DESPITE her determination, Neve wasn’t particularly sure what to do.

So she just walked on.

As she wandered past the hurtling images, her mind wandered as well. Was this how brains actually worked? How her thoughts and memories were in her head? It didn’t make much sense for them to be that way, but this was the plain evidence that it was.

She hadn’t noticed it before, but a low hum of jumbled noise bounced all around her. If she listened closely, she could make out a few words.

“Get off…!”

“...Angelica!”

“...hear me?”

Neve stepped toward an image, stopping once she was barely a foot away. All the noise in the room altered, now saying all the same things and looking just like the image she was staring at.

In the image, Neve stood in the same room Neve did now, staring at all the images darting around.

“Wait—where the fuck am I?” Neve said, shutting her eyes.

Angelica’s voice rebounded in the room. “You’re in your head. Look, no more questions. We don’t have the—”

Neve shuffled back. She’d known what the images were before, despite them flying by so quickly, but it was still off-putting to see herself from the past—even if it was from only a few minutes ago.

Now that the images were all saying the same thing, she could hear them easily, and that was the last thing she wanted.

But she walked on, trying to think of where The Obscurity would be.

Then all the images faded away, the white room darkening in color. Neve froze, wrapping her arms around herself as everything went pitch black.

“Neve?”

She stepped back at The Obscurity’s reverberating voice and opted to stay silent. If what Angelica had said was true, The Obscurity finding out that she was near might be the death of her.

The Obscurity laughed. “I know you’re there. And I know what you’re trying to do.”

Neve bit her lip, not moving an inch. What was she supposed to do in this situation? The Obscurity even knew what she wanted to do, so it was practically determined that once it found where exactly she was, it would try to take her over.

And what were the odds that it wouldn't succeed?

She couldn't see, there was nothing around her that she could grab to guide her, and she had no way of pinpointing where The Obscurity was - in fact, she was almost sure it wasn't in a particular spot. Alice had said that The Obscurity was “darkness personified”, and everything in sight had just gone black the second Neve thought about finding The Obscurity.

Since this was her mind, it made sense that her thinking about The Obscurity had brought her to it.

Neve stared into the darkness, her feet firm on the ground. Her heart banged against her ribcage, and it took a whole lot of willpower to keep herself there. The darkness was worse than a demon, worse than Angelica and Alice smacking her around.

The Obscurity was worse than anything Neve had ever dealt with. And here she was, waiting for it to come at her.

She could taunt it so that it knew right where she was, but she was a little too scared to do that much.

“Genevieve…”

Neve stiffened, eyes widening as the cold voice of her mother came from all around her. She had to cover her mouth to keep from telling The Obscurity to stop.

Her knees shook as two gigantic eyes took shape in the darkness - her mother's narrowed, light blue eyes. Pale pink lips came from underneath them. “Genevieve!”

Neve's legs buckled, a shrill scream letting itself loose from her throat. She forced herself back up, dashing in the opposite direction of her mother's face.

Logically, she knew it was only an illusion The Obscurity had channelled up to get her to reveal where she was, but that didn't stop Neve from being terrified. She had to do something, anything, but she couldn't think.

Her mother laughed, a chilling sound that didn't even sound like her. No, it was The Obscurity. “Oh, Neve. Thank you for the help.”

Neve's back slammed into the ground, a foreign essence filling her eyes, nose, mouth, everything. She thrashed as the matter spread down her body. Her limbs became leaden, pressed to the ground. She wanted to breathe, needed to breathe, but the only thing to breathe in was darkness.

And so she did.

The Obscurity filled her, took her over. Neve’s consciousness had all but disappeared. But in her consciousness was one thought, repeating itself again and again:

Take me to Nirvana!

All her resolve went into that last wish as The Obscurity smothered her sentience.

A low chuckle sounded resounded. “Your wish is my command.”