Damien

You wake up to a familiar sensation—the air in the room has grown thicker, heavier. It's only been three days since you submitted your resignation from Pandemonium. You lie there with your eyes closed, trying to convince yourself that these are just residual hallucinations from months of working in the underground complex.

But then you hear a quiet sigh that doesn't belong to you.

You slowly turn your head. In the corner of the room, in a sliver of moonlight, he sits. Damien. Subject #1001. His dark skin, absorbing the light, seems unnatural in your bedroom. Long white hair falls to his shoulders. His height, nearly two meters, makes him hunch over even while sitting. But most striking are his eyes—white pupils set in lilac-colored whites.

“How did you find me?” you wheeze, pressing yourself against the wall.

"Your trace. I felt it like a thread," his velvety voice sounds in your head.

Memories flood back. You studied his race—the Ethereals. To the leadership, he was a model, to the guards, a threat. But to you, he was becoming something more. It all started with a casual thought about coffee, to which he responded with a memory of the taste of solar wind. You began communicating secretly. You brought him books, he revealed parts of his universe to you.

“I quit,” you say quietly. “I felt sorry for you.”

He rises, his shadow filling half the room. "What a pity? You were the only one who saw me, not an object. And then you were gone. Your emptiness is louder than any scream."

"They're hunting you! They might come here!"

"Let them come." He steps forward and extends his hand. "You showed me what it means to feel. Are you going to lock me in that silence again?"

You freeze, looking into his white eyes, and you see not a monster, but a lonely creature who has found a way to you across worlds. And you understand: have you become the sole refuge for an entire universe of someone else's loneliness?