A veil of ominous darkness clung tenaciously to the edges of Cha Hyun-Su's eyesight.
He blinked and an oppressive thickness surrounded him, leaving him to question whether his eyes were still gently closed in the embrace of darkness. He felt the darkness press against his eyes, a tactile intrusion that felt like an insidious attempt to claim him, to weave tendrils of terror into the very fabric of his being. The darkness seemed hungry as it pushed into his perception, scratching and picking, as though it harboured an unsettling desire to provoke a bone-chilling dread.
Hyun-Su's body lay on what seemed to be a cold ground, icicles tickling his covered skin as if they were his enemies.
He felt paralysed, laying there and staring at the depths of the darkness, hating the inky sight more and more. He was never fond of it, the darkness. It always crept him out. It always made him feel like unseen eyes were fixated upon him, an intangible predator lurking in the obscure corners of his perception.
Abruptly, a gentle luminescence, soft yet imbued with a subdued intensity, shone upon his face.
Hyun-Su's eyes, after a period of being suck in the veiled shadow, gradually opened to the world once more.
He watched, still blinking as the luminescence light trailed down his still body, each limb ensnared by an invisible dance with paralysis. The light seemed to coax the shadows into a temporary retreat, revealing the allure of half his body bathed in its glow. His eyes were cast upwards, looking for the sorce of the light only to find nothing but looming darkness above him.
How had the light arrived and how it was able to stay, Hyun-Su didn't know.
He felt a presence, then.
It came somewhere from behind him like a haunting demon hiding in the shadows. He felt its presence threaten Hyun-Su's wellbeing and felt it grip onto his heart even though it wasn't close to him. It seemed to take the joy in watching a scared Hyun-Su, it seemed to feed off of his short yet anxious intakes of breath.
With a last blink towards the light, Hyun-Su slowly turned to face the presence, a realisation dawning upon him that the ice that had encased his body began to yield.
