Run your ass off.

Not much you can do at this point. If you were a real knight trainee of Gladion's order you might be able to make a stand and hold back the night, maybe even stand a chance, but there was no way your mind was pure enough to hold that kind of focus even at a time like this. Your chest feels like it's going to explode. You start to slow down because your body simply refuses to cooperate, the overworked muscles slowly giving out.

The sound of splitting bark erupts behind you, making you jerk mid-step and almost fall. There had been no footsteps, nothing to indicate somethings presence, but you feel it. A cold that bites through your armor, through your flesh, and into your very bone. Something strikes your chest plate with the **** of a war hammer and you fly through the air onto your chest, barely ten feet from the clearing. You struggle to your feet, unsheathing your sword, but the weapon is wrenched from your grasp as soon as it's drawn, thudding into a tree some ten feet to your left. In the shadow, you feel rather than see the two pinpricks of abyssal darkness inches from your face, like some kind of abominable inversion of twinkling life.

Then you hear... a child's laugh? Syllables you could never hope to pronounce slither over your ears like ice. There is a pause. A seemingly infinite stretch of time where you gaze into the abyss and the abyss quite literally stares you in the face. Something strikes your head, too fast to detect, and then- Darkness.