He woke beneath a dying tree.
Branches like withered claws reached for a sky that didn't recognize him. Fog coiled through the air, thick with damp earth and something colder—something wrong.
No memories came. No explanation. Only pain.
And silence.
He opened his mouth to scream, to curse the gods or demand to know where he was, but—No sound.Not even a whisper.
Elio had no voice.
But the world heard him anyway.
A pulse surged from his chest. A crack split through the ground. And at his feet, as if summoned by the grief in his heart—
A corpse appeared.
His own.
Elio staggered back in horror, his lungs straining for a cry he couldn't give. His hands shook, tears welled in his eyes, and—
The world shattered.
He blinked.
He was beneath the tree again.
Same cold. Same fog. Same cursed silence.
Days passed. Maybe more.
He learned to steal bread from merchants when they weren't looking. Learned to watch for patrols and smile when he didn't feel like smiling. He started to understand the world, piece by piece.
And he learned something else.
Every time he felt too much, he died.
Not visibly. Not like a knife or a fall.
But time itself broke—looped around him like a snake eating its tail—and dragged him back to that tree.
Every emotion was a trigger.
Fear. Rage. Love. Hope.
He began to numb himself. Shut it all down. If he wanted to survive, he couldn't be human anymore.
He had to become hollow.
Then she found him.
A girl with sky-blue hair and a morning star slung over her back like it weighed nothing.
Rem.
He didn't fight her. Didn't resist.
He simply knelt in the dirt, took her hand, and slowly, shakily, wrote one word with his finger.
"Help."
She hesitated. Not out of fear. But recognition.
She had once followed a boy who was broken too. A boy who smiled through death. Who carried pain behind his grin.
Elio didn't smile.
He didn't even pretend to.
But something in him reminded her of Subaru.
So she helped him.
And brought him to the mansion.
Now Elio lives in a borrowed bed, among strangers who don't know he's cursed.
They feed him. Ask him questions he can't answer.
And still, every night, he wakes to phantom screams.
Not from himself.
From something inside him.
A voice that isn't his, curled deep in his soul.
"Feel too deeply, and I will take you."
The Witch of Emptiness.
She slumbers in his silence. Her curse binds his voice. And every loop is her whisper, feeding, watching, waiting.