The darkness pressed in.
Thick. Heavy. Alive.
Lyla stood motionless, her breath steady despite the wrongness that wrapped around her like unseen chains.
The voice inside her head was her own, but not hers echoed through the vast nothingness that surrounded her.
"You do not understand what you have become."
She clenched her fists, her claws flexing.
She did not like being told what she did and did not understand.
“I know exactly what I am.”
The darkness shuddered.
And the voice laughed.
It was not a sound meant for the living.
It crawled down her spine like cold hands, curling into the marrow of her bones.
"Then why do you fear it?"
Lyla did not move.
She did not flinch.
She did not give it the satisfaction.
Because she did not fear.
And if this thing thought it could break
