[img]http://i.imgur.com/SsySWU5.png[/img]

[b]”I see you.”[/b]

The words continued to echo in her head long after they were first said.

Leila couldn’t even remember when they were first said. Yet it persisted - the deep, haunting voice that evokes enough fear on its own without even being attributed to the legendary Midnight man. It persisted even when the cries and yells and sounds of collision going on among the group of Lost Souls all around her should’ve drowned it out.

Leila nearly tripped over her glowing jar as the group scurried out from the cabinet. She didn’t fetch her yet unlit candle, and wouldn’t realize that until much later.

[i]There was no such thing as a spirit of a Midnight Man that responds to rituals and materializes as will in the form of a figure all in black.[/i]

[i][b]”I see you.”[/b][/i]

As soon as she realized she didn’t have the time to think she started running.

There were flashes of light, most of fire, some brighter briefer, akin to the light produced by electrical discharges of sorts. Leila could tell that it was likely the mages in their group. Sources of light - in the darkness Leila wished for light, but the temporary, intense illumination from the fire and the lightning provided no comfort, and invoked instead panic. After the flames faded Leila’s eyes were left unadjusted to the darkness, the remnants of the signals of light imprinted in her brain materialized in the painful and confusing blue-purple shadows in her sight, and the already feeble light of the lit candles in the hands of others appeared even weaker.

Her fellow Lost Souls yelled various things, none of which she could entirely make sense of.

Her feet propelled her body blindly forwards, pushing onto whatever hold they could gain, without time to think about position or force or direction. She certainly bumped into a number of things, may have been people or walls or other things, she couldn’t tell. There were lights, softer lights, like that of the reflected light of the moon, shining through rectangular openings, projecting their shape onto other surfaces, yet it didn’t provide sufficient information as for how the surfaces were arranged, having Leila clueless about where she was and where she was headed. She was too disoriented to even follow the sounds - the only way she managed to stay with the group was grabbing onto someone’s clothes and following roughly the direction it jerked, and being determined to never, ever let go. Not in this chaos - not in this darkness.

There was no way either to determine whether it was just her imagination or was the horrifying figure of the Midnight Man composing itself again out of the darkness - she thought she saw it, but then there was a flash and an explosion and when she looked that way again there was nothing. She felt her way through the hallway, keeping her grasp on the sleeve that belonged to-

- it turned out the sleeve was Inadi’s robe, as she heard his voice when she heard him yell something about the guests and later about the sword they had to look for. It was too late when she came to the realization that he intended to stop at the doorway, however, and upon accidentally stepping onto a what sounded like a wooden shard from the disintegrated door she lost her balance and the momentum she carried in her scurry tossed her right into Inadi.

“wah”

She let out a sound as she stumbled over - a rather awkward one that was a result of part of her wanting to scream and the rest telling her that she needed to stay silent to stay safe. Possibly rolling a few times on the ground and potentially bringing the young man who intended to guard the door down with her, the action -along with all the action around them - finally seemed to come to a halt with her lying face-up, left hand still gripping firmly although she couldn’t tell onto what anymore.

And after an interval of several seconds that felt much longer than it actually was, when her mind was finally composed enough to tell up from down and her eyes adjusted enough to receive signal from the lights of the candles and the distant windows - she saw, this time clearly, the thick mist of emptiness gathering itself to form the silhouette of the figure of a man.

Many things went through her mind upon that sight.[/i] There is no such thing as a Midnight Man. What is happening? I want to see light. What was going to happen? Go away. Let me out of here.[/i] But most prominently, there was a signal that her consciousness screamed in a deafening volume above all other thoughts: the unreasonable, irrational, yet overwhelming sensation of fear.

Leila didn’t know what to do, so she closed her eyes.