I've been drifting around this place for what feels like millenniums. I can't remember how I ended up here, just that one day I found myself unfortunate enough to be taken here. There's no light, no ghastly glows from any other creatures. I've been here so long I can no longer even tell if I'm still blinking.

This place has no real feeling to it. Just vast emptiness. It doesn't really feel like it goes on forever, and it's not a heavy, overwhelming type of emptiness either. The temperature feels as if it's at a comfortable point, but I begin to wonder if I've just grown used to the climate of this strange place after being here for centuries. My fingertips are still cold though. That's one thing I remember from my life all that time ago. I could never conquer the cold, no matter how bundled up I was.

I've also begun to notice that my form is no longer the same as when I first arrived here. I feel lighter now than I did then. Sometimes I also feel as if my legs turn into a tail as I float here. I'm not sure why that is, I've just come to see it as evolving to my surroundings, becoming my surroundings. I think that might be what happens to other beings who get stuck here. They get eaten and picked at by this place. Because I can't be the only one who's had the unfortunate luck to get stuck here, can I?

I also believe that beings trapped here get devoured because I can feel myself becoming wispy, like I'm made out of a flickery material similar to fire. Bits by bits of myself flake off in the flowing rhythm my body has taken on.

As my train of thought goes in circles on it's tracks with no end, I realize something that I haven't tried to do for a long time.

Move.

Walk.

Get around.

It must've been quite a few centuries since I've tried to look for a way to escape this dark place. I was still more corporeal then, still knew how to work my limbs. Would I even be able to make it a few steps before growing weary and succumbing to this place once again?

As I think and think and think, I come to the conclusion that nothing would hurt whether I did it or not. I began by trying to take a step forward in front of me but I'm not standing on anything to take a step from. As I lose my balance and begin to wobble, my legs turn into a flickering tail once again and I balance out. I begin to float forward more steadily now, as if my tail is helping to propel me.

I go on for what could be minutes, hours, or even years until I come across something that feels so alien but oh so familiar at the same time.

Gravity.

There's a weight pulling me towards what I assume is down. At first I just quietly observe what's happening. But then I hear something that isn't the ever so slowly shallower and shallower breaths I've been taking for centuries. It's loud and it isn't something I've ever heard before. And then…

I can see.

There's a fluorescent green glowing above me. I look at my arms, wispy and shadow like, reflecting the green light.

My escape is above me. The opposite way that I'm floating.

I begin to propel myself upwards, trying to fight to ever increasing feeling of gravity as it pushes harder and harder against me. Soon I'm clawing myself up, fingers gripping a wall, it bends against my fingers and it's the most wonderful thing I can ever remember feeling. Something beneath my fingers.

As I make my way up I begin to wonder how I know this is an escape. Who knows whether or not this place is controlled by some other powerful being, or if this is just the last stage before my existence is finally wiped away. I just know that I need to pull myself over this wall and into this light.

Pulling myself over the wall is excruciatingly painful and tiring. I haven't used my muscles for anything except breathing in centuries. At one point, I lost my hold and almost fell from the wall but I managed to keep my grip and keep climbing up.

As I finally pull myself up over the wall, I look at the green light, triumphant, but I notice that it's getting smaller and smaller. Disappearing, my last chance.

Panicking, I dive into the portal, crashing into a solid floor on the other side.

My senses are immediately overwhelmed. I can feel gravity and the floor crowding in from all around me. I can smell different scents that I can't recognize, this place smells burnt, caustic, and slightly of a sweet smell that makes my mouth begin to water. The most overwhelming though is sound. So much is happening. I can hear sets of shouts, but I can also hear whirring. The sound of electricity mixes with the sound of someone screaming and through my panicked state on the floor I begin wondering what's happening around me in this new world I fell into.

I drag myself up into a sitting position, and gap at the sight before me. A young being falls out of the glowing, fluorescent light that I made my escape through. Had there been someone else in there with me this whole time? Had I not realized it? The screaming has stopped now that the figure with snow white hair exited the portal and collapsed.

This being does not appear to be human.

Am I even human anymore?

