Neon Confidential
2 - Marked

NOTE: This may not be the final revision, published form may vary.

The last thing I feel before everything fades to nothingness is the cold bite of the rain against my skin. The distant thrum of the city’s neon buzz is muffled now, an echo trapped beneath a layer of static. The pain in my throat is gone, replaced by an overwhelming, suffocating emptiness. My body is still, motionless, as though it’s no longer mine to control. There’s no struggle, no fight. Just silence.

I can’t tell if I’m breathing anymore. I can’t feel anything at all.

In the black void, the absence of sound is deafening. I stretch out in the dark, reaching for something, anything, to anchor me back to reality. But there’s nothing. Nothing at all.

Is this it?

I don’t know how much time passes. Seconds? Hours? Days? It doesn’t matter. Time is irrelevant now. What’s left of me is suspended, trapped between worlds, caught in some liminal space where even my thoughts feel like they’re fading away.

The city—DuskWire—still exists out there, I’m sure of it. The distant neon lights flicker, the rain continues to pour, and the air remains with the stink of oil and decay. But it’s not real anymore. Not for me.

I try to call out to the world, to the living, to the people who still have time left to walk the streets, to breathe the air, to fight the fight. But nothing happens. My voice doesn’t form. I can’t even remember how to speak. The silence deepens, wraps around me, and I understand then what it means to be truly, utterly alone.

This is it. I’m gone. I’ve been erased.

I’ve become a whisper in the wind, a shadow on the edge of a dream.

I don’t want to accept it. I don’t want to believe it, but the darkness is so thick, so suffocating, that I can’t push it away. I’ve lived through more than I care to remember. The kind of violence and loss that would break anyone else. But this…

I don’t know what happened to the world around me. The figure with the glowing eyes, the shovel, the eerie coldness of their voice—it was all too fast. I didn’t have time to react. It wasn’t just death. It was something else entirely. I’m not dead in the usual sense. I don’t feel dead. Though what would dead feel like?

I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

To her.

The thought of Mira hits me like a punch to the gut, a jolt of something that might be anger, or pain, or maybe just regret. Mira. She’s the reason I still kept going. I don’t remember how we met anymore—time for an Echoborn has a way of blurring those moments—but I remember everything that mattered after. Her laugh, the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, the way her voice grounded me in a world that felt like it was always slipping through my fingers.

I didn’t tell her that I loved her. Not the way I should have. Not the way she deserved. Maybe I thought there’d always be more time, more nights like the ones we spent together—watching the rain fall on the city’s rooftops, talking about nothing and everything, the kind of moments that make you believe you’re invincible, that the world can’t touch you.

I was wrong.

But now, it doesn’t matter. I’m nothing.

I force my thoughts to her face, to the memory of her warmth, of her presence. I reach for it, desperate to hold on to something. But the more I try, the more her image slips away. The shadows grow, swallowing the memory piece by piece. The harder I grasp, the more it fades.

I want to scream. I want to rage against the void that’s swallowing me whole, that’s making me forget, erasing every trace of what I was. But no sound comes. My body is gone. My emotions are gone. All that’s left is a blackness that feels like the end of everything.

And just when I think I can’t bear it anymore, when I think I might lose myself entirely in the dark, a sliver of light breaks through.

It’s faint at first, barely visible—just a glimmer in the distance, flickering like a dying star. I focus on it, despite the crushing weight of the void around me. It’s a tiny thread, but it’s there, and it feels real. It feels like the last shred of something familiar.

I don’t know how I’m doing it. Maybe I’m not supposed to be able to move, to think, to exist anymore. But I fight against it, my essence pulling itself together, clinging to that sliver of light.

Then, suddenly, it’s not just light anymore.

A voice.

"You’re not supposed to be here."

It cracks like ice. Cold, unfamiliar, and sharp. It cuts through the dark, a jagged sound that slices through the nothingness.

I try to speak, but nothing comes. The voice doesn’t wait. It speaks again, this time more forceful, like a command, an imposition on my very being.

"You should never have left DuskWire."

I don’t recognize the voice. It’s like a thousand others layered together—ancient, fractured, and disturbing. I try to reach for it, to demand answers, but the darkness presses in, and the light shifts again. The voice is fading.

No. I can’t let it go.

With all the strength I can muster, I focus on that sliver, on that sound. It’s the last thread of reality left to me. I can’t lose it.

"Who are you?" My voice cracks through the silence, akin to a whisper. But it’s there. I spoke. The sound vibrates in my mind, though my mouth doesn’t move. I’m not even sure where the question came from. Maybe it’s just instinct now. Desperation.

The voice doesn’t answer, but I can feel the air shift. The very fabric of the nothingness around me trembles, a ripple through the dark. Then, finally, a response—low, venomous.

"I am not who matters here."

A new voice, different, older, reverberates from somewhere behind it. Stronger. A presence that ripples through the empty space. I feel it, a ripple of power that feels so foreign, so ancient, I can’t comprehend it fully.

"You should not have been marked. You are not like the others."

I don’t understand. Marked? I try to focus, but the more I reach for this feeling, this presence, the farther it slips. A piece of the void, a fragment of something else, starts to worm its way into my mind.

"You are something that should not exist here."

I try to shake the words off, but they stick to me, clinging to the walls of my thoughts. I don’t understand. I was a hunter, a tracker. A protector of DuskWire. I was made to fight in the shadows, to exist beyond the ordinary, to chase the things that lurked in the darkness. I was Echoborn.

But now? Now I’m a casualty. Erased.

The darkness is pressing in again. Too much. Too much to hold onto.

I feel the light pulse again, but this time it’s stronger. A presence, like the beating of a heart that hasn’t stopped yet. It pulls me back, gently at first, as if it’s waiting for me to realize what’s happening. But then the pull grows stronger, a tug on the core of my being.

And somewhere, just beyond the horizon of my consciousness, I hear a familiar voice. It’s faint. Soft. But it’s there.

"Malik."

Mira’s voice.

It breaks through the fog of my mind like a spear, sharp and true. I latch onto it, the only thing that feels real. Her voice calls me back. I don't know how, but I feel it.

"Mira…"

My throat is dry. But I can still hear her.

And for the first time in what feels like forever, I take a breath.