Shattered Legacies: Book 1, Holo Change

💠Chapter 10: Stepping closer💠

His footsteps echoed off the stainless seemingly marble walls creating the tunnel like hallway. Bouncing from the cold but smooth floor under his feet, the only thing that dared pummel the silence. Including his own breathing. It felt like he'd been walking for days. His legs felt tired, his body starting to burn from the inside like a lit match being placed on dry grass. Roasting away his energy, as if something inside of him were fighting against the call pulling him along like a wagon gently tugged by a string. And in turn fighting him as well, searing his flesh, squeezing his lungs, blurring his vision. His feet moving on their own, while his senses told him to stop. Following a siren song like voice that whispered words he couldn't understand. And as the inferno inside him tried to claw its way out, scratching at his chest from the inside, the blank canvas he navigated began to change.

Slowly, white fading into a mint green, giving the impression that he was making progress. Shaded from the glow reaching the surface of his chest with the feeling of claws tearing away with the heat. The droning call got louder, raising the intensity and sending a chill down his back. Like a pair of soft hands were grazing his face, cupping his cheeks in adoration, and then slowly being pulled back as if the presence was floating away in front of him. He nearly choked on the air, his body fighting to breathe. Legs shaking, it wailed again long and painful sounding, as though it were expressing the oppressive flames effect that he could not. A raging pushing hellfire, the air wrapping around his arms and legs like leather straps in attempts to keep him back, as the mint green darkened to the shade of an apple, and with it the light once more grew. Now creating a glare on the bottom of his face he just could see, and turning the fire feeling to boiling hot oil.

Something excruciating that was tossed straight at his chest from the inside, making him finally react to the agony. Screaming out in pain with a burst forward, his legs finally buckling under the weight and lack of energy left. And as if he'd just fallen from a cliff, his body sank. Seemingly disappearing through the hallway floor, as if it were made from liquid and falling deeper. The sight of where he'd just been becoming dimmer and dimmer through his exhausted blurred vision, surrounded by an abyss of black nothingness that glided over him like water. Giving him a small amount of relief as it seemingly took away the burning sensation holding him prisoner. And at the same time, causing the light from his chest to fade. Flowing up in small strings of mint tendrils like the smoke from burning incense, releasing into the void that swallowed him whole along with the particles that glittered for merely a moment, before being snuffed out.

Though his breathing became calm and and his pain evaporated, as he allowed himself to sink in no attempts to fight, something else started to creep in. Something slow, cold, holo. The voice now taking on a tone less like a guiding hand, and more like distant stance. The droning was deeper, with a reverb that stung his ears. The hands were grazing over where he'd felt claws, making the pain fade, but moving as though it were flicking up to get a dabble of his blood. It was a pain less physical, and more akined to the voice itself. The breathable liquid that enclosed him turning thick, sticky, it made his skin feel grimy. And then grew rough with a coldness, like pins and needles sticking his skin. Like he were sinking through snow. Causing his eyes to struggle to stay open. Tempted to drift away by the freezing abyss and the brushing gestures, to which he fought. Something else urging him to resist. The voice weak like his ability to move, but there all the same. Giving him a soft pair of hands on his shoulders, like someone trying to push him back up to the surface from below. And a plea blessing his ears with encouragement, sweet and familiar. He had to keep his eyes open. No matter what he started to feel. He had to stare into the open void. He didn't know why, but he knew he had to.

So he fought, struggling against the call of temptation. He forced his eyes to stay open like prying open a bear trap with a crow bar. The snow cold liquid turning to ice in response. As if to punish him or make it harder, his fingers and toes all feeling to freeze up. Making it hard for his hands to ball into fists as if he could grab his consciousness and hold on tight. The air being sucked from his lungs like a deflating balloon, his limbs locking up until he couldn't move even his eyelids. It was like his body was being turned to ice. And then, as the sweeter voice cooed a line of praise to him, his heart was run through thanks to what it was he was meant to see. Hidden within the emptiness a face began to outline itself. Though his vision was blurred, he could still make out a general shape. A pointed chin on a round head. Something thin and stingy draping down around it, falling from the void. Then a pair of splits that cracked themselves open and made heart stop completely as they brought forth a slithering voice all their own with the fuzzy shading he was only given a blink of a look at, before it all disappeared.