I begin to creep forward to ask them a question when two teenagers rush past me and collapse next to the second being to escape from the portal.

Confused, I begin to pull myself towards the creature on the ground. Why couldn't his friends see me? Am I not visible?

The boy opens his glowing green eyes and looks at the two humans above him.

"Sam? Tucker?" He asks.

I'm flabbergasted. How could he know their names? It is nearly impossible to escape from that place. How could he happen to know these two humans?

The three have a few more exchanges before the boy is standing. He looks around and finds a reflective fixture hanging on the wall. What's the word for it again? It's been so long…

As the boy takes a look at his appearance, he begins to shake. He shakes his head back and forth, clearly in a state of panic.

"N-no, guys how can this be happening? Why do I look like this? Why do I feel so strange? Why-."

Suddenly he stops speaking, looking at the ground he turns around to face his friends. He looks up, with a shocked expression on his face before he quietly whispers.

"Am I dead?"

The three look around at each other, at a loss for words in their fear. Soon enough a big rumbling comes from above and the three teens look up. Panic falls across all of their faces.

A worried voice comes from the entryway to the room.

"Danny, kids, are you okay?"

The one I presume to be Danny, begins to breathe more heavily as his eyes widen.

"They can't see me like this. What would I tell them? 'Your invention works but it killed me'?"

The two try to calm him down but a sudden burst of white light emits around him and engulfs him from his head to his toes. Once it dies down a human boy can be seen standing in his place, with raven black hair and baby blue eyes.

At that moment his parents rush downstairs and begin coddling him, making sure he's okay when they see the portal behind him. They wear a shocked expression, but quickly shake their heads and rush their son upstairs. Soon a door can be heard slamming shut and something speeds away.

My mind is reeling at everything I just witnessed. More than anything I have witnessed in the last few centuries. But that boy didn't come from inside the portal like I did.

He's the reason it turned on.

I float towards the portal, peering at it but not daring to go inside, lest I get trapped in that dark nothingness once again.

This changed something about that boy, this isn't something that should have happened. I'm sure of it.

I turn to look in the… Mirror! It's called a mirror. At first I can't see myself but then I flicker into existence and I can see what I look like for the first time in as long as I can remember.

It's not what I was expecting. I appear translucent and wispy, my eyes also a glowing green. I look as if I were a fire so cold it were a shadow.

I once again look around the room, feeling lost and alone. I'm unsure what to do with my new found freedom, knowing I can't pick up where I left off. I don't even know when I left off.

I make my way up the...stairs.

I see a burst of orange light coming from outside the house and look through the window. The sun is closing in on the horizon. I try to turn the doorknob but find that my hand passes straight through it instead. Looking at it in shock, I just float straight through the door.

I sit down on the grass outside, relishing in the cool feeling of it as I wait for the boy to come home.

I'm unsure on what I should do now, but one thing I think I need to do is stay here and help this boy however I'm meant to.

Because why else would I have escaped the Unworld? It couldn't have been a coincidence.

My memories begin to resurface now that I can interact with anything that isn't a numbing darkness. I can feel the memories of my capture welling up.

This...halfa… escaped the wrath of the Unworld and death.

This halfa got the chance that I did not. I got sucked in by a portal whose calculations were off by a point and while I believe the same being changing experience happened to us both, he got the chance of them being right this time.

I look back at the house that I'm sitting in front of. As my memories return I realize that I hadn't actually been in that place for centuries.

It looks like it hasn't even been a year.

Two portal accidents in the time frame of a year.

I always knew that their sick obsession with ghosts would eventually end up hurting one of us.

But you'd think that after accidentally letting your only daughter walk right in the middle of an experiment, that they would learn their lesson. Especially after learning she disappeared from it's effects.

But now, her little brother was now a victim of their twisted obsession too.

As I sit in our small patch of grass in front of the house, something happens. A ring of white light spreads up and around me. Holding my hands up, I see that they are my hands. Peachy, solid hands.

I look up to see my family gaping at me from the RV. Tears spring to my eyes and they exit the vehicle and run towards me.

I'm not sure what happened to Danny and I, but I know that, together, we'll conquer this challenge.