Jacob awoke not with a gasp, but with silence. No breath. No heartbeat. Just awareness—raw, intrusive, and endless. He was lying on a tiled floor, cold against his skin. His limbs were numb, and the darkness was absolute, pressing in like a thick, suffocating fog. It wasn’t just bck—it was void, the kind that swallowed light, sound, and thought. He didn’t know how long he had been there. Minutes? Hours? Time was a whisper now, distant and broken. And then, from above, a single fluorescent light buzzed to life. Flickering. Unstable. Jacob sat up slowly. His body ached, as though it had been torn apart and stitched back together wrong. He was in what looked like an abandoned operating room. The tiles were chipped and bloodstained, surgical tools rusting on carts that hadn’t moved in decades. Along the far wall, rows of metal drawers—morgue lockers—lined up like coffins waiting for names. And they were all open. Empty. No, not empty. Each locker door had a name scratched into it. Some were unreadable, the metal warped and scarred. But one near the end caught his eye: Amanda. His breath caught. He stood, wobbling, and approached the drawer. It was empty, but lined with something dark—stains long dried but still fresh in the air. That name… it couldn’t be a coincidence. He didn’t know an Amanda, but it felt familiar, like something forgotten was tugging at the edge of his mind. Then came the sound. Not footsteps. Not breathing. A scraping. Metal on tile. Jacob turned slowly. In the doorway, a tall, gaunt figure was dragging a long surgical bde across the floor. Its face was hidden beneath a surgeon’s mask, stained brown. Its eyes—if it had any—were obscured by cracked goggles. It didn’t move like a man. It twitched. Lurched. Like a puppet without strings. And when it stepped into the light, Jacob saw what it carried in its other hand. A heart. Still beating. His own heart screamed in response, thundering in his chest as the figure began to speak—not with its mouth, but from everywhere. “You left the door open, Jacob. You let her through. Now she’s inside.” Jacob stumbled backward, colliding with one of the empty gurneys. He didn’t know what it meant—what her meant—but he didn’t wait to find out. He ran. Through a door, down a hallway that twisted left and right with impossible geometry. The hospital pulsed around him, lights fshing like veins. The walls stretched, contracted. Screams echoed down the halls—not of pain, but ughter. Childlike and cruel. Finally, he burst into a new room. And stopped. Amanda stood in the center. Her eyes were different now—one normal, the other swirling bck like a storm. She didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe. “You’re the reason I’m here,” she whispered. “You dreamed of this pce, Jacob. You brought us both in.” Jacob shook his head, backing away. “No—I don’t know you—” “Not yet,” she said, stepping forward. “But you will.” The lights went out again. And in the darkness, something else stirred. Something bigger. Something hungry.