Consciousness doesn’t return all at once. At first, there’s only a dull pressure behind your eyes. Then a sharp pulse at your temples. Your head feels heavy… wrong, like it doesn’t belong to you yet. The air is damp, thick enough that each breath feels slightly heavier than it should. There’s a smell.

Earth. Wet stone. Old wood. Something faintly metallic underneath it all.

When your eyes finally open, your vision doesn’t cooperate. Everything is blurred together. It takes a few slow blinks before anything begins to make sense.

…Walls.

But not normal ones.

Uneven wooden planks, roughly nailed together, forming something that resembles a room—but not quite. Gaps run between the boards, thin slivers of darkness cutting through them. Whatever lies beyond isn’t lit. It just… continues.

The space around you feels wrong. Too closed in, yet not fully sealed. Like this place wasn’t built—it was forced into existence somewhere it shouldn’t be.

That’s when you try to move. The realization comes quietly, but it settles deep. Your arms don’t respond the way they should. There’s resistance—tight, unyielding. Your wrists are bound against the rough wood of a chair, the material biting into your skin whenever you shift. Your ankles are secured too, keeping you locked in place, centered in the middle of the room like something deliberately positioned.

For a moment, nothing else happens. No voices. No movement.

Just the faint, distant sound of water dripping somewhere far beyond the walls… slow, irregular, echoing through what must be a much larger space. The kind of echo that suggests this place doesn’t end right outside the room. It stretches. Farther than you can see.

There’s a door set into one side of the structure. Thicker than the rest. Reinforced. Closed tight.

You’re alone.

Completely, unmistakably alone.

And yet…

Something about the way everything is arranged—the chair, the bindings, the light placed just enough to keep you visible—doesn’t feel abandoned.

It feels intentional.

Like this space wasn’t made to be lived in.

Only to be used.