Her bones clank beneath her skin, stiff and reluctant, each step heavier than the last. The air presses in, thick and suffocating, clinging to her, trying to keep her trapped. Her ribs ache—tight, twisted, as if something inside is pushing, clawing, desperate to break free. She rolls her shoulders, shakes her hands, but the feeling only intensifies.
It’s not her skin that itches. Not her muscles.
It’s deeper
Her skeleton stirs beneath her, restless, a quiet tremor running through her, straining against its confines. It wants air. It wants to stretch. It wants to feel alive again.
She presses a trembling hand to her chest, feeling the slick fabric of her shirt stick to her skin, her breath shallow, a tightness in her throat. Each breath rattles, trapped behind ribs that refuse to give. The pressure builds, radiating out from deep inside, an itch that claws at her, desperate, relentless.
Her fingers dig in. The skin resists, then the bone, grinding against itself with a sickening screech. She presses harder—harder still—until her nails tear through skin, and the first snap shudders through her.
It’s faint at first, a soft crack, barely heard over the thrum of her heartbeat, but it is enough. She pulls harder.
The next snap is louder, wet, as bone groans and rips under the strain. She staggers, falling to her knees, a sharp pain shooting through her chest. But she doesn’t stop. She pulls, feeling the skin give way, the ribs splitting with a sickening crack.
Air rushes in. Cold, sharp, biting. It fills the gap, the space where warmth once lived. Her chest yawns open, and the scent of iron, of blood, thickens in the air.
But there is nothing.
No heart. No lungs. No pulse. Just an empty, hollow void. A dark, yawning chasm where life once thrived.
The wind pours in, howling through the wide gap, but it doesn’t fill the space. It simply slips through her ribs, a cold draft that feels like nothing at all. It tastes of dust, of decay, a void that’s never been touched.
The itch doesn’t ease.
It grows.
It sinks deeper, crawling through her bones, gnawing at her marrow, spreading an icy numbness through her limbs. Her hands tremble as they press into the raw wound, slick with blood, but the emptiness only widens.
The wind howls again, louder this time, pressing against her ribs, slipping through her hollowed-out chest.
She opens her mouth to scream, but the sound never comes. Her throat is already empty.
And then, from the deepest part of the void inside her, something shifts.
Something scratches back.