## Chapter 1 – The Message That Shouldn't Exist
At exactly **2:17 AM**, my phone vibrated.
The sound was soft, almost shy, but in the suffocating silence of my one-room apartment, it might as well have been a gunshot. My eyes snapped open, even though I hadn't been sleeping. I had been lying there, staring at the cracked ceiling above my bed, tracing the spiderweb of fractures that spread across concrete like broken veins.
Rain drummed against the window, slow and methodical, like someone tapping with long fingernails, asking for entry.
The power had been out for an hour. The fan was dead. The streetlight outside was dark. No Wi-Fi. No signal. Just the heavy, oppressive quiet of a city that had forgotten how to breathe.
The phone's pale glow spilled across my bed, painting the walls in cold blue light.
**UNKNOWN NUMBER:** *Don't look behind you.*
My heart leapt violently.
A wave of cold rolled down my spine and settled in my gut like a stone. Logically, I knew I was alone. The landlord lived two floors down, half-deaf, half-drunk. The hallway light outside my door hadn't worked for months. The locks were old, but sturdy.
Still… every nerve in my body screamed the same word: **Run.**
I didn't.
Slowly, I turned my head.
Nothing.
Just my shadow on the wall, stretched long and crooked by the phone's glow. It looked wrong—too thin, too tall, like it belonged to someone else.
The phone vibrated again.
**UNKNOWN NUMBