I need to wake up.

  Not in this room. Not in this body. Not in this reality.

  The bruise on my ankle was still there, purple and raw, throbbing as if it had its own pulse. Every time my eyes landed on it, a heavy pressure pressed against my chest. It wasn’t just a mark. It was proof. Proof that the world on the other side of sleep wasn’t staying politely behind its curtain.

  I wanted to unzip myself, peel out of this skin and leave it behind. I wanted to detach from the apartment, the stack of emails waiting to bury me, the neighbor’s muffled rhymes bleeding through the wall. I wanted to step sideways into some other version of me, one who didn’t know what it meant to wake up with fingerprints that weren’t hers.

  Instead, I wrapped myself tighter in my blanket and told myself I’d take the day off. One day. I wouldn’t go in. I'll take vacation from one thing that's still within my control. And, I’ll spend it doing something normal, the rules still worked. If I could just act human long enough, maybe reality would remember I belonged here.

  The morning drifted into afternoon in small, clumsy rituals.

  I pulled out a puzzle box from under my bed, the thousand-piece kind where the sky looked the same in every direction. It had been sitting there for months, half-finished, accusing me. I forced myself to keep placing pieces, one after the other. A picture forming felt steadier than thinking about bruises.

  When my back ached from leaning forward, I stumbled into the kitchen, boiled instant noodles, and burned my tongue on the first bite. I laughed, a sound too sharp and too short, but at least it was mine.

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  The silence pressed in after that. Every creak of the building sounded like something waiting. So I gave in to the one thing that never betrayed me: music.

  I slipped on my headphones and let my favorite metal band detonate inside my skull. Guitars shredded, drums cracked like thunder, the singer’s voice tore the air to ribbons. The sound shook me so hard I almost felt free. No bruises. No dreams. Just me and noise so loud it drowned out thought.

  For the first time in days, my chest loosened.

  I wasn’t thinking about the forum. Or rituals. Or shadows whispering my name.

  I was just Amaya. Just alive.

  Then the chime cut through.

  I ripped my headphones off. My heart slammed against my ribs. That tone — sharp, urgent, unmistakable — I had set it only for my boss. It meant deadlines. Fire drills. Emergencies.

  But it wasn’t my email. It wasn’t Slack. It wasn’t any work app I recognized.

  The screen lit up with a single notification, text plain and impossible:

  “Running doesn’t work, Amaya.”

  My stomach dropped.

  The message expanded on its own, line by line:

  “Here’s how you open the door.”

  Below it unfolded a block of instructions. A manual. Step by step, written flat and clinical: how to steady your breath, how to check if you’re dreaming by pinching your hand, how to “push through the veil.”

  No branding. No sender. No source.

  I stared, frozen. I had covered my tracks. VPN. Tor. No logins. No names. Nothing that could trace back to me.

  And yet—

  They found me.

  The phone slid from my hand, clattering onto the puzzle. Sky pieces scattered across the floor.

  The manual stayed lit on the screen, every line pulsing like a trap.

  There is no door to escape any more, I was already Inside.