"—The seal was blessed to bind a whisper. They shattered it… and gave it a voice.—"

A voice. He couldn't tell whose.

Opium's heart was already going before the rest of him caught up.

'Where the fuck am I?'

Consumed in darkness, he came up gasping, or tried to. The breath snagged somewhere in his chest and turned into something small and ugly. Not a scream. He wouldn't dare scream.

Or she might hear.

'Wait, did she…'

He didn’t finish the thought. His brain had already raced on, skipping to the TV, the game, the loading screen, finding nothing that made sense.

His back ached and his body groaned. The space felt warm on his body and he noticed a pressure in his ears. His pulse was hammering up into his throat, heavy and fast, like it had forgotten how to stop. Each inhale came up short as if something was sitting on his chest.

‘What the hell happened?’

He was in complete darkness. Not a crack of light.

'Am I still in this black void? How-is any of this real?'

Something pressed against his back. His heels. The back of his skull.

'Did I hit the bottom of this place?'

"I pressed X to boot this weird-ass game. Then it's like, a whole vacuum start suckin' me into the TV, and then… here?"

"Did the game suck me in?"

He raised his shaking hands up. Stone, close enough to touch without reaching. When he tried to stand, his head quickly met the ceiling.

"Ouch—what the…?"

His arms hit the walls before he could fully extend them.

Fear and curiosity twisted together as he lay there, feeling every boundary. He dragged his hands along the space around him, commanding his numb limbs to explore every inch. Familiar objects crinkled as he shimmied. His fingers pressed against the spot where his head had struck, then reached outward, stretching as far as the cramped darkness allowed.

Rough, solid stone on every side.

The space was barely wider than his body, tight and unyielding. Too long, too narrow, and too low.

‘A stone coffin?’

The thought alone made his chest tighten.

"How did I even get here. Wasn't I pulled in."

"What the fuck is going on?!"

A familiar voice came once again.

[NEW PLAYER, PLEASE COMPLETE REGISTRATION]

‘What the hell!’

This voice echoed like a warning. It wasn’t near him, or anywhere physical but inside his head and out, as if it was spoken from reality itself.

“Hello?! Hellooo! Help I’m stuck! Help me out! Hellooooo!” Opium shouted, waiting.

He frowned at the silence.

“What the fuck was that.”

Then something else pulled at his attention.

Each breath he drew demanded more than the last.

His breathing hitched. Panic began to rise.

Hoping this was a coffin to get out of, he slammed his palms against the stone above him and pushed.

Nothing.

His lungs were working harder for less and less.

He shoved again. Not up, but to the side. Planted his feet and pushed, hoping to shift it, slide it, anything. Just a sliver of air.

The stone lid remain still. Doubting if this was even a coffin at all.

His arms trembled. His breath scraped in his chest. Heat rushed through him, anger flaring up just to smother the terror clawing at his insides.

"That's it?! I get sucked into some video game hell just to die!?"

Every breath felt like dragging oxygen through a straw.

His vision was failing. The edges of his thoughts began to rot away, slipping loose, dissolving into nothing.

'Fuck that! I ain't die like this!'

He let go of every thought, every fear, every memory, and clung to a single command.

Push.

Plucking his arms, he drove himself into the lid one final time. Every muscle locked. His legs anchored. His back bowed violently against the stone. Pain detonated through him. He felt something in his arms crack. His spine screamed.

Still nothing.

His strength began to drain away and his arms started to give. Pressure was stirring up in his lungs.

And with it, his fate began to seal.

As soon as his arms were about to retreat, the stone twitched and slipped a fraction to the side. With his vision nearly gone and his consciousness slipping, he felt it. A change.

The sensation flooded Opium's fading mind with a last, desperate spark of hope.

It sharpened him. Just for a moment.

One final surge of clarity before he drifted toward the mental abyss.

He threw everything into the stone. His arms, his back, his legs, the scream building in his chest.

'I ain't dying!'

The pressure in his lungs grew with a disturbing weight.

He arms pushed slightly more to the side and felt a greater change as something wafted across his face.

Air.

A thin, vertical streak of dim red light cut through the darkness.

His mouth moved on its own. Dragging in a massive, violent gasp, like a corpse being torn back into its body.

