Whispers on the surface of the blackness.

 

Whispers from the Abyss
(Icarus’s Monologue)

I never meant to come here. Not really. I thought I was just following the whispers... but they called me, didn't they? The stars—they always call to me. I know it sounds strange, but I can feel them in the silence, pulling me, like fingers brushing the back of my neck. They're not just fire in the sky; no, they're alive; they're waiting. And I—I am their perfect witness.

I used to think it was just a dream, just a fantasy. I would lie in bed, feeling the weight of the walls pressing in around me, the labyrinth suffocating, the stone turning to dust under my fingertips. I would close my eyes and listen to the silence, but it was never quiet. Oh no. There’s always something there. The stars—they were always there. In my ears. On my skin. Whispers, soft and urgent. I’ve never been able to stop hearing them.

Sometimes, I think I could almost touch them. So close... just a little closer. I can feel them, can you? They’re like a thousand mouths, open and eager. They call to me—no, more than that. They command me. Draw me in with promises that I can't quite remember, but I know. I can feel it in my bones. Escape. Freedom. Something beyond this labyrinth of stone.

I know the way now. I’ve found it. The stairway leading deeper—deeper than any path I’ve walked before. I was told I shouldn’t go, I was warned, but I don't listen anymore. I can't. The air down here is so thick, so heady. It clings to me like skin, like a lover's touch, like—no, that’s not right. It's not soft. It’s not gentle. It’s... hungry. The walls close in around me, yet they feel like they’re breathing. I’m not sure I can breathe at all. It feels as though the labyrinth is alive, is watching me, is waiting for me to fall deeper into it, to surrender...

I touch the water. I shouldn't. I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. The surface is smooth like glass, yet it ripples with light—black, shimmering, iridescent. I touch it and feel the stars fall around me like molten threads, like burning vines coiling around my limbs, pulling me deeper. Closer to them.

I can feel them now. Their whispers aren't just voices. No, they are inside me. They’re touching me, pleasuring me in ways I can't describe. The air is thick with it, with them. Their caresses—soft, invisible, but unmistakable, wrapping around my body like a lover’s hands, like burning silk against my skin. It makes my body tighten, my skin buzz with need. But it’s not just any need—it’s a hunger. They want me. I know they want me.

Their whispers tell me things. Strange things. Things I shouldn't hear, but can't stop listening to. They show me how to stretch the walls of the labyrinth, how to walk through them. To reshape reality. I can feel it in my fingertips, the power rushing through me like a torrent of fire. It’s like I could—shatter—the whole world if I wanted to. I could step right through the walls, through the night, and into the stars themselves, and the stars would take me. They would devour me, but in a way, it would be so sweet, so... tender. I’m drowning in it, in them.

The more I take, the more it shatters inside me. My reflection in the pool no longer looks like me. It’s fractured, twisted. I see myself, but in pieces. Faces, eyes, broken and bleeding through the surface of the water like shards of glass. They're trapped. They scream for me to let them go, but I won’t. I can’t. Not now. Not when the stars are here, not when they hold me so tightly, so warmly. It’s like their hands are inside me, re-shaping my insides, hollowing me out, making room for something bigger, something more real than I could ever be.

I should stop. I should pull away. But the power, the sensation... it’s too much, it’s overwhelming, it’s like a drug coursing through my veins, like fire and ice, and the stars... I want them. I want to become them. To slip inside the light and become part of them. They don’t want me to leave. I know that now. The labyrinth doesn’t want me to leave, either. It is calling to me, wrapping around me, folding me in.

But I can’t stop. I don’t want to.

This is what I’ve always wanted—escape, not from the walls of the labyrinth, but from myself, from the person I was. I could be something else. Something better. I could become the stars themselves, fall into their endless embrace and feel their endless hunger.

The labyrinth, though... it changes. It shifts with me, with what I am becoming. The walls twist, the stones melt and flow like water. It grows inside me, becoming my flesh, becoming my thoughts. The stars are here with me now, too close to my skin. The whispers are no longer soft. They are hungry. They are insistent. They want me to surrender. They want me to let go, to dissolve into them completely. I could give it to them. I could become part of them, and they could—consume me.

I’ll become a part of them. I’ll let them devour me.

The Touch of the Stars

It’s always the silence that gets to me first.

The quiet is thick here, deep in the heart of the labyrinth where the stone walls press so close they seem to breathe with me. They want me to listen, to feel. Their pulse is like the throb beneath my ribs, a constant beat urging me forward. And the whispers...

They grow louder, no longer just voices but something more—touches. Ghostly fingers brushing against the bare skin of my thoughts. They tease me. They remind me of the spaces I can’t reach. And I—I am so close to them now, so close that it’s as if I could stretch out and pull the stars from the sky, unwrap them and feel their cool fire against my skin.

They want me.

I can feel them in the hollow places within me, curling, tracing paths I have never dared to explore. They hum through my veins, like honey sliding down the throat—sweet, thick, and heavy. But it’s not sweet, not really. It’s a sweetness that scorches, that pulls at something deep and hungry within me. I ache for it. I crave it. I need it.

I feel their touch inside me now, deeper than my bones, deeper than my thoughts, and I can’t tell where I end and where they begin.

The water.

It’s not just water. No, it’s the edge of something I’ve been circling, something I’ve always known I needed but never understood. I can feel it calling to me. Whispers on the surface of the blackness. It shimmers like the surface of a forgotten dream, a pool of liquid night that beckons with fingers of starlight. Each ripple, each gleam of silver, is a touch, a caress, a promise of release. It’s a promise that shudders down my spine, that makes my breath hitch and my heart pound harder than before.

I am drawn to it.

