In/finite Veil Chronicles: Fragments of Paradox

Chapter Zero

All I could see was an all-consuming darkness, thick and impenetrable, suffocating my senses. And then --- that figure. Their hands coiled around my throat like iron shackles, squeezing the life out of me with a feral intensity. Who were they? My memory was a shattered mirror, fragments scattered beyond reach. All I knew—all I could trust —was the raw, chaotic cacophony of my five senses.

My eyes failed me first. The figure blazed with an iridescent radiance so intense it swallowed everything in its path, leaving me blinded, stumbling through the void. But as the searing light dimmed to a flickering halo, I began to discern the shape of their face no,  their eyes. They were alive, like twin galaxies locked in eternal dance. At first, I thought they shimmered with sapphire hues, sharp and piercing. But no closer now they glowed with the venomous purple of wisteria, deep and intoxicating, a color that whispered of death disguised as beauty.

Their scent hit me next. It was devastating, an aroma that tangled sweetness with the acrid tang of something  unholy. My head swam as it coiled around me, a hypnotic poison that clung to my mind like smoke in a burning room. I felt the saliva pooling in my mouth, bubbling over as my throat, raw and battered, struggled for air.

Those hands—God, those hands. They bore down on me with the crushing power of a bear's claw, unyielding and fierce. And yet, they trembled, betraying a strange fragility. They were soft too soft, almost silken, like they belonged to someone who had never known a day of labor. Were they a man's hands? Or a woman's? The question burned in the back of my fading consciousness, gnawing at the edges of my panic.

I clawed at the void for breath, my lungs screaming in desperate agony, but the figure's grip only tightened. My vision blurred, and an ominous ringing filled my ears, drowning out their voice a voice that spilled from their lips like venom, low and chilling, but indecipherable through the chaos in my head.

Then I saw it the glint of cold steel. With a slow, deliberate motion, their left hand reached for the scabbard at their hip. The blade sang as it slid free, the sound sharp enough to slice through my waning consciousness. It gleamed with a cruel, wicked beauty, promising an end I wasn't ready to meet.

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