The Shattered Veil

The Shattered Veil

A Descent Into Light and Madness

The personality changes again—just like that. Not in weeks or months, but in moments. One moment calm, the next unraveling. A transient soul, flickering between forms, between thoughts. There is a strange comfort in the instability. A familiarity in being lost.

Still, stubbornness rules. I walk the same cursed path, again.

And again.

And again.

Sleep does not come gently. It claws, fights, resists. My body begs for rest, but my mind rages against it like waves crashing into rusted steel. Breaths shallow into murmurs, into almost nothing.

The world begins to blur.

There is a path, I think. A gravel one. It leads somewhere, though I’ve forgotten where. The gravel is sharp—tiny razors that slice my bare feet. The pain is real, and that’s how I know I’m still in this world, or something like it.

Then the light comes.

Unforgiving.

Blinding.

It tears through me, through my eyelids, like fire behind thin curtains. There’s no warmth in it. Only terror. Only exposure. It illuminates every crack inside me—every fracture I worked so hard to hide.

I try to wake up.

But I don’t know if I’m asleep.

The pathway disappears. I’m standing still. I think I see blood. Or is it tears? My vision pulses. My right eye feels hot, like something has pierced it. A bur hole burned straight through to my soul.

Shock echoes in my temples. I breathe—

and forget.

Or maybe forgetting is the goal.

We pretend. Again and again. Pretend until the pretending feels real. Pretend until it becomes something that defines us.

I am defined by nothing now.

There was a girl once—some dream. Maybe a song. Maybe a memory. Not her. Never her.

She stayed in the light.

I lingered in the shadows.

At night, I survive. I listen. I prepare.

But in the day, the real war begins.

I fight under the brightness that burns everything I am.

But is that really survival?

Is it really living if I’m only buying time? Holding back the inevitable collapse?

Sometimes I feel like my skin is cracking. My arms, my chest, my face—ready to spill salt and sorrow, not blood.

My fresh is flesh.

And my flesh aches with memory I cannot name.

There’s a room. I remember a door. Always slightly ajar. Shadows curl at its edges like fingers inviting me in. Or warning me away.

Inside, nothing is still. Everything breathes, even the walls.

Especially the walls.

And the light...

The light in that room isn’t from this world.

It does not warm.

It exposes.

A figure waits.

Or maybe I’m the figure.

Maybe I am both the hunter and the haunted.

The days blur. The nights too.

I survive, but only to keep running.

There is no destination.

Just the pathway.

Just the weight.

People say “you’ll be okay,”

but they never ask what I’ve seen.

They don’t see the shards inside me,

the jagged edges where thoughts once were.

They don’t hear the voice that says,

"Why bother? Just rest. Close your eyes. Forever."

But I don’t.

Not yet.

Because I still feel the gravel beneath me.

Still feel the burn of false daylight.

Still taste the blood in my mouth.

I keep walking.

Not because I believe in hope.

But because stopping means surrender.

And even if the battle is already lost,

there is something sacred in the struggle.

There is truth in pain.

There is memory in blood.

There is meaning in the madness.

And so I walk.

With broken vision,

and blistered feet,

and a mind stitched together with nightmares.

I walk.

Through horror.

Through haze.

Through the haunted light.

Because somewhere beyond the shattered veil,

something waits.

And I want to see what it is.