Restart

Dear Asmodeus

       The door swings open with a squeak of the hinges, and I am faced with dead air on the other side. There is no one and nothing but darkness. I can see the light off into the distance through the twilight, far off that the light is barely visible. My head twists around to see again, the stock still home of Sterlo, and before me, a doorway leading into darkness. It frightens me, terrifies me beyond belief, and has my knees smacking together as they shake. This is like the time before, the gloom that consumed my dream. Why is it different this time? Why is there a doorway in Sterlo's home that leads into the dream I've been having, a fantasy that I felt like I've had before?

       My body wants me to stop prying, wants me to stop this pursuit and turn tail. It wants me to run from this dark abyss and pretend to have never have seen it, push it to the back of my mind. I want to; I want to turn and erase the image, yet my body refuses to listen to my command. Instead, I step forward, and through the door I go, which promptly shuts behind me and encases me with its crepuscule. I let out a frightful yell, trying to stop my legs from moving toward the light at the end of the room, but nothing I do and nothing I scream seems to stop them.

       My curious legs need to know; they have to see what is calling me. It feels the need to know what my mind has been trying to tell me.

       No, no, please. We don't know what is over there on the other side. We don't know what awaits us, what has been trying to dig its claws into us! We shouldn't be doing this; it will hurt us! It will hu—.

       The light is surrounded by murkiness and is nothing but a ball that looks almost like a bulb. It glows and stays floating in the air, hanging by nothing. What is it, and why does it shine so? Tentatively, I reach toward the glow, and my fingers slowly wrap around its circumference. It feels as though it's calling me...

       "Syntyche...Syntyche..."

       It repeats this over and over, a name that does not belong to me, yet it draws me in. I had heard this name before, listened to this voice call out its name like so. What is this?

       My hands grab the glowing globe and squeeze, and it explodes from between my fingers. Like a bomb, a shuddering shakes my body, and the blaze blinds me but only for a brief moment. Unlike before, when I open my eyes to check what the explosion did, I'm confronted with a strange scene. What seems to be a large tear, big enough for me to step through, the edges of the tear shinning a hint of that golden radiance. This... is this some sort of... portal?

       The other side is just as dingy, if not more so, as the luster from the edges of the tear softly illuminates my face. The fear etching itself into my soul, I step through with no hesitation. I can no longer go back, and the only way forward seems to be this rip. My foot taps against the blackened ground, echoing off into the dark distance. It sounds almost like a marbled floor. The slash does not move as I wiggle my body fully through as I expected it to, and the other side seems to be even sootier.

       Where am I, and why am I here?

       The air biting at me with its slight chill, a shiver rolls through my body, and my hands' grip my arms to try to maintain my warmth. I look around, trying to catch sight of the following area I should be heading to. The red dot catches my wandering eye with nothing but coldness and inky shadows beyond it. Not a thought to stagger over, I make my way to the fluorescence. The closer I step towards it, the more strange the red light seems. With the pulsing, almost dying appearance, the red light gets brighter and a deeper shade of red.

       I let out a gasp once I step before it, my shock stirring the fluids in my stomach, which makes a hand fly toward my mouth to cover it. "Is that... a bleeding heart?" I whisper into the air, shuddering at the grotesque sight. A metal rod stabs through the heart, poking out from each end of the throbbing organ, the bleeding a constant flow of red liquid that trails off the living object, dripping to the floor where a pool has already been formed. The heart, seemingly unfettered by the puncture, beats on with no trouble at all.