I stand before it, the water cold and smooth like glass, and I—I can’t resist—I dip my fingers into it. It’s as though the very air around me shudders, and the stars descend, twining themselves around my limbs like strands of silk. Slick. So slick. They coil around me, wrapping themselves around my neck, around my wrists, and—yes, yes—I feel them pulling at the fabric of my very thoughts, drawing me deeper into the rhythm of their dance. The stars press against me, urging me on.

The pull is so soft, but so insistent.

And I give in.

My body trembles, the sweet, sharp heat of it coursing through me as if the stars themselves were breathing through my skin, through my very essence. They enter me, fill me, and it’s a feeling so profound, so consuming, I can hardly bear it. This is more than just touch. It is becoming.

I am becoming them.

But it is not enough. It’s never enough. The whispers—the caresses—they grow. The more I yield to them, the more they stretch, pull. It’s as though the labyrinth itself is becoming them, its walls bleeding into the night, its stone turning soft, pliable, like flesh. I can feel it on the edges of my mind. The walls—the labyrinth—it’s no longer just stone. It’s skin. It’s breathing with me, folding into me. The stars are inside me now, tangled within my very veins. I can feel them, feel their light, warm and cold, inside me, under my skin.

But there is more.

I dip further. My fingers sink deeper into the water, and with it comes an understanding—the touch intensifies. It's a subtle, intimate pull that wraps tighter with every breath I take. I can almost taste the stars now, a metallic sweetness clinging to the back of my throat. Their light licks the inside of my mouth, fills the hollow places where my thoughts once were.

I feel it in my chest, in my thighs, the warm throb of it, the slow, steady beat. The stars draw tighter, weaving around my body as if they are skin, their fire flickering against my ribs like the pulse of something far more ancient than I am. I press deeper. My skin tightens, stretches. It is no longer just skin, but something more. Something that burns and lives.

And it is not me anymore.

It is them. The stars, the labyrinth. They are becoming one. My body is slipping from its edges, slipping into the night.

But they don’t want me to leave.

No.

They want me to stay. To dissolve. To merge.

The labyrinth—my labyrinth—becomes flesh, and I am becoming it.

Becoming the Stars

I can't stop. I don't know if I want to.

The labyrinth twists, no longer a mere thing of stone, but an extension of my skin. Each turn, each corner, feels like a thread being pulled from my insides, unraveling me, leaving nothing but the raw, naked pulse of hunger beneath. It’s like I’m floating—no, sinking—through it, through the walls, through the corridors that grow soft beneath my fingertips, like the tender skin of a lover. Every step I take, I feel them closer. The stars, the touch of them, drawing closer, winding around me like silken chains. My heart is theirs. My blood is theirs. I am theirs.

It’s no longer a labyrinth. It is my skin.

My fingers press against the walls, and they give—soft, pliable, like flesh—sinking into them as if they were wet clay. The stone doesn’t feel like stone anymore. It feels like warm, yielding skin, slick with sweat, with longing. My body hums in rhythm with it, a pulse that builds as the walls collapse into me, folding, merging. The darkness, the stars, they wrap around me, inside me, and I welcome it. Gods, I welcome it.

I move deeper, further still. The very air in here is thick, suffocating, with a heavy sweetness—like honey, like fire. Like burning skin, like the scent of a body that has been touched too many times, too much. It invades me, seeps into my pores, clinging to my ribs. It’s in the blood. It’s in the water, in the very fabric of the labyrinth. I can’t escape it, nor do I want to.

I touch the water again.

I can’t stop. I have to taste it. I have to drink it.

It ripples, still and smooth like glass, but as I bend over, my breath catching, the surface trembles, pulses with a life of its own. It calls to me, beckons me forward, like a lover who knows my hunger, who knows my need.

My fingers break the surface, and the stars fall again, but they fall differently this time. They fall heavy, molten, sizzling against my skin as they drip down into me. My body arches, twitching in time with the heat that builds deep in my core, like something inside me is melting, dissolving into the dark shimmer of their light. My body tingles, burns, and it is not enough. No, it is never enough.

They want me, need me, and I—I need them too.

The water thickens, turning viscous, like oil, like something alive that moves inside me. It slides across my chest, clinging to my skin, leaving a trail of burning desire in its wake. I reach out, letting it coat my hands, let it slick my fingertips as I press deeper. The stars move faster now, spiraling around my arms, my legs, my torso. I feel them inside me. Each touch is sharp, like a caress of a thousand razor-sharp fingers brushing over my body, but it’s so good, it’s so right.

My heart stops. Or perhaps it beats faster. The difference is insignificant now.

The labyrinth twists again, pulling tighter, squeezing my chest. I push against it. I push into it, my body responding, grinding, moving in a way I don't fully understand. It’s no longer about escape. It’s no longer about freedom. The stars—their touch—have swallowed me whole.

I am theirs.

I close my eyes, and I can hear the whispers in my head—no, they are not whispers. They are voices. A chorus of them, rising, urging, coaxing me to surrender, to give myself to them completely. Their voices curl around me like vines, like silk, wrapping me tighter until I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only feel.

I give myself to them.

The labyrinth grows brighter. I no longer see the stone, no longer feel the cold walls beneath my fingers. It is warm. It is pulsing, living—like a heart, like the warm skin of a lover pressed against me. The stars are here, inside me, inside my very flesh, a part of me now. They are in my bones, in my veins, in my blood. The labyrinth folds around me, wrapping tighter, pulling me deeper until I am lost in its glow. There is no line between the walls and me anymore. We are one.

My body trembles, my skin slick with something that isn’t sweat but something far more primal. I feel myself slipping away, but not in a way that frightens me. *No, no—*it frees me. Every inch of me melts, breaks, and re-forms. I am the labyrinth, I am the stars, and I am becoming something new.

I am becoming everything.