body was covered in translucent fog, endlessly shifting—
like a sketch being erased and rewritten over and over again.
Except this time, the canvas was reality itself.
Then it turned its head at an impossible angle and looked directly at Satya.
A smile stretched across its ever-changing face.
Then it opened its mouth to speak.
Just like before, Satya instinctively understood it was dangerous.
So he turned and ran toward a scattering of trees in the distance.
Except this time—
he was too late.
The moment his attention drifted from the thing—
it spoke.
A loud ringing echoed through Satya's mind.
A myriad of voices flooded his thoughts.
They whispered countless things at once.
His ears began to bleed.
His mind felt as if it were breaking apart.
Then, amidst the chaos, Satya heard something.
Something he instinctively understood he needed to hear in order to survive.
So despite the state of his mind, he focused on that sound.
Footsteps.
Those eerie, distorted footsteps.
Suddenly, Satya's entire being was overwhelmed with danger.
Yet his body refused to move.
Then his eyes noticed something in the distance.
The Shadow.
Another sound rang through his ears.
"RUN."
It was the Shadow.
Or perhaps only the memory of its voice.
But Satya obeyed.
He ran toward the scattering of trees in the distance.
He ran and ran.
His ears bled.
His mind shattered.
Yet he continued running, as if guided solely by the Shadow's voice.
Soon, he reached the trees.
They resembled a maze of twisted trunks and branches.
But Satya's mind was too broken to think.
Yet it still thought.
Satya ran around the trees, trying to shake off the thing.
But the thing always seemed to appear where Satya thought it would appear.
Then Satya suddenly stopped.
His mind still imagined him running ahead.
From the other side of a tree, the thing rushed past Satya and continued chasing the path his thoughts had created.
Then, as Satya's mind stabilized slightly, it realized—
Satya was standing still.
Satya finally understood.
That thing was following his thoughts.
The next moment, the thing seemed to realize it had been tricked.
So it turned around.
And ran.
This time, faster than ever before.
The distance between them shrank with every passing second.
Satya realized he could not outrun it.
So he made a resolute decision.
The moment the thing drew close to both him and the tree—
Satya chanted:
"Kasthagni."
At the next moment, the world seemed to drown in an ocean of flames.
And through that sea of fire, Satya leapt outward.
He looked back.
The tree was burning.
Burning in a way it was never meant to burn.
An endless blaze swallowed its surroundings.
Heat distorted reality itself.
Then Satya saw it.
The blurry figure of a human standing motionless within the fiery depths.
---
{Reality is breaking
in an ocean of shards.
A figure of a human,
just like a mirage.
It is erased and rewritten
across an endless stretch—
just like
a Human Sketch.}