Nero woke with a gasp, like a man breaking the surface after too long underwater. His body jerked, desperate and disoriented. His mind lagged behind, sluggish. A scream built in his chest but collapsed under a crushing weight that settled behind his ribs.


    He blinked, his eyelids heavy as lead, each slow, deliberate motion sending a wave of pain knifing behind his eyes, sharp and relentless. His vision swam, and the world tilted at a nauseating angle, colors blurring and bleeding into one another.


    Above, the sky stretched in hues of bruised purple and dried blood, thick and unnatural. Swollen clouds churned, their undersides pulsing with a sickly violet glow. A black sun hung low on the horizon, hollow at its core, its eerie light bleeding out, casting twisted, restless shadows across the land.


    His fingers dug into damp soil, the coldness seeping into his skin. A shiver, colder than the soil itself, crept up his arms, the chill seeping into his bones. The world felt unsteady beneath him, shifting as if it might waver and fold into itself at any moment.


    Blades of tall grass framed his vision like prison bars, swaying in the wind that did little to stir the stagnant air. The silence pressed in, absolute. No birds chirped, no distant calls of life. Only the wind—restless, insistent—tugging at his hair, as if it too longed to escape.


    He forced himself upright, muscles trembling with effort, remembering strength his mind could not place. The world around him was wrong. Not just unfamiliar—but violated, as if some unseen force had twisted and corrupted its very essence.


    The air was thick with the stench of decay, of something deeper, something unnatural. It clung to his skin like an unseen film, seeping into his lungs with every breath. His heartbeat steady, but—off, like a missing note in a melody he couldn’t remember. A slow, hollow echo reverberated through his chest, like a second pulse buried beneath his own. He exhaled. The sound that left his lips felt foreign, as if it belonged to someone else.


    Why was he here?


    The thought flickered, weak and fragmented, dissolving the moment he reached for it. Desperately, he reached for a different memory—any memory—but found only emptiness. His past was void, his mind hollow. He reached into that void, his mind grasping for something, anything, but only found the cold, smooth surface of nothingness, like a hand plunged into an icy, bottomless lake. No faces, no names, nothing. Just absence.


    And then, a single thing surfaced. A Name. His name.


    Nero.


    The word rang through his mind, unfamiliar but absolute, like an echo of something long forgotten. It felt solid, real, a single thread linking him to existence. His name was Nero. That much he knew. But there should have been more.


    Nero’s chest tightened, his breath coming in quick, uneven gasps. His heart pounded wildly, each beat echoing harshly in his ears. His vision blurred, edges darkening, a suffocating fog creeping in. The emptiness inside him twisted, pulling him deeper into the void. His hands trembled, fingers cold and unsteady, grasping at nothing.


    The absence burned. Like Shattered glass embedded in his mind, reflecting nothing but void where recollection south be, each shard a sharp, agonizing reminder of what he had lost.


    Then—


    "Finally awake, are we? How disappointing. I was hoping you''d died."


    The voice slithered through his consciousness, not heard with ears but felt within the marrow of his thought, a cold, insidious presence that invaded his very being. It threaded through the labyrinth of his broken mind, cruel, mocking, and intimate in its intrusion.


    Nero’s breath caught, a sharp, ragged gasp. He turned his head in every direction, searching for a source—but there was nothing. No presence, no echo. Just that voice, coiled deep inside him. His fingers twitched, instinctively reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there.


    “Ugh. Watching you flail is exhausting. Can we please get a move on before I lose what little patience I have left?”


    Nero swallowed, the dryness in his throat harsh. “Who are you?”


    His voice sounded distant, like it barely belonged to him, a hollow echo of his former self. His body tensed, bracing for an answer, for something to match the venom in the voice.


    “You know who I am,” the voice sneered, as if it could taste bitterness in Nero’s confusion, “Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten.”


    A flicker of something dark, buried deep within the shattered fragments of his mind, stirred. Recognition clawed its way forward, ragged and relentless . The voice wasn’t just familiar—it was intrinsic, woven into the fabric of his being. A part of him that he could never truly escape.


    This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    His fingers clenched until his knuckles whitened, and his eyes squinted as memories began to unravel, spiraling like dark tendrils.


    Sinthos.


    The name cut through his mind like a blade, sharp and undeniable, a wound that refused to heal. He couldn’t forget, even if he wanted to.


    This parasite in his soul. The shadow beneath his skin. His tormentor, his curse. The one thing he could never escape, the constant, gnawing presence that haunted his every thought.


    "Oh, It remembers me. How touching.” Sinthos dripped with venomous amusement. “Perhaps it will remember how to be useful next."


