This page marks the beginning of my novel’s journey — fragments born of dusk and dream, attended by ghostly illustrations brushed by AI.
“Longing seeped in, fragile and profound at once, as if I were an autumn leaf frozen in the frost of timelessness. A familiar taste from distant dreams appeared on my tongue… now tangible — the taste of wine from the blood of time and ashes of centuries. As if on my lips were drops of stagnant blood, drunk from a silver chalice on an ancient altar.
Darkness embraced me — like an elder sister welcoming the one returned after long exile.
My body sank into the gloom, as if I had plunged headfirst into a black lake and dissolved within it…
Darkness becoming a part of me, resonating with my heartbeat…
A whip of white light struck my eyes. A ringing filled my ears, as if a thread had been torn from me. The thunder was not merely sound, but a fracture in the symphony of darkness, and the lightning — not a discharge, but a slap of eternity.
My gaze darkened, and it was not blindness, but — a rupture.
The ritual was interrupted.
The world fell away for a moment. It cracked, like glass, and I realized:
I am not in the darkness. I am a part of it.
The echoes of the choir and the touches vanished, leaving only the light — coarse, unfamiliar, undue. His light. The light, used to pull me from the grasp of darkness. But the Darkness remained. It remained within. Now it looks through my eyes…
In a moment, I stood in the same place — on the edge, on the porch of the house, in His embrace. But everything had changed. The light in the mansion now seemed foreign, unnatural — too warm, too bright…
I did not return then, though He thought He had pulled me from this black ocean. But I remained within it.
Part of my spirit, my past self, that old me — remained there…
In that lake now it rests, somewhere in the depths…”
On my Boosty, you can find further excerpts — echoes from the story’s darker corridors, under the tag #DescentIntoNightmare.
More pieces of the tale in Russian can be found on my Telegram — soft echoes of the world I’m writing.
