Something was moving in the dark. Where was I? How long had I been sitting here? Hours? Days? The floor beneath me was cold, hard, damp. Stone...maybe. I couldn't remember how I got here. Couldn't remember why. All I could hear was noise. Voices with no words. Sounds with no shape. My own thoughts screaming over each other, a chaotic roar I couldn't silence.

There. There it was again, a silent shift in the dark. Something darker than the darkness around it, darker than the absence of light, moving at the edge of my vision. Every time I tried to focus on it, it slipped away, leaving only a void slightly less black than itself.

Maybe if I just closed my eyes.

Wait.

They ARE closed.

My body felt numb, cold ran through my veins. The darkness wasn't in the room. The thing moving wasn't in the shadows.

It was in me.

The dark was everything I'd ever shoved down, locked away, buried deep where no one could see; it had all broken free. The anger I'd swallowed, the envy I'd denied. The pride, the hate, the rage I'd pretended didn't exist. All of it, loose now, trying to consume me from the inside out.

I tried to stand, too tired to run. I couldn't move.

The shadow drew closer. Not walking, not creeping. Just... there, suddenly, closer than before. And I realized: it wasn't stalking me. It was feeding.

I felt the anger drain first. Not disappearing, but being absorbed. Pulled into the movement in the dark like water into sand. Then the pain. Then the noise. One by one, the chaos inside me folded into the shadow, and the shadow grew denser, heavier, more.

The closer it got, the quieter everything became.

The screaming stopped. The voices went silent. The roar of my own thoughts faded to nothing.

Just... emptiness. A profound, complete emptiness. I could feel it settle into my soul, cold and patient. When I breathed, it settled deeper. We moved together now.

Something was moving in the dark.

But now, the darkness moved inside me.