CHAPTER 59: 56: IT...?

It had been waiting for him.

It had been waiting for him.

For him...

Edward choked back a sob, his eyes still glued to the darkness that was staring at him.

All of his existence was screaming at him to get up. To move his legs and get as far as away from it as possible. To run.

Alas, fear reigned stronger than instinct this time.

But there was still a morsel of reasoning left in his mind, tearing apart the panic to make him get up and flee.

Then it spoke.

"You’re strong."

Silence.

Then—

A shriek, laced with pain so immense that the world itself seemed to pity its owner for a moment.

Edward clutched his head, his pained voice echoing over and over again in the darkness as an unbearable pain descended upon him, clawing apart his mind.

The searing pain took over him, blood dripping from his lips and nose as his mind broke down bit by bit.

It was unbearable.

It felt like someone was burning him alive.

Trembling like the dying man he was, he crumbled into the ground, eye’s rolling into the back of his head as his convulsing body slowed marched towards death.

It was scary.

Edward was going to die.

It was so painful.

The agony was too much.

It hurts so much.

It hurt... so much.

It hurt.

It hurt.

It hurts.

"IT HURTS!!! STOP PLEASE I BEGYOU" He pleaded.

"MAKE IT STOP PLEASE."

"MAKE IT STOP PLEAS-" He cried at the top of his lungs, his voice almost unrecognizable from the strain he was putting on it.

Then Edward felt something in his neck pop, and when he tried to scream one more time, nothing other than silent air came out.

He clawed at his throat, his fingernails digging into his flesh as he struggled against the searing pain, his blood shot eyes trembling as it stared at the stealing.

His entire body twitched once, and a morbid crack ran through the room.

Then, someone snapped their fingers.

A vast, ancient silence enveloped the world.

And when he blinked again, Edward was suffocating under the titanic pressure all around him, lesser than the pain, his mind clear. Blinking his eyes open, he looked around, instinctively studying where he had fallen to.

There was a dull throbbing pain radiating from the back of his head, and his vision was still coming in blurry no matter how much he blinked.

From a first glance, it looked like he was in a moderately sized cave, illuminated by sharp glowing crystals, with mana particles floating around them.

There was a certain tension in the air along with the pressure, keeping Edward on edge.

He looked down at his hand, and noticing that there wasn’t anyone holding onto it.

Wasn’t Selene supposed to be with him?

’Wait.’

His eyes widened with terror when his mind caught up with time and he unknowingly let out a surprised yelp.

He convulsed just from the memory of the sheer agony he had just gone through, tears flowing out of his eyes when he recalled the pain that had just took hold of him.

Slowly, but surely, he turned his towards the familiar spot on the far end of the cave, his heart hammering to get out of his chest as the terror seized him once more.

His mind had immediately jumped towards the worst conclusion, but thankfully, or not—there was no eyes staring back at him this time.

It’s not like it helped with the panic though.

He was still very much rattled and crying, and hiccupping from the fear as he struggled to calm down.

It also didn’t help that his friends were nowhere to be seen.

"Guys?" He mumbled weakly between sobs, his teary eyes scanning the cave for any of the signs of his companions he had seen earlier.

"Help...me..." He choked, wheezing at the bile that was rising to his mouth.

The beautiful mana particles he had seen earlier were all gone, replaced by motes of a darkness so vile that looking at it made his stomach churn.

There was a small wind flowing in from somewhere, the cold air of the cave surrounding him like a protective barrier from the heat that wafted towards him.

Then came the whisper.

No, the whispers.

Through the noise of his own muffled sobs, Edward felt like he could hear something that resembled a large amount of whispers. Growing louder and louder by moment, along with it intensity of the heat emanating from the unknown direction was also starting to scale itself.

Right as they were about to grow so loud as if to swallow Edward whole, like a mirror breaking down, all of it crumbled into silence—Into nothing. Not just the voices, but the cave he was in, the heat that was trying to overpower him, everything, encasing him in a cocoon of nothingness.

Then, like thunder striking on a peaceful night, a calm voice spoke.

"How are you here?"

Edward almost jumped out of his skin, shielding his face from whatever had just spoken to him.

"Who are you!? What do did you do to them!?" He screamed at the voice without even meaning to, his voice a shaky mess from the terror.

He tried to look between his arms, through his blurry vision at the face that was looking down at him.

It looked like a regular old man with greying hair, his expression rather calm for standing in front of someone that looked like they had been scarred for life.

The old man slightly raised his eyebrows, a rather vigorous spark of curiosity igniting in his eyes as he studied Edward.

Edward meanwhile, was still struggling to control himself, and to calm the panic that was clawing at him.

The old man waited for a long time—to the point that it felt like an eternity—for Edward to take control of himself, his eyes studying the rattled boy.

Then, when the sobs finally started to die down a little, he crouched next to him, before finally speaking.

The darkness around them—no, the world itself shook when the man finally answered Edward’s question.

"That’s a rather interesting question."