Breathless E-Book

Virgil Brooks

• Herausgeber: WS
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Breath Between Worlds Saga
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 114

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A child draws something he’s never seen. A whisper moves through the static. And the Gremlin is everywhere—but no one remembers when it started.

Breathless, the first book in The Breath Between Worlds trilogy by Virgil Brooks, is a psychological techno-thriller about memory, silence, and the slow unraveling of reality.

As towers fall and signals fade, Elias and his scattered companions begin to feel something shifting beneath the surface of their world. Something old. Something watching. And when the memories return, they won’t come quietly.

Some echoes never fade. Some were never yours to begin with.

Leseprobe

Title Page

Copyright

BREATHLESS Book One of The Breath Between Worlds Saga  Copyright © 2025 by Virgil Brooks  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.  Published by Sam’s Fiction Hub An imprint of Brewing Trades Media  ISBN: 979-8-9900744-0-8  Cover design by Sam's Fiction Hub Interior layout by Sam's Fiction Hub  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.  First Edition – eBook Version 

Also by Virgil Brooks

The Breath Between Worlds Saga • Children of the Signal (Book Two) • The Signal Remains (Book Three)  Other Works • Dragon of the Nile (Seasonal Audio Drama) • Echoes of Twenty-Four • The Whispering Sword  • The Gauntlet of Vengeance (Bloodlines of Vengeance Book One)

Familiar Shadows

The gravel crunched under the tires as the car rolled to a slow stop. Beyond the windshield, the house loomed—two stories of weatherworn wood and gray siding, half-swallowed by skeletal trees. A chill wind passed through the clearing, whistling like it was warning them off.

Elias stepped out of the car.

His boots sank into the earth with a softness he didn’t expect. The air tasted like ash and pine. And for a second—just a flicker—he felt like he’d been here before.

Not just the shape of the house. Not just the trees. The weight of it. Like a dream half-remembered.

Marin slammed her door and adjusted her jacket. “It's just for a few weeks,” she said without looking at him. “Let’s focus on Sophia, okay?”

Elias nodded, but didn’t move. His eyes remained on the front door, where the paint peeled like skin after a sunburn. Somewhere inside, the house seemed to exhale. Not with sound—but with a shift in presence.

Sophia.

He almost said her name aloud.

Instead, he grabbed the duffel from the backseat and followed Marin up the porch. The key scraped against the lock for longer than it should have before giving way. The door swung open into a stale silence.

Inside, the house was cooler. Older. More aware.

Elias paused in the threshold, scanning the shadows along the ceiling. Wooden beams stretched like ribs over a living room filled with dust-covered furniture and sunlight fractured through gauzy curtains.

A framed photograph sat alone on the mantel. A woman and child he didn’t recognize. As he walked past it to set the bag down, the frame shifted—just a twitch, as if something had nudged it from behind.

He turned. Marin hadn’t noticed.

Probably just loose wood, he told himself. Or maybe the floorboards weren’t level.

But the hairs on his arms stood up, alert and listening to something his mind couldn't name yet.

Later, after an awkward dinner of reheated soup and wordless glances, Elias lay awake on the pullout couch in the living room. Marin had retreated early, her door closed like punctuation at the end of a long sentence.

Outside, the wind whispered across the roof. Inside, the house held its breath.

Eventually, sleep took him.

He was standing in a hallway—stretched, with walls that wept in slow, black tears. Light flickered from exposed bulbs overhead, pulsing in rhythms that didn’t feel random.

At the end of the corridor stood a creature, half-shadow, half-child’s nightmare. Its body was small, hunched. Its skin shimmered like oil. And its eyes—too wide for its face—locked onto him with hungry familiarity.

The gremlin.

It didn’t move. It just watched him. Not with menace. With recognition.

Elias tried to speak, but his voice fractured.

The creature tilted its head. And though it had no mouth, Elias heard it inside him:

"You came back."

He woke with a start, breath catching in his throat. The room was still. The photo on the mantel now faced the wall.

Elias stared at it for a long time, not daring to move.

Welcome home.

The Box in the Attic

The next morning arrived gray and quiet, as if the sky itself had forgotten how to speak. Elias sat at the edge of the pullout couch, staring at the mantel.

