Patrick jogged along sleeping suburban streets in the predawn darkness. The light of the new day had not yet reached the horizon, and the stars above shone with unopposed brilliance.

  He had no idea how long he had been running. His heart thumped in his chest, and his breathing was heavy and strained, but he couldn’t remember if it had been twenty minutes or an hour. He checked his watch, but the numbers were hidden by a darkness the streetlights couldn’t penetrate.

  An oppressive silence surrounded him. The rhythm of his feet pounding the road and the heaving of air in his lungs were the only sounds cutting through the still night air.

  It was a silence that infected everything with an eerie, watchful stillness.

  He felt like he was running through a cemetery. The houses lining the streets were tombs that housed the dead, and the road beneath him was a graveyard path cutting through empty, lifeless shells.

  Above many front doors, a lonely light shone in a futile effort to keep the darkness at bay. Each one was a beacon of hope—either a sad welcome for guests who would never come, or a ward against the things in the dark that might.

  The world was impossibly still. Not even a gentle breeze stirred the leaves in the trees. He felt as though he were the last person left alive, the sole survivor of some quiet death that had swept away the world of the living while they slept.

  There was no life in this world. There was nothing but the cold, harsh glow of streetlights keeping him company. Like soldiers standing at attention, they lined both sides of the road.

  Each pool of light cast upon the ground was a refuge from the darkness—a safe haven against the monsters of twisted shadow and imagination that lived beyond its reach.

  He moved from one pool to the next, each stride flowing into the next in an uninterrupted motion, carrying him forward through this desolate world.

  A world that slept and dreamed its dreams.

  Onward he ran, and although he did his best to ignore it, fear ran with him.

  A constant certainty filled him—an inescapable conviction that sat just behind his eyes. The light would fail. It would abandon the world, and the darkness would claim him.

  As soon as the thought fully formed, the streetlight above him vanished.

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  It winked out of existence, plunging him into darkness.

  He stumbled for a few steps before coming to a halt. Looking up, he saw the orange glow of the bulb fading to nothing.

  He glanced back down the street. Every other light still shone steady and bright. Only the one above him had failed.

  Patrick turned away from the dead light and resumed jogging.

  It’s too late, he thought. But he ignored the voice and kept running. He focused on moving forward and allowed himself to hope.

  Each step brought him closer to the light ahead—a world of safety burning brightly against the deep night.

  As he approached, his shadow shrank behind him until the light stood directly overhead and his shadow lay beneath his feet.

  Then the light blinked out.

  Darkness swallowed him once more.

  He stopped and looked around. As before, the other streetlights still shone brightly. Even the previous lamp—the one that had failed—now burned steady again.

  He looked up, heart hammering, fear flooding his veins.

  The streetlight above him was no longer simply dark.

  It was emitting darkness.

  Instead of casting illumination, it poured out shadow—rays of black that obscured and distorted everything they touched. Innocent shapes warped beneath it, filled with promises of pain and terror.

  He broke into a run again as the darkness around him deepened.

  There was no doubt now. No matter which light he ran toward, he would never find safety.

  A movement to his left caught his eye, and he spun to face it.

  He felt them before he saw them—the deepest shadows beneath shrubs and along fences, the ones untouched even by starlight. They pulsed, slow and rhythmic, like living, breathing creatures.

  The darkness had come alive.

  Shadows tore free of their natural restraints and began to move. Filled with unearthly essence, they flowed outward. Slowly at first, almost hesitantly, tendrils of darkness crept across the ground, searching.

  Fear lost its grip and instinct took over.

  He ran.

  The ground flew beneath his feet as he pushed himself to the limit.

  But there was no escape.

  Every shadow he passed reached for him. They grew, merged, and spilled together, spreading like a living stain over the gutter and onto the road.

  Ahead of him, the streetlights—his salvation—began to fail.

  One by one, they popped out of existence.

  Fear turned to panic as the darkness stretched farther and farther down the street, which now seemed endless. He ran toward salvation that continued to retreat, until no lights remained in sight.

  Only dim ambient glow from the clouds lit his way.

  The shadows surged ahead of him, overtaking him, cutting off every path of escape.

  There was nowhere left to run.

  He stopped, helpless, watching as the shadows multiplied and spread in every direction. They covered the world in blackness so complete it was no longer merely dark—it was empty.

  Everything the darkness touched ceased to exist, replaced by a horrifying nothingness.

  It surrounded him. Ahead. Behind. Everywhere.

  He spun in a frantic circle, searching for an escape.

  There was none.

  The world had become a canvas drowned in black ink. Stars vanished one by one until nothing remained but void.

  Only Patrick stood at the center, trapped within a final, fading circle of dim light.

  He knew that a single step beyond it would condemn him to an endless fall into nothing—forever, without hope.

  Beyond that small circle, the world no longer existed.

  The darkness rushed in to claim him.

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