Kayden opens his eyes.
The ceiling is familiar. Wooden beams. Warm light that comes from nowhere. His ceiling. His house. His void.
He blinks once. Twice.
"Where was I?"
The thought slides away before he can catch it. Something about... a ship? A woman in green?
He knows the nightmares of naked women he gets often. Never women in green robes. He files it away and sits up. Runs a hand through his ash-colored hair. It's the same. Messy. Soft. Unbothered.
He's in his bedroom. Standing now, though he doesn't remember standing. His gray sweater hangs loose over the black beneath. His feet know the way to the living room without being told.
The sky-blue sofa waits. He lies down.
In his hand—when did he pick it up?—a rectangle of dark chocolate. Perfect. It always is.
"It remembered being perfect," he says to no one. His voice is quiet. An instrument never raised. The words mean nothing. They mean everything. He doesn't think about it.
The TV glows across the room. Pure white. Blank. Showing something only he can see. He stares. The chocolate melts on his tongue. Regrows. Melts again.
He remembers it took one month for the world to turn into something that cannot be described. He doesn't care. He has this.
Time passes. He doesn't count it.
Then—a thought. Faint. From somewhere not quite inside his head:
Wasn't I just somewhere else?
He frowns. Just slightly. Just for a moment.
The chocolate disappears from his grasp. He stands up slowly and over to the window.
The void stares back. Empty. Absolute. His only.
Then he hears a bang.
The house shakes. Kayden hits the floor. Pain blooms in his knees, his palms—real, sharp, present.
A voice rasps from everywhere and nowhere: "Flesh, I must devour."
Footsteps. Loud. Ringing in his ears. He tries to stand—can't. Blood spills from his mouth, hot and copper-sweet, coating the floor in red. He coughs and crawls. His fingers leave smears on the wood.
A figure steps out from the shadow behind the sofa. Tall. Dark. Red cape the color of closed wounds. Its eyes burn crimson, painting the room in hungry light.
The air thickens. Metallic.
Kayden pushes himself up and turns to look over his shoulder. What he sees is a thing, less a man and more a conflict of shadows. Tattered. It's hungry and wrong.
Kayden's bloody lips twist.
A chuckle escapes him. Soft. Genuinely amused.
"You remember terrifying me," he says, meeting those red eyes. "I don't."
The creature roars. Glass shatters. Long hands emerge from the cape—claws growing, extending, reaching. It leaps.
Kayden watches it come.
Fast, he notes. But not fast enough.
The claws swing. Cleave his face in half.
He's already gone. Only an afterimage remains for less than a split second.
Floating in the void now, watching from outside. The creature stands confused in the room, clutching air where a head should be.
Kayden raises a hand. A silver spear forms itself from nothing, solid and gleaming. He throws and it pierces the creature's chest. Stops mid-way.
The thing turns. Looks behind itself. Sees nothingness as the house simply vanishes under Kayden's command.
Then he speaks. Not loud. Not close. The voice comes from everywhere—from the void itself, from the space between the creature's thoughts, from somewhere deeper than sound.
"Look."
A pause. The void breathes.
"Out."
The creature spins.
Kayden floats fifty feet away. Arms loose. Face empty. Watching.
Behind him, the house hangs in darkness—his house, his domain, his perfect terrible home.
He flicks his wrist.
The house moves.
Not flies. Not falls. Simply translates across the void like it was always meant to be there, always meant to be here, exactly where the creature now floats. Kayden doesn't throw it. He places it. Gently. Precisely. With all the force of a collapsing star dressed in wood and memory.
The house meets the creature.
Crash isn't the right word. Crash implies sound, impact, something breaking. This is just contact. The house arriving. The creature accepting. Wood and shadow and red cape folding into one another like they were always meant to fit.
Kayden watches for a moment. Lets the silence settle.
Then he exhales. Lifts a hand. Curls his fingers.
The house reforms around him. He's in the bedroom now. Standing on the bed. The creature phases through the wall, leaps, pins his hands to the wood behind him.
Predictable.
A third arm grows from his chest. Smacks the creature's face. Once. Twice.
The thing pauses. Confused. Good.
It roars in his face—mouth opening wide, dozens of pointy fangs drenched in maroon. It lunges forward, bites down on the third arm, tears it off.
Chocolate gushes out. Brown. Warm. Flooding. Coating the creature, the bed, the floor.
It lunges back, startled.
Kayden steps forward. Touches its cape with one finger.
The creature freezes.
"Chocolatify," Kayden says. "Right now."
The thing turns to liquid. Pure brown chocolate pours across the room, pooling, spreading, covering everything.
But the eyes remain.
Two red orbs, floating where a head used to be, pulsing with hunger.
Kayden raises his hand. A bubble forms around him.
The eyes begin to glow. Brighter. Hotter. A crimson verdict that incinerates the room's geometry—shape and color and depth devoured by light.
The bubble weakens. Cracks.
Then a snap. Like fingers breaking silence.
Kayden blinks.
He's floating in the void. Alone. The house is gone. The creature is gone. Just him and the endless Not.
He shakes it off. Makes the house appear beneath him. Lands on the roof.
A voice comes from behind. Smooth. Harmonic. A glass bell struck in a distant hall.
"You were so close to being turned into fuel."
Kayden turns.
A woman stands before him. Dark green robe from crown to floor—perfectly sculpted, seamless, swallowing her form and face. No hint of features. Just serene, impenetrable green.
In her gloved hands, two red orbs pulse once, twice, then fade to nothing.
Kayden tilts his head. His eyes are detached. But something beneath them stirs. Curiosity. The first thing in a long time.
He reaches out with his perception. The omni-directional awareness that usually gives him everything at once. It slides off her. Slippery. Refusing to focus.
All he catches is her hair. White. Cascading past her hips. A river of moonlight.
"Kayden," she says calmly. "You are offered. You have full right to decline."
He lets out a sigh. Shoves his hands in his pockets.
"Who are you?"
Silence.
Then she speaks. No hesitation. No explanation. Just the offer, delivered flat, like she's done this before.
"You follow me. I keep scavengers out of your house."
Kayden waits. She offers nothing else.
"Okay."
They stand there. He doesn't move toward her. Doesn't offer his hand. Just... waits.
The void shatters anyway. Light pours through—white, absolute, the color of blank pages. The house dissolves around them.
Then silence.
Then somewhere else.