The sound of a thousand voices tore through the air, screaming his name in a painful disjointed harmony. Hill felt like he was being thrown around by a tornado, flying through nothing with no solid ground anywhere. He was too terrified to even open his eyes.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, his body slammed hard against something solid. He coughed violently as his lungs struggled to adapt.
He opened his eyes... and saw nothing.
He wasn't blind, though. The ground beneath him was visible thanks to a faint light that seemed to come from his own body like a dim spotlight. The surface he had fallen onto was black with a rough shiny texture, similar to fresh asphalt.
He wiped his mouth and looked around, but saw only darkness in every direction.
"Wha—" he started, his voice scratchy. "What's going on?"
Kael's words echoed in his mind. "You'll face a manifestation of that corruption—something unique to each of you. Your only job is to destroy it," he mumbled, recalling the muscular Awakened's speech.
He was definitely on The Bridge—he was sure of that. The falling sensation that started when Jian's staff touched his chest had brought him here. But there was no manifestation in this darkness, just himself.
But I need to destroy the manifestation to reach the 'New World,' right? How can I do that if there isn't one here? he thought, anxiously biting his thumb as he spun in circles, his faint light showing only the small patch of asphalt under his feet.
"Hello?" he called again. "Is anybody there?"
His voice didn't even echo. It was like the darkness swallowed it before it could travel through the murky space. Nothing but crushing silence answered him.
Why isn't it showing itself? Is something wrong with me?
Kael had said the manifestation was unique to each person, born from the corruption in their soul. What did that mean? Hill sank to his knees on the cool surface. What defined his soul? His desires? His fears? His traumas?
He thought about his family. His father's image flashed in his mind. The pain was sharp, but his father wasn't here. His trauma came from them, from the suffocating weight and hopelessness that haunted his family, but the source wasn't physically present in this void. If it was, he'd see some corrupted version of his family. Maybe the manifestation was something less obvious?
What about desires? Hill drew a blank. He honestly couldn't think of anything he truly wanted, except maybe to not be here facing this terrifying ordeal. He'd spent so long feeling like a failure, lost and directionless, that ambition felt foreign to him. No, it definitely wasn't desire.
That left fear. His breath caught. Yes, fear he understood. Fear had been his constant companion. Fear of disappointing his father further, fear of his mother's worsening illness, fear of never knowing what happened to his sister... but most of all, fear of the future.
He hated thinking about it. Whenever his thoughts went too far ahead, all he saw was ruin. His father, beneath the forced cheerfulness, was drowning in depression Hill felt powerless against; the future showed only the mask finally slipping, leaving emptiness.
His mother, frail and sick back home; the future showed her bed empty, her quiet presence gone forever.
His sister, who ran away with bad influences; the future offered only silence or worse, confirmation of his darkest fears.
And himself? Adrift, talentless, a failure caught in forces beyond his control, destined for nothing but this numb walk toward oblivion.
The uncertainty. The crushing weight of potential loss, potential failure, potential emptiness. That was it. That was the heart of his dread. An uncertain future, painted only in shades of gray and black.
As this realization settled in his mind, the darkness before him changed. It seemed to gather, drawing together like smoke collecting against the void. A figure began to emerge, stepping out of the absolute blackness into the edge of Hill's faint light.
His eyes widened.
It was tall and impossibly thin, wrapped in a heavy tattered cloak that seemed woven from shadows. The hood hung low, hiding most of its face, but Hill could make out hollow cheeks and the hint of a lipless mouth frozen in a grimace. Skeletal hands, bone-white and frail, reached out from the ragged sleeves. It drifted silently on the asphalt ground, making no sound.
Chills shot down Hill's spine.
The Ghost of an Uncertain Future had arrived.