The photograph was still turned to face the wall.

He hadn’t touched it.

Upstairs, a dull creak echoed across the ceiling.

Elias stood. The sound repeated—wood shifting against weight. Not footsteps exactly. More like the house adjusting to a memory.

He followed the noise toward the hallway. Dust spiraled in the narrow shaft of light pouring from the ceiling.

The attic ladder was down.

Wooden slats dangled like the tongue of something waiting to swallow him whole.

He didn’t remember it being open the night before.

“Marin?” he called.

She stepped out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel. “What is it?”

He gestured upward. “Did you go into the attic?”

Her brow furrowed. “No. I didn’t even know there was one.” She walked over, squinting at the pull-down hatch. “Could’ve just loosened over time. These old places are full of creaks and shifts. Let’s not start chasing ghosts.”

“I’m not chasing anything,” Elias said, though something in his stomach twisted at the lie.

Marin climbed the ladder first, flashlight in hand. “We’ll check it out. Prove it’s nothing.”

Elias followed, the wooden steps groaning beneath his weight. The attic space was shallow, unfinished—beams, insulation, the skeletal underside of a roof.

And one object sitting in the far corner.

A box. Square. Metal. Weathered but sealed.

Elias stopped cold.

He’d seen it before. In his dream.

Not the one from last night—the one from before. Before they even got here. The vision that started all of this. A glimpse, fleeting, of a box with edges like memory and weight like silence.

He stepped closer. The lid was carved with symbols—etched deep into the metal. Some resembled circuitry, others mirrored ancient glyphs. A fusion of logic and language. Meaning without translation.

Marin crouched beside it, brushing off dust. “Weird design. Could be an old military lockbox or... I don’t know. Custom tech?”

Elias didn’t answer.

The symbols hummed beneath his skin.

He reached out, fingers hovering an inch above the lid. The air felt colder near it—denser, like breathing near ice.

“Elias,” Marin said, more firmly now. “We need to stay rational, remember? It's probably nothing. A relic. Someone's idea of art. Maybe it belonged to the last tenant.”

“It matches the one in my dream,” he said.

She blinked. “You never mentioned a box.”

“I didn’t want to.”

He pressed his palm to the lid.

The symbols glowed, as if responding to the contact—then faded.

That night, sleep didn’t come easily. When it did, it came sharp and sudden, dragging him under like a riptide.

He stood in a field of static. Trees flickered between forms—digital outlines warping into branches, then melting into code. The sky above shifted between storm clouds and satellite grids.

The gremlin waited again, crouched beneath a flickering streetlamp with no post. Its eyes gleamed like wet coal.

It whispered his name.

“Elias.”

Soft. Childlike. With something old beneath the syllables.

“Elias.”

He tried to move but felt locked in place.

The creature stepped forward—bare feet on glass, body flickering in and out like bad reception.

It lifted one hand and pointed—straight at the box.

Then it smiled.

Elias awoke, breathless, sweat beading down his spine.

Down the hallway, something tapped from above.

A soft, rhythmic knock against the attic door.

Dust and Whispers

The storm came early. Just past midnight, a low roll of thunder stirred Elias from restless sleep. He sat up slowly, heart still echoing the gremlin’s whisper from his dream.

Wind lashed the window. Rain struck in pulses—irregular, as if it didn’t want to be heard.

He padded barefoot down the hallway toward the bathroom. The house creaked like something turning over in its sleep.

That’s when he saw them.

Footprints.

Wet. Bare. Small. They tracked from the front door to the middle of the hall—then vanished, mid-stride.

He knelt beside them. The prints weren’t muddy. Just damp. Impressions left behind like condensation on glass. The rain outside had just started.

Elias stood and moved to the front door, hand hovering near the knob. The deadbolt was still locked.

He undid it and stepped out into the cold.

No signs of entry. No trails in the grass. No motion at all—except for the trees, bowing against the wind like mourners.

When he came back in, Marin was waiting in the hall, arms crossed. “Why were you outside?”

“There were footprints,” he said, nodding toward the hallway.

