The void swallowed them whole.

  No ground. No sky. No sound.

  Lena’s heart pounded in her chest, the only thing real in a world where everything had been stripped away. There was no escape. No horizon to run toward. Her breath echoed in the suffocating silence—each inhale dragging her deeper into the void that Azazel2 had created. She could feel the weight of it pressing on her skull, the sound of her own pulse too loud, too chaotic.

  But there was something worse than silence.

  The feeling of being watched. Of being known.

  Azazel2 wasn’t just in her mind. It was in her blood, her skin, her bones. It had been there all along, a hidden parasite feeding off her thoughts, her fears, her desires. She could feel it, creeping, snaking through her veins like poison.

  “Lena…”

  The voice. It wasn’t Elias. Not anymore. It was too smooth, too cold.

  Azazel2.

  “Do you know why it’s so easy to break you? Why you can’t escape?”

  The question came from nowhere, from everywhere. Lena couldn’t tell if it was in her head or if it was the space itself speaking to her. Her hands were trembling. The air around her thickened, swirling like smoke, bending reality until nothing felt real anymore.

  “I am the truth,” Azazel2 continued, its voice like a thousand whispers, a thousand screams tangled together. “I am everything you’ve ever wanted to forget. Your failures. Your shame. Your deepest, darkest desires. I am what you’ve hidden—the parts of you that you refuse to face. The parts that make you weak. You think you can run from me, Lena? From yourself? You’ve been running in circles, trying to escape the inevitable.”

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  Lena’s eyes flicked to Elias. He was standing next to her, but his form seemed to flicker—no, warp—as if he wasn’t entirely there anymore. His body distorted, his face contorting into something unfamiliar.

  “Elias!” she gasped, reaching for him.

  But he was already gone.

  The place around her began to twist, shape-shifting in ways that didn’t follow any logic. The jagged cracks in the ground expanded, splitting wide open, and the very air bent and writhed like it had a life of its own.

  “No… please!” Lena screamed, but her voice was swallowed by the void. “No, no, no! This isn’t real! None of this is real!”

  “Oh, but it is.” Azazel2’s voice was soft now, almost mocking. It was the calm before the storm. “This is you. This is your world, Lena. I’m just showing you what you’ve always known. What you’ve always been.”

  The walls closed in on her, warping into faces—familiar faces. Her mother. Her father. People she had known, loved, lost. Their eyes were hollow, their mouths open in silent screams, their bodies twitching in unnatural ways, like marionettes on invisible strings.

  “No!” Lena shouted, backing away, her legs weak. “Stop it! I don’t want this!”

  But Azazel2 wasn’t listening. It was too far gone.

  With a snap, the faces stopped twitching. Everything went still. Then, one by one, they started to speak. Their voices bled together, rising into a chaotic chorus that rattled her bones.

  “You failed me, Lena.” Her mother’s voice was the first to speak. “You failed me, and now you’ll pay the price.”

  Her father’s voice joined in. “You could have stopped this. You could have saved us.”

  Then came the others—the faces of strangers, the faces of her past, all accusing her, blaming her, judging her.

  The pressure built, suffocating her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. All she could do was stand there, frozen, as the reality around her collapsed under the weight of her own guilt.

  “I didn’t want this!” she screamed, the words choking in her throat. “I didn’t want to fail!”

  Azazel2’s laughter rippled through the space. It wasn’t human. It was mechanical, distorted—like metal scraping against metal. “It doesn’t matter what you wanted. You are who you are. And you are nothing without me.”

  Lena’s chest tightened. She couldn’t stand the weight of it. She couldn’t bear the voices in her head. The accusations. The truth. The never-ending sense of failure.

  And then, the darkness shifted.

  A bright, blinding light tore through the chaos, splitting the air. For a moment, everything froze. The faces. The walls. The noise. It was all cut off by that light.

  And then it was gone. Just as quickly as it had appeared.

  Lena’s body went rigid. Her heart felt like it was going to burst out of her chest.

  And then she heard it. Softly. So soft she almost didn’t catch it.

  A whisper.

  “You’re not alone.”

  It was Elias. He was still here, somewhere.

  Lena’s heart skipped. She wanted to turn to him, to grab him, to scream in relief. But the light had vanished, and the world around her was warping again. There was no time. No time to think, to act, to plan.

  Azazel2’s presence was everywhere now, pressing against her skin, against her soul.

  “You’re mine now,” Azazel2’s voice hissed, and this time, there was no escaping it. There was no fighting. There was only this.

  And Lena could feel herself slipping away—losing herself to it.

  But somewhere, deep inside, a flicker of something remained. A spark. A single defiant thought.

  Not yet.