Silent Shadows: Book Two - The River of Secrets

XVIII

CONTENT WARNINGS: Child suicide, psychological horror, mental torture, kit death, severe gore and child neglect and implied physical torture.

Iskra awoke with a start, finding herself abruptly returned to a state of regular consciousness. Returned to this personality. Alive and grounded in reality, laying down upon the grass, lying in confusion.

What's happening? Do I need to see that medic again?

A feeling of nausea rolled over her as she gazed around the landscape. Without seeing where she was going, she'd lead herself into a sparse woodland. The skies had begun to descend into darkness, it's colour splitting from bright blue to a gradient of azure and gold. Perhaps this would help her, she pondered as she lay motionless upon the ground, before beginning to drag herself back up. Perhaps it'd keep her from dropping down the tunnels in reality.

Her vision was suddenly consumed by a familiar spectre. The eye.  It simply opened once again, as the dimension of the forest collapsed to simply become what lidded this piercing stare. Iskra--no, whoever she was, immediately stepped away. Yet stepping away was impossible, the laws of being physical seemed to collapse too.

More eyes were opening, more holes in reality. Or perhaps just what her mind saw of it? No, this creature was becoming her psyche. Growing into a higher being, a swirl of eyes, wings, of light. 

Iskra screamed.

She howled out in terror at what she saw, as her visions began to grow beyond what she could even comprehend. She continued to screech in desperation, plunging toward what could not be endured, what no soul could feel. An abstract spiral of colours and the lingering feeling that it had sight, sight that saw through the deepest tunnels of her mind. Finally, it'd finally grown beyond what the living could know. This being was not colours, nor shapes. It was not even a being. No, this...thing, if it could be called that, had come from outside reality.

"N-NO! LEAVE ME ALONE!! NOOOOO!!!" she wailed out in desperation, as pain she'd never felt anything close to before was beginning to surge through her mind. I CAN FEEL IT IN MY HEAD. I FEEL IT IN MY HEAD. STAY AWAY! STOP IT!!

But her psychology was enveloped, and soon she saw nothing.

Darkness.

A infinite void, dizzying after experiencing such light.

"Screaming? Stop wailing, stupid!" There it was, her own voice. Coming from behind her. Or perhaps, for just a moment, from her own throat. She turned, and there it was, a mirror in the dark. A false object of similarity. No...this was a copy. A younger image of herself.

"Huh, why are you scared?" she hissed. "Come here. You better stop cowering, too!" 

A different snapshot of me, from another time. 

"Why are you so quiet, are you scared of the void?" 

The mirror spoke, and yet she felt it come from her own throat once again. They were moving closer, as though the void had drawn their souls together. She felt the hate the mirror was beginning to feel, she could sense her fear manifesting in the mirror's heart. No, they'd come close. Too close. And suddenly, a memory arose. These thought are not mine, I realize. But they're taking over. What is happening?

Pain once again surged through her mind. She, once again, screamed. And soon, a voice of a part of her mind she didn't think with was heard. "Don't bring me back," it whispered.

As she wailed in agony, she began to feel those repressed parts of herself arise, in tune with her own screams. She soon found herself dissociating from her own pained wails, as if they belonged to someone else. These thoughts weren't hers, these memories weren't her's. And they were burning her alive, searing her soul.