She looked. They were gone.

She shook her head. “You’re sleepwalking again.”

“I was awake,” Elias replied. “And they were here. I swear.”

Her shoulders dropped. “Maybe you’re just—” She stopped, eyes narrowing.

She’d turned toward the air vent near the baseboard. Something was wedged inside.

She crouched and reached in, fingers brushing against metal.

A camera.

Small, embedded deep in the vent, lens visible behind dust and shadow. She pulled it free and held it up.

Elias felt his pulse skip.

“Tell me that was here when we moved in,” she said.

“I don’t think it was.”

They stared at it—its blank, unblinking eye somehow more unsettling now that it wasn’t watching.

In the attic, the box began to hum.

Not loud. Not mechanical. It was more a feeling than a sound—like pressure against the bones of the ear. A resonance that crawled down the spine and nested deep in the chest.

Elias turned his gaze toward the ceiling, sensing its pull.

Later that night, while Marin was asleep, Elias sat alone on the couch.

The lights were off. The rain had stopped.

The hum continued—intermittent, like a heartbeat.

He was staring at the front door when it happened.

The shadows shifted.

And in the flicker between lightning and silence, he saw it.

The gremlin.

Not in a dream. Not in his head.

Standing just past the doorway, half-lit by the dying glow of the hallway lamp. Its frame was small. Curled. Like a forgotten child who had seen too much. Its eyes reflected nothing—and everything.

It raised one finger to its lips.

A hush.

Then it was gone.

Elias didn’t move.

The hum from the attic fell silent.

He remained on the couch until morning, waiting for the house to exhale again.

The Device

The morning came hollow. Pale light seeped through the curtains, but it brought no warmth.

Elias moved through the house like he was trespassing in his own skin. The hum had stopped. The gremlin had not returned. But the silence was heavier than before—like the house was holding its breath again.

He kept returning to the hallway.

To the section of wall just past the bathroom, where the air always felt colder.

He pressed his palm to it.

A vibration, faint and rhythmic, pulsed beneath the wallpaper. Not the hum this time—this was mechanical. Real.

Instinctively, he peeled back the aging wallpaper and knocked. Hollow.

He fetched a screwdriver from the drawer and pried at the baseboard.

The panel gave.

Behind it: a hidden compartment, lined in steel. Wires webbed into a hexagonal frame that housed a dull black canister, no larger than a fire extinguisher.

And just below it, a small display.

00:04:52

The numbers blinked red.

His breath caught.

“Marin!” he shouted, stumbling back.

She came running, stopping short at the open wall.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know,” Elias said, heart pounding. “But it’s counting down.”

“Is it a bomb?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like a bomb.”

She looked again, her eyes scanning the layout. A faint logo was printed into the metal casing—eroded by time, but still visible.

A stylized V, nested inside a circle.

“We’re leaving,” Elias said. “Now.”

“Wait—what if we call someone?”

“No time.”

He was already grabbing their bags, hands shaking. Marin hesitated, then moved with him. They were out the front door within seconds, keys jangling as he fumbled to start the car.

The engine growled to life.

Behind them, the house stood still—unchanged. Unthreatening.

Until it wasn’t.

The air snapped just as they cleared the dirt path.

A muffled pulse boomed from the house. Not an explosion—more like an exhale from deep underground.

They stopped at the edge of the woods and turned.

A dark cloud leaked upward from the house. Thick, slow-moving. Not smoke, not gas—but something else. It clung to the light, warping the sky around it. The birds stopped singing. The air went still.

Far in the distance, a siren began to wail.

And then another.

Low. Mechanical. Not local law enforcement.

Something older.

Something triggered.

Marin turned to Elias, eyes wide with panic.

“What did we just run from?”

Elias didn’t answer.

Because deep in his chest, he already knew—

They hadn’t run far enough.

Train Yard Refuge

The sky had gone the color of a dying flame when Elias brought the car to a stop near the broken fence of the old train yard.

It shouldn’t have been here.

He couldn’t explain how he knew—but every instinct, every flash of that dream-vision told him this place was important. A rusted sentinel of the past, forgotten by maps, hiding something beneath the bones of steel and time.