Yuuji awoke again—not with the feeling of being reborn, but with the sickening sensation of being torn from the very fabric of reality and stitched back together with something far less human. The darkness had a weight to it, a sense of expectation, like the silence just before the storm breaks.
He couldn't remember the exact moment when the world shifted, but it had. Again. The place he found himself in was no longer the void—though it wasn't the world he remembered either. The air was thick, saturated with a buzzing hum, as if the atmosphere itself was vibrating with something far beyond the mundane. The ground beneath him was solid, but it felt unstable, like the earth was constantly rearranging itself, shifting and adjusting with an unseen, alien hand.
He pushed himself to his feet, limbs aching with the cold sting of unfamiliarity. His body felt like a strange husk, one that was too large for him, as if the person who once inhabited it had been lost to time and memory. But he was still here—wasn't he? He was someone, wasn't he?
Yuuji tried to focus, but his mind fractured under the strain. Fragments of his past, of his life in the city, flickered in and out of his consciousness, like ghosts in the fog. His sister. Tokyo's skyline. His mother's laugh. They were distant now—like memories from another lifetime, echoes that faded the moment he tried to hold them.
"Remember who you were..." The voice. Erisen. But it was more than that. Something ancient. Invasive.
Yuuji staggered forward, his gaze darting over the new world. There were no stars in the sky, no sun to cast light. The only illumination came from the pale, sickly glow of the architecture around him. Great towers of obsidian rose, jagged and twisted like the teeth of some ancient beast. The air smelled like ash and metal, sharp and suffocating.
A sound reached his ears, distant at first, but growing louder. A low, droning hum that vibrated through his chest, as if the very ground itself was resonating with it. Something was alive here. Something vast. He could feel its presence, like the breath of an ancient god hanging over him.
And then, as if summoned by the hum itself, they appeared.
The Hollowborn.
They were not like the beings of his previous world. They didn't walk—they drifted, their forms flickering like shadows in the corner of his eye. Their eyes were black voids, empty and hungry, leaking a soft mist that twisted around them like smoke. Their faces—if they could even be called faces—were shifting, constantly changing, as if they were never quite real. One moment they would be a figure of darkness, the next a silhouette of a woman, or an old man, or a child. But always, there was something wrong about them. They were wrong.
Yuuji felt the pull in his chest, that familiar ache, like the last thread of his humanity was unraveling with every step they took. They weren't interested in him. Not yet.
One of the Hollowborn stopped before him, its form flickering as though it were made of fractured light. It cocked its head, as if studying him, but there was no recognition in its hollow eyes. There was only emptiness. It opened its mouth—no, not a mouth, but a gap—and from it came a sound, not of voice, but of thought.
"You have come. But you are not what we expected."
Yuuji's heart pounded in his chest. Its words were not spoken, but they pierced through his mind, reaching into the deepest parts of his soul. He wanted to ask what it meant, but the words stuck in his throat. He couldn't speak. He didn't have the voice to do so anymore. His lips felt numb, as if they no longer belonged to him.
Another Hollowborn appeared beside the first, its form a blur of shifting shadows and vague shapes. "The Vessel is incomplete," it murmured, and the ground beneath Yuuji trembled as if the words themselves held weight.
A flicker of understanding hit him—he was the Vessel. He wasn't just a lost boy from Earth. He was the empty thing between worlds. The one who had been discarded, cast into the abyss. He had been chosen, not by any will of his own, but by some force beyond comprehension.
"The threads of fate have twisted. You are the fracture between worlds. You are the boundary, the whisper, the echo." The voice again, this time deeper, older.
The Hollowborn circled around him, their forms shifting and reforming as they moved. They were speaking to him, to each other, but the words were not meant for him to understand. He wasn't supposed to understand. He was supposed to become.
Suddenly, the ground trembled again, and a massive figure emerged from the shadows. This one was different. Taller. More solid. Its eyes burned with a pale light, and its form was almost humanoid, though its body was a grotesque amalgamation of fractured pieces, as if it had been torn apart and reassembled by hands that didn't care for symmetry.
It spoke with a voice like the crack of thunder, a voice that resonated deep within Yuuji's bones. "You are the Echo now. The one who speaks for the hollow."
The words cut through him like a blade.
The Hollowborn surrounding him stepped back, bowing their heads, acknowledging the figure as something greater, something beyond them. Yuuji's vision blurred. He could feel the emptiness within him, spreading like a sickness. The Echo was no longer something he could control. It was something he was becoming.
The world around him began to distort, the very fabric of reality warping and twisting like smoke. A pulse, faint at first, grew louder. A rhythmic beat that seemed to come from the very center of his chest. The darkness around him stirred, as if waking up, as if reacting to the presence of the Hollowborn. The hum of the world grew louder, more urgent.
And then—just as suddenly as it began—the ground cracked open beneath him.
Light. Not from the sky, not from the towers, but from within him. A burst of pure, searing light erupted from his chest, ripping through his body, tearing at the hollow spaces inside him.
The Hollowborn recoiled, their forms flickering violently, as if they were afraid of what he was becoming.
A voice rang out, echoing through his mind, the only thing that remained steady in the chaos:
"Your soul is a vessel now. Do not let it break."
Yuuji opened his mouth, but no sound came. He tried to scream, but the scream wasn't his anymore. It was the Echo.
And then the light consumed him.
---
To be continued...