Silence.
Pure silence was all that Stiles could hear. Cold was all that he felt, and darkness was what surrounded him.
Time and time again, he'd find himself stranded at the beginning of that grim, uninviting hallway, and yet, he never managed to figure out what its end held for him. Its beginning remained shrouded in mystery all the same, for that matter.
What his presence in such a place meant, was an unsolved riddle to him. He had his theory. The suspicion that it was all but an elaborate joke. A scheme built from the ground up for the sole purpose of tormenting him.
Well aware he was stuck in a nightmare but with no means to escape it. Truly, a sickening game that had its strings tied around the nogitsuné's fingertips.
Once again, the passage before him extended to no visible end. The small ounces of light that allowed him to see the space around were of an origin he had yet to determine.
Once again, he could do nothing but follow the path ahead of him. Walk with a lot of apprehension, but walk nonetheless.
The further he progressed down the line, the more he thought he was losing the ability to distinguish colors.
His white, foggy breath was discernible as it left his mouth and ascended before blending in with the thick veil of murk filling the entire tract.
And then he saw them. The doors…
The same wooden ones he'd always encountered in that repeating illusion. Perfectly aligned, one next to the other, and from each side of him, as though mirrored to be reflected.
Stiles made his way towards the very first door to his right, turned the knob then pushed in order to open it, but it resisted him. He gave two more good pushes, but the door insisted on remaining closed.
So, he turned around to the first door behind him and repeated his actions. Only for the same thing to happen.
He moved towards the second, then third doors, then the fourth ones from both sides.
He began to wonder if there was any use to it all, him trying the doors.
Stiles picked up the pace and went through more doors in a shorter span of time… Time which he had no way of telling in that obscure hell.
He broke into a run, desperate for something different to happen. He prayed for anything; an open door, a light to follow, a voice to guide him out of there.
However, locked door after locked door with no indication whatsoever of when or where it might end, brought his spirits further to the ground.
Stiles slowed down until he completely stopped in one spot, turned to his right then moved towards the space between two specific doors. He gave his back to the wall before leaning on it and sliding into a crouching position.
Eyes cast upon the ground, Stiles held his head in both hands, clasping his palms tightly against his ears as though trying to muffle sounds and voices only he could hear.
Though, whatever voices he tried to suppress… They were stronger, persistent, too loud to silence.
Everything came rushing back to the surface. The voices came with images. Images of the night of their intrusion in the apprentice's domain flashed back behind his eyes. Images of the last time, the last look Scott had given him, last glimpses of his best friend before he vanished into the night.
Scott MCcall had, indeed, disappeared, leaving all of them behind. Scott had always been about saving lives, even those of his enemies. He'd always pulled his punches, never allowing himself to reach his full potential as a werewolf, let alone an alpha. A true alpha.
Taking a life was the line he'd always been terrified of crossing.
Thus, killing Euriella the way he did that night broke something in him. The idea that his deepest fear became reality consumed him completely, and he allowed it to, letting go of his humanity in favor of the beast he'd always stifled.
Then, images of his father, Noah Stilinski, as he begged his friends to lock him up so that he couldn't hurt anyone, stormed his mind.
On that same night, Jackson had managed to neutralize Noah using his Kanima venom, preventing him from running into the wilderness like Scott did.
Stiles sank so deep into his memories that he'd almost missed the fact that one of the doors, the one right in front of him, had creaked open, seemingly, of its own accord.
He placed his hand on the wall behind him in order to push himself up, stood in place, contemplating the door, no doubt, expecting to see someone behind it. The one responsible for the action.
Stiles unrooted his feet from their spot and began to, very gingerly, advance towards the door.
Once within his reach, he pushed it away with his fingers in order to get a better look at what lay behind it.
"Lydia?"
Her name was the first and only word he muttered upon laying eyes on her figure.
Lydia, or the creature that resembled Lydia, had her back turned to him. She had hair he'd never mistake for someone else's.
She was kneeling at the center of a vast room, surrounded by nothing but walls of fog so thick, Stiles couldn't even see what she had in front of her.
"Lydia?" he tried to get her attention after failing to the first time.
He slowly walked around her so that her face would become visible, but the closer he moved to her, the more of her surroundings were revealed.
Right by her knees, began a solid, dark shape that rose from its roots in the dirt up to the height of her chest.
It appeared as a large tree stump. A stump he recognized the more he scrutinized.
What could that vision possibly mean? If it had a meaning to begin with? Why was Lydia kneeling in front of the nematon?
"Lydia?" he called her name a little louder that time.
"She can't hear you,"
Stiles's head snapped towards the source of the voice, only to be met by the noguitsuné or the true owner of the body the noguitsuné had possessed. There was no way for Stiles to truly tell them apart quite yet.
After those words, and before Stiles could say anything, the young man turned around and went out the door that Stiles had entered through a minute prior.
Stiles turned his gaze towards Lydia once more. He'd circled around her enough to finally see her face. She had her eyes shut, deeply focused on something.
Between Lydia's mute and still figure, and the creature that had actually spoken to him, the choice seemed simple.
Stiles followed in the young man's steps, through the door and back in the hallway. He paused, noting a second door that wasn't open before that moment. Stiles looked to his left, then to his right, deciding there was no other way to go from there.
He neared the door with much caution, slow in his tracks, pushing the wooden barrier just enough to comfortably peek inside through the crack.
"I've never had a room quite like this one. Not ever," the young stranger smiled.
Seated by a round table that held the same chessboard it always did in that nightmare.
"Yeah, you've said that before," Stiles' reply was… Nonchalant, for lack of better descriptors.
His demeanor had completely shifted from the moment he recognised that place. It was as though everything became familiar all of the sudden. He made his way towards the bed before dropping his weight on the mattress.
"Have I?" asked the young man. Although he seemed to address those words to himself rather than to Stiles.
"At least, a thousand times," Stiles' eyes were busy inspecting every parcel, every inch of his childhood room.
"We haven't met that many times yet,"
"You've been counting," Stiles half asked, finally bringing his sight towards the young man, only to be met by a radiant and yet miserable smile.
"Oh! There's not much to do around here, all day long, all… Night long," he said.
"Who are you, really?" Stiles finally asked the question he'd been dying to have the answer to.
The stranger took a deep breath before exhaling, "My first name was Norio,"