They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. The brain replays your life just before you see the white light. For Miki, there was no bright light calling her towards it. Only pitch blackness. Nothing. There was nothing. She stretched her fingers up in hopes of grasping something, anything, solid to pull her up from this sea of nothing. Water passed through her fingers like air. Water? Was she drowning? No. There was still air in her lungs. She was in a place where nothing seemed to be what it was.

She remembered falling down, and reaching for someone. Who? Who was she so desperately trying to cling to? Miki couldn't remember.

She didn't even know if her eyelids were opened or closed. Her world melted into one big, black void. And the void was staring back.

Miki couldn't make out face like humans in a crowd. They didn't have faces. They only had tiny black eyes staring at her. No mouth. No ears. No nose. Just eyes. Formless shapes swimming around her in this pit. They had no mouths but they still whispered. Sometimes they were coherent, other times they weren't. Just how long had she been down here with the whispering shapes. Or was she born into this void, this nothingness, this half-dead existence? No. There was a life before this. A life with daylight, smiling faces, friends, family. There was something long before this.

Miki thrust her hands upwards. She clawed at the void above her. She found no purchase but clawed her way up. Pushing herself up, she swam to whatever end lay beyond this nothing. Tendrils of oil clung to her ankles, threatening to pull her back down. They were not finished with her. She was so full of shadows, she could not take any more. Her body weighed like lead.

She swam.

Miki swam towards the roof of the void. It had a surface. She remembered that much. Slowly, the pieces were coming together. The harder she swam, the more shadows in her mind cleared. Bits came together like a puzzle. Names were still alien to her, but she could see faces. Miki swam towards the top. She clawed her way through the clinging shadows until air hit her lungs.

She swam until her feet hit some rocks and she was able to tread the rest of the way. Pitch blackness gave way to a different kind of darkness. As her eyes adjusted, she could make out shapes of rock jutting out of the ground. A large silver moon hung in the cloudless sky. Stars dotted the velvet backdrop. She waded through the void to reach the shore. Her knees wobbled and they buckled as she touched the lip of the hellish lake she escaped from. Miki crawled the rest of the way, jagged pebbles pinching her hands and legs. It was a welcome sensation. Even pain felt more familiar than the nothingness that had been filling her soul at the bottom of that lake.

When she reached as far as her body would allow, Miki collapsed in the dirt. She was gasping for breath. Air hit her, punching her in the chest. She choked on it. She swallowed all she could. Something slick ran down her forehead and body. Sweating, she realized. She was sweating. More pieces were being put together.

But was too exhausted to think about anything. Miki rolled over and spread her tired limbs out in spread eagle. Panting, she stared at the star-strewn sky. The constellations were unrecognizable. She did not know where she was or where she came from, only that she wasn't from around here. Wherever that may be.

She needed rest. That was what her body was telling her. Her body ached from effort. But she needed to get away from the lake as fast as possible. There was danger. She had to get away. Far away where that nothingness could cling to her and drag her back to the bottom. Her body would not respond. Miki willed her limbs to move, to get up and run. She couldn't even lift her head. She was far too gone to get moving again.

The stars blinked out of view. Her eyelids began to close against her will. Miki inched further away from the lake and went as far as she could go with the limited energy she had left. She collapsed in the dust. Moving again became too much effort. She couldn't fight the exhaustion taking over or ignore the heaviness in her eyes. Sleep washed over her like a blanket. She did not resist.

A chorus of a thousand voices, and maybe more, whispered to her as she sank deep into unconsciousness.