Arms collapsed by his head, no longer able to hold themselves up.

He lay there in the coffin, motionless, chest heaving, lungs wheezing, as sensation slowly bled back into him.

'Wh… what?'

All he could do was stare at the dim streak of light, locked on it for a long moment.

The sunken eye kid chuckled.

"I… I did it…"

"I fucking… did it! screw you… bitch!"

For a while he just lay there, breathing, letting time pass.

——

After he rested for what seemed like an eternity, he continued to push the lid away.

Disheartened that the lid was still extremely heavy.

The process was agonizingly slow. But for the first time since waking up, he had something he hadn't had before.

Time.

He got there eventually. After a while and a few breaks, Opium finally got the grainy stone lid to a point where he could crawl out of it.

He hooked his arms over the edge and let his body do the rest, dragging himself out of the low coffin.

"Finally."

His arms were quivering. He let them. He just lay their on the floor for a second, chest still heaving, the air tasting less rewarding, but breathing without fighting for it was he cared about.

He slumped himself on the side of the stone coffin then looked around. Pressing his back on the stone coffin that once entrapped him.

"This is not the abyssal void I was imagining," he murmured, surveying his surroundings.

"I suppose the graphics finally loaded in." He whispered with a nervous chuckle.

The air hit him first. Warm, ancient, and dead, carrying the dust of bones older than anything he'd ever known.

He took in the small chamber around him. It was closer to a burial tomb than any ordinary room. The red sliver of light he had noticed earlier revealed itself as a flickering torch near the entrance, its glow weak and unstable. It wasn't going to last.

The dying torch cast a wavering amber glow across a massive iron door. Its surface was as intricately wrought as the coffins, Gothic patterns carved deep into the charcoal-black metal.

Stone caskets rested throughout the chamber, carved with more care than anything Opium had seen outside a museum. Some sealed. Some open. One had modern trash in it.

What truly chilled him was the walls. They weren’t stone.

They were skulls.

Human skulls, stacked from floor to ceiling, fused together like bricks in some grotesque cathedral. All were yellow with age. Some were cracked. A few still had teeth.

Thousands of empty eye sockets stared outward.

He listened. The chamber wasn't silent. He thought it was the torch at first, but the sound was coming from the skulls.

He stopped breathing.

"They're whispering."

“They're actually whispering.”

"These fuck ass walls! Definitely not creepy."

The whispers all blurred together, too many to follow, Creating a low hum of inaudible words.

Now that he realized it, that is all he could hear.

He turned slowly, taking in the skulls, the ancient tombs, the torchlight, the door, the rectangular room.

Trying to adjust to his new realm.

He couldn't figure out what bothered him more, that the room was wrong in ways he couldn't list, or that some part of him could feel it. Like every aspect of the world was slightly shifted. As if reality had slipped a fraction off its axis."

'Okay. TV. Loading screen. And then I was. Here? Wherever here is.'

"I'm far too sober for this to be drugs."

The logic kept slipping. He tried to catch it, organize it into something that made sense, and it kept slipping.

"The only thing logical is that I'm actually in the game. Can that really happen!"

'Even if that's true, how the hell can I get back. Maybe play and finish the game? The voice I heard was prolly part of it.'

The joy of being stuck in a game lasted the smallest second. Then he realized which type of game he is in.

A disturbing world. Grim atmosphere. A harsh progression system, unforgiving living conditions, relentless trials, impossible bosses. The list went on and on. The more he thought about it, the more his heart sank.

"Buddy." He called, quietly, like someone making sure the other person hadn't left.

I didn't have any words. I'd had years to find them, and I still didn't.

"Buddy. You've been quiet for a loudmouth."

The silence between us settled into the room like it belonged there.

The room held its quiet, broken only by the unsettling hum of the skulls.

Too quiet, as if he could hear heavy footsteps outside of the door.

He listened closely.

Nothing. Just the skulls.

He listened harder. Past the hum, even the torch crackling. But there was no footsteps.

"Must be my imag—"

Something pounded the door. The crash of screeching metal rang through the chamber, hard enough to feel in the floor. Leaving the black metal door warped and cracked open.