The ticking of the wall clock was the first thing I heard.One tick… then another.As if every second was denying me something I didn't know I'd lost.
I'm sitting at the dining table.Before me, an empty plate and a glass of water I don't remember pouring.The light coming through the window is pale—almost sick.There's a faint scent of iron, touched with sulfur.It doesn't come from the kitchen.It comes from me.
Heat stirs in my hands, as if beneath my skin a living ember were burning.I touch the edge of the table, hoping the texture will return me to reality.But the wood throbs.Not fast. Not slow.Just… throbs.
I try to breathe deeply, but the air tastes metallic—like blood.Something ancient spills inside me, unseen.An echo of the place I came from—or perhaps the one I never left.
I walk toward the hallway mirror.My footsteps sound hollow, as if they don't belong to this floor.I look at myself.It's me.Yet my eyes… are not.Inside them, a reflection that shouldn't exist:the tower, distant and faint, glimmering deep within my pupils.
I blink.It vanishes.But the smell returns.Iron. Sulfur. Smoke.As if hell had followed me here—or worse, as if I had brought it with me.
And while the clock insists, marking a time that no longer belongs to me,something whispers from the other side of the mirror.
I don't understand it.I don't want to.I only know the voice sounds more human than mine.