    Nero gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. The movement was more difficult than it should have been—every muscle screamed in protest, as though he’d been fighting for centuries, his body a battleground of forgotten conflicts.


    "Your weakness disgusts me," Sinthos hissed. "All that power festering inside you, and you can barely stand."


    Nero ignored him, clenching his hands. His body felt… wrong. His skin stretched too tight, his bones too heavy. His muscles ached, as if they recalled something his mind did not.


    "Tell me what you know," Nero demanded, his voice sharp, a razor edge to every word, as though cruelty were his native tongue.


    "I know you''re a failure," Sinthos replied, laughter skittering across Nero''s mind. "I know we''re not where we were, but not where we are. And even if I did know , I wouldn’t tell you. Your ignorance is one of my few remaining pleasures."


    Nero took a slow breath, willing his body to obey, forcing his muscles to respond. The strength, so familiar and yet so distance, surged through him. His legs trembled but held firm, a testament to his will. He surveyed the world around him—an endless field that stretched in all directions, the tall grass rippling like a golden ocean beneath the blackened sky. In the distance, jagged peaks broke through the sky, sharp as teeth, their outlines blurred by the distorted light.


    His gaze locked onto the mountains. They felt… important, a pull in his chest that he couldn’t explain.


    “The mountains, hmm? Not a bad choice,” Sinthos mused, its voice a cold laugh inside Nero’s skull.”Though I wouldn’t be so eager to reach them. You might get caught by them, somewhere between here and there.”


    Nero stiffened. “Them?”


    “You feel it too, don’t you? The wrongness of this place?” Sinthos paused, savoring the moment. “I would ask if it reminds you of that time, but I doubt you’d remember.”


    Nero felt it. The air was too still, the silence too deafening. It wasn’t just emptiness—it was anticipation, a palpable tension that hung in the air like a predator waiting to strike.


    He took a hesitant step forward, his feet dragging through the tall grass. The wind stirred around him, but it offered no comfort, only a sense of unease. Every breath he took felt heavier, as if the air itself was suffocating him.


    The field stretched endlessly in all directions, but now—something shifted. Not in sight, but in feeling. The grass no longer moved in harmony with the wind. It swayed strangely, parts of it moving out of sync, as if something unseen passed through it.


    “You know it won’t be that simple.” Sinthos whispered, the words scratching the back of his mind. “It never is.”


    Nero clenched his fists, pushing the voice aside, a futile attempt to silence the insidious presence, and forced himself to move forward, each step a deliberate act of defiance. The mountains looked on the horizon, impossibly distant. The longer he walked, the further they seemed to stretch away, as if the land itself was playing tricks on him.


    The air thickened, pressing in around him like an unseen weight. Each breath felt labored, not from exertion but from something else—something wrong. The ground beneath his feet wasn’t solid. Not really. It pulsed beneath his steps, like a faint, sluggish heartbeat buried deep beneath the soil.


    The silence wasn’t just absence. It was something waiting. Holding itself back.


    Then came a sound. Faint at first—a soft, distant buzzing, like the distant hum of insects. But with every step, it grew louder, more urgent. It thrummed under his skin, crawling into his bones, a maddening drone that echoed the growing unease within him.


    Sinthos chuckled, a low, knowing sound that made Nero’s teeth clench.


    "Do you feel it yet?" the voice murmured, a chilling whisper that seemed to emanate from the very air around him. "The way this place breathes? The way it watches?"


    Nero’s hands curled into fists, his knuckles white against his pale skin. He kept walking, each step defying the fear that threatened to consume him.


    He glanced over his shoulder, half-expecting something to emerge from the grass, a shadowy figure or a monstrous form, but there was nothing. Only the endless field, swaying in the wind like the tentacles of some vast, patient entity.


    “You’re alone,” Sinthos whispered, his voice like cold water, creeping down his spine. “No one else. Just you… and me..”


    Nero’s stomach turned, a sick realization pressing at the back of his mind. The words, venomous yet strangely comforting, settled into him like a stone dropped into water. But even in the darkness of that truth, something else lingered. A feeling that there was something out there, watching. Waiting.


    Then, the buzzing stopped.


    The wind stilled.


    The world itself seemed to freeze, holding its breath.


    A shiver ran down his spine, the hairs on the back of his neck standing alert. And then, a sound—soft at first, like a leaf brushing against the ground, but unmistakable


    He wasn’t alone. The realization struck him with the force of a physical blow, a cold, hard truth that sent a wave of adrenaline surging through his veins. He wasn’t alone, and whatever was out there, was coming for him.