Chapter 5 — The Choice
1504 Words
Darkness swallowed everything.
Not a blackout. Not one of those moments where your eyes adjust after a while.
No—this was the corridor darkness.
The endless, thick, breathing dark that existed beyond dreams.
The kind that felt like it was pressed against my skin, trying to seep inside me.
I couldn’t see.
Couldn’t hear.
Couldn’t breathe properly.
My heart pounded so loud it felt like the only real sound left in existence.
Then—
A hand gripped my shoulder.
Not violently.
Not like the shadow that wanted to drag me.
This touch was firm, urgent, desperate.
“Move,” a voice whispered.
His voice.
My other self.
The dream version.
The one who tried to warn me.
I stumbled forward blindly, and his hand guided me through the dark.
The ground under my feet wasn’t my room anymore.
It was shifting, humming, trembling like the surface of a giant creature.
No walls.
No ceiling.
Just an infinite stretch of nothingness and faint echoes of my own breath.
“Where—where are we?” I choked out.
He didn’t answer immediately.
His footsteps didn’t echo like mine.
They were silent.
Almost like he wasn’t touching the ground at all.
Finally, he said:
“This is the place you fall into when you stop dreaming.”
“The corridor?” I whispered.
He shook his head.
“The space behind it. The real one. The one the shadow comes from. The place it wants to trap you.”
My stomach dropped.
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re not supposed to,” he said, grip tightening. “You weren’t meant to see any of this.”
“Then why am I here?”
His voice lowered.
“Because it chose you.”
---
1. The Invisible Path
A faint glow pulsed far ahead of us—pale, greyish, moving like fog around a lantern.
As we walked, the dream-version kept glancing behind us, like something was following.
Something hungry.
“You don’t have much time,” he said. “It’s close.”
“What is it?”
“The shadow," he replied. “The thing pretending to be your reflection. It’s not me. It’s not human. It’s not even a double.”
“Then what is it?”
He exhaled shakily.
“A replacement.”
The glow grew brighter as we approached it, revealing a thin path stretching across a bottomless pit.
Made of light.
Soft, shimmering light that rippled like water.
He stepped onto it first.
“It can’t follow us here. Not while I’m with you.”
I hesitated. My legs felt like jelly.
“What happens if I fall?”
His voice turned cold.
“You don’t get back.”
I stepped onto the path.
Light rippled under my feet like a living thing.
We moved quickly, his hand on my arm, guiding me through the endless darkness.
“What does it want from me?” I asked.
He didn’t look at me.
“It wants your place. In the waking world. In the loop. In every timeline it can reach.”
“Why me?”
He flinched.
That tiny reaction scared me more than anything.
“Because your mind… is different,” he said quietly. “Your fever didn’t weaken you. It opened you. Made you visible.”
“To who?”
“To everything that lives here.”
We kept moving.
The dark behind us began to pulse, like a giant heartbeat.
It was coming.
---
2. The Truth of the Loop
The path widened slightly, and for the first time I could see him properly.
He looked like me—
same eyes, same posture, same everything—
except he wasn’t breathing.
His chest never rose.
Never fell.
“Why don’t you breathe?”
He didn’t answer at first.
Then:
“I’m not alive the way you are.”
My throat tightened.
He wasn’t human.
He wasn’t a ghost.
He was something created by the dream.
“Then why are you helping me?”
He stopped walking and looked directly at me.
“When you fall asleep,” he said slowly, “your mind creates a version of you to walk the dream.”
“That’s you?” I whispered.
He nodded.
“I exist only when you sleep. I vanish when you wake. But during the loop—” he paused, jaw tightening— “I got stuck. The dream didn’t release me. It kept me. It kept creating new loops.”
I tried to breathe through the terror growing in my chest.
“You’ve been trapped… for how long?”
He looked away.
“Time doesn’t exist here like it does for you. But long enough to know I’m not supposed to exist anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
He stepped closer.
“When the loop resets, a new version of me is created. But I didn’t disappear. Something blocked the reset. Something kept me alive.”
My voice trembled.
“The shadow?”
He nodded once.
“It used me as bait. It kept me here so you’d dream again. So you’d follow my voice. So you’d open more doorways. Fever made everything easier.”
My skin crawled.
“So everything that happened… it planned?”
“Not planned,” he corrected softly. “Desired.”
The darkness behind us trembled.
Then roared.
I clutched my ears.
“What was that?!”
“It found another doorway.”
He grabbed my wrist.
“We have to run.”
---
3. The Thing with No Face
We ran across the path of light, the darkness shaking violently around us.
Something was breaking free.
Something massive.
Something angry.
It wasn’t just chasing.
It was hunting.
Behind us, a shape surged through the darkness—so large it blocked out the faint glow.
A tall, stretched figure.
Long arms.
A head tilted too far to one side.
No eyes.
No face.
Just a breathing absence.
And its breath—
HAAA-HUUUH
HAAA-HUUUH
—shook the entire corridor.
“Don’t look at it!” the dream-version shouted.
I didn’t want to.
But I did.
And instantly—
My foot slipped.
I fell sideways toward the endless pit.
His hand shot out, grabbing my arm.
“Sarthak—DON’T LET GO!”
“I’m trying!”
The shadow lunged forward, its fingers stretching unnaturally, reaching for me—
The dream-version yanked me up onto the path just in time.
“MOVE!”
We sprinted, the path crumbling behind us as the creature’s breath dissolved the light.
“It’s destroying the path!” I screamed.
“It wants you to fall,” he replied, breathing hard even though he didn’t need to.
“Why?!”
“Because if you fall,” he said, eyes filled with something close to grief,
“you become like me.
A dream-being.
A shadow piece.
Trapped.”
The light ahead split into two paths.
He stopped.
“This is it.”
“This is what?!”
“The choice.”
---
4. The Two Paths
The first path glowed brighter, steady, humming warmly.
The second flickered violently, one step lit, the next nearly breaking apart.
“What are these?” I whispered.
He turned to me.
“One leads back to your world.”
“What about the other?”
His expression darkened.
“The other leads deeper into this realm. Where the shadow wants you.”
I swallowed hard.
“And you? Which path do you take?”
He looked down.
“I can take neither.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not alive,” he whispered. “I’m a moment. A fragment of you. I exist only because the loop was broken. Once you leave, I fade.”
That hurt more than I expected.
“So you’ll die?”
“I was never supposed to live.”
The shadow roared behind us, dragging itself closer.
“Choose,” he said urgently. “Please.”
My body shrieked with panic.
“How do I know which is real?”
“You don’t,” he said gently. “You feel it.”
He took my hand and placed it over my heart.
“Listen to everything you are. Everything you fear. Everything you hope. The path that responds—”
He pointed at the brighter one.
“—that one belongs to the living.”
“But what if it’s a trick?”
He smiled sadly.
“If the shadow wanted to trick you… it wouldn’t be behind us. It would be in front.”
The darkness surged.
It was nearly upon us.
“Sarthak,” he said quietly,
“this is your only chance.”
I looked at the two paths.
One flickered in chaos.
The other glowed like a heartbeat.
I stepped forward—
—and chose.
The moment my foot touched the bright path, the world tore open in a blast of white light.
The dream-version’s voice faintly echoed:
“Run, Sarthak…
before it learns your name.”
- Writer
