"𝙸𝚝 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚌𝚕𝚘𝚜𝚎, 𝚒𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍. 𝙳𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚒𝚌." 𝟷𝟾𝚝𝚑 𝚂𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚖𝚋𝚎𝚛, 𝟸𝟶𝟶𝟷.

You open your eyes.

You’re not real. Not anymore. You don’t even know if you ever were. The thought feels distant, blurry—like a memory seen through fogged glass, dissolving before you can reach for it. You don’t remember. You don’t. You can’t.

The air tastes hollow. It hums softly, like the silence between two dying radio stations. You try to breathe, and it feels wrong—too smooth, too deliberate, as if something is breathing for you.

Have you ever been here before?

A question echoes through the stillness, but it doesn’t sound like your voice.

You look around. The world stretches endlessly, a pale field with grass that sways though there is no wind. The color of everything bleeds together—gray, green, almost-white, unreal. The sun is nowhere, and yet you feel its warmth clinging to your skin. It’s clear as day, and yet there are no shadows. None at all. You look down at your hands, expecting to see darkness beneath them. There is only light. Too much light.

The only darkness in this place lies far away: a massive black square resting at the edge of the horizon, perfectly still, perfectly flat. It doesn’t belong here. It’s too solid, too certain in a world that feels like a thought half-remembered.

Is it an exit? A doorway? A wound?

You can’t tell, but it pulls at you. The closer you look, the more it feels like it’s looking back.

The air begins to ripple with faint sounds—distorted, muffled, familiar. It’s music, maybe. Something old, something you might have heard once as a child in a dream. The melody twists and folds in on itself, becoming both comforting and unbearable. Beneath it, a thousand whispers rise, soft and overlapping, words you can almost understand if you just listen a little closer—

—but the moment you try, they stop.

You realize, with a slow and creeping certainty, that you are not alone. You can feel eyes tracing the outline of your thoughts, something just beyond the edges of this place watching you remember that you’ve forgotten.

A cold pulse crawls up your spine. You should move. You should go.

The square waits, impossibly still, impossibly patient. Its surface seems to breathe—slow, deep, like the world itself inhaling. The field hums louder, the music begins to melt into static, and for a heartbeat you think you can hear your name buried in the noise.

You take a step forward. The ground bends. The air vibrates.

Somewhere between the next step and the next breath, you think you understand.

You were never supposed to wake up here.

And yet—here you are.