NOVEL WEB Chapter 6: The Picture
Oliver didn't walk—he slipped.
One step forward, and the world melted underfoot.
The crowd vanished.
The fire froze in mid-flame.
And then he was somewhere else.
Not in the forest. Not in the field. Not even in his body entirely.
The trees around him bled oil from their bark. The sky above pulsed like wet silk. Footsteps echoed in reverse, and wind whispered backward lullabies.
He was inside the picture.
The one he'd touched before—
—the one with the woman who had his smile but not his name.
Each step forward deepened the blur, like he was pushing against a film of memory stretched too tight.
And somewhere deeper still, beneath the surface of this place, something stirred.
Something he'd forgotten on purpose.
Until now.
"Hey, boy. Don't you have any damn manners?"
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere.
And instantly—he knew it.
Not the way you know a song, or a scent.
But the way you know pain.
The way you know fear so old it predates your name.
He turned, slowly—too slowly.
And there he was.
Yama.
Not cloaked in judgment. Not distant.
Just standing there.
Human-shaped. God-carved.
And looking straight at him.
The memory detonated.
He was younger. Barely sixteen.
A festival—not this one, but similar. Warm lights, bodies laughing, the illusion of safety.
He had just stolen a kiss behind a vendor stall. A rush of joy, new and raw.
Then—
That voice.
"Hey, boy. Don't you have any damn manners?"
It didn't strike—it carved.
Like a rusted blade dragged through soul-flesh.
Every syllable shredded something vital.
The laughter died.
The crowd turned.
And the shadow that fell over him snuffed out every ounce of air.
His legs weakened. His knees gave.
His body betrayed him.
Warm liquid spilled down his pants.
Shame. Terror.
And something older.
Something ancient inside him shuddered—as if it remembered this man from a thousand lives before.
"What the fuck…?"
The voice cracked—less anger now, more... confusion.
The crowd gasped.
Silent horror.
And then—
Cruelty.
Laughter exploded. Not human laughter.
Predator laughter.
"Oh God… Did he piss himself?"
"Right in front of everyone…"
"HA! Look at him! The little coward!"
His skin blistered under their mockery.
His face burned as if the sun itself had turned its gaze upon his failure.
"If I were him, I'd slit my throat and vanish!"
"Look! He's trembling. Probably high out of his mind!"
The children pointed.
The women cackled.
The men howled.
And then—
They held their noses.
As if his existence had become a stench.
"Yama! Look what you've done!"
"Yama didn't even touch him. And yet…"
"The boy pissed himself just from the presence of Yama!"
"He's already dead. He just doesn't know it yet…"
"How's he even going to show his face again…?"
He didn't.
After that day, Oliver had scrubbed that memory raw.
Buried it so deep that not even his nightmares dared unearth it.
Until now.
Until this fractured picture made all truths bleed through.
And now—
The crowd was gone.
The forest peeled back like paper burning slow.
And he was left in silence.
But not alone.
Yama stood before him again.
Not the judge.
Not the memory.
The source.
"You tried to forget what shaped you," Yama said.
"You buried your humiliation so you could grow over it like weeds."
Oliver's voice trembled: "I was just a boy."
"You were already guilty."
"Of what?"
"Of thinking you could outrun judgment."
"But I didn't choose that moment—"
"And yet it chose you."
A pause. Then softer:
"The picture does not lie. It waits."
"Why are you showing me this?"
"Because what's coming will be worse."
The sky above cracked.
Lightning forked without thunder.
And somewhere, a new picture fluttered into view—
Not a memory.
Not yet.
But a glimpse.
Of Hazel.
Bound.
Weeping.
Inside the frame he once touched.
And something—someone else—lurking just behind her.
Watching him.
Smiling with teeth that didn't belong.
The picture tilted.
Fractured.
And then—
He fell.
He fell into the picture.
Not through it—into it.
The air thickened as if the frame had swallowed him whole.
His body spun, then stilled—weightless, breathless. Time splintered around him like glass collapsing underwater.
When he landed, the world didn't jolt.
It sighed.
A soft, drawn-out breath of grief too old for words.
Hazel's world wrapped around him like wet gauze—dim, humid, and blurred at the edges.
Light flickered through lace curtains that didn't touch any window.
The floor creaked beneath his feet, but there was no weight to it.
Everything felt borrowed, as if stitched together from fading recollections.
A hallway stretched out before him—longer than it should be, turning in impossible corners.
Frames lined the walls, but every photo was of Hazel.
Not portraits—moments.
Her hair braided loosely by a woman with no face.
A child's birthday—Hazel alone, holding a cake.
A swing, still moving, but Hazel already walking away.
And in each one, her eyes were getting dimmer.
Less certain.
Less there.
He turned a corner—and she stood at the end of the hall.
Dressed in soft gray. Barefoot.
She didn't move. Her lips parted, but no sound escaped. Her fingers trembled against the wall, like she wasn't sure it was real.
"Hazel?"
She blinked.
And then the walls around her breathed.
The picture pulsed.
This was not just a prison.
It was alive.
He stepped forward, but the hallway lengthened—her image receding like a retreating tide.
"Hazel! It's me! I remember you. From the door. From the scent—jasmine and amber. The mirror."
Her lips moved—I didn't call you this time.
"You did. Or something did. I saw you."
You followed the wrong version of me.
"I didn't know!"
The lights above crackled, and the walls shivered.
A sudden cold burst from beneath the floorboards. Behind the pictures, faces began to stir.
Not Hazel's.
Others.
Shadows that wore her skin but not her spirit.
One had her eyes but grinned too wide.
One whispered his name with a smoker's rasp.
One bled from the mouth while laughing.
They began to crawl from the frames—reaching, slithering, mocking.
"Hazel, what is this?"
This is the part of me Yama left behind.
"He judged you?"
He doesn't need to touch you to carve you open.
She turned, disappearing around another bend.
He ran after her, and the floor fell beneath his feet—he crashed through rooms with no ceiling, no logic.
A bedroom without a door.
A train car drifting through a forest.
A mirror—he stared, but saw Hazel's reflection, not his.
In her hands was the red stone.
Glowing. Throbbing.
A child's whisper echoed behind him:
"That's what binds her here…"
He turned—no one.
But when he looked back, Hazel was beside him.
Not smiling.
Not crying.
Empty.
"Do you want to leave?" he asked.
Not without you.
"Then come."
She held out her hand—shaking, but willing.
He reached.
Just as their fingers touched—
the red stone shattered.
A scream ripped through the house—not hers, not his, but the picture's.
Frames burst off walls.
The hallway crumbled.
The world pulled inward, sucked through a singular point of light—
And then—
they were falling again.