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Immediately, they are swallowed by the suffocating ink in the atmosphere just as the door closes shut from behind them. The room is pitch black. There is nothing Vera can make out except absolute darkness. Holding her hand is Kaela, in a soft yet firm grasp. Her friend leads the way, while she trails behind, slightly doubtful of how they are going to find their seats when there is not a single ounce of light where they stand. With no one else to hold onto, Vera finds herself solely dependent on Kaela's familiar touch.
What a peculiar place, Vera thinks to herself, how did we manage to not trample over anybody's feet yet? There is no other sound in the room except for Kaela's soft breathing and the combination of their light footsteps. Vera can't shake off the undeniably eerie feeling that had crept up in her lungs and forced her to hold her breath the second she entered the room. "Kaela, did you find a seat yet?" Vera whispers to the darkness.
A faint shuffle of footsteps from behind her grabs her attention and Vera immediately stops in her place, accidentally slipping her hand away from her friend's grip. Her stomach drops and a small amount of panic rises in her throat. "Kaela, wait- where are you?" She blurts out to the absolute darkness. As predicted, nothing but silence replies to her.
The small hairs on the back of Vera's neck rises. She can feel the chills creeping upon her skin, inch by inch, as a barely perceptible drift descends from the entrance they came from. Her hands ball into fists, nails burying themselves into the sensitive flesh of her palms. A hardly audible whistle whizzes past her ears and hangs in the air like a warning sign. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. There's nothing to be afraid of...you just have to find Kaela. It's only the dark, she chants in her head. "Kaela?" Vera utters again, this time knowing that she would not get an answer.
Scratch voices echo in the back of her mind, soft and strange and unlike anything she's ever heard before. Her heart pounds erratically in her ribcage and the metallic taste of blood tinges her mouth as she bites down hard on her bottom lip. There are two distinctive noises that continue to speak from somewhere in the room- or perhaps somewhere in her head. One of the voices sounds as if millions of tiny crystal gems were rubbing together and falling all at once, while the other voice reminds her of glass shattering. They whisper into her ears. She can almost feel the crystals pour down one side of her neck while fragments of glass cut into her flesh on the other.
Fear crawls down her throat and slips into the rest of her body. Without thinking, she reaches out to find Kaela's hand, desperate for anything but complete emptiness. Ice-cold fingers gingerly meet hers. Frost bites at the tips of her fingers as she her hand is greeted with the unfamiliar touch of the unseen person's fingers. With a startled gasp, Vera retreats her hand and backs up until she crashes into a moving wall behind her. Glass prickles the exposed area at the base of her neck and arms. She whips her head back and tries to make out what she walked into. Her eyes strain against the thick veil of black, but no matter how hard they try, they are met with absolute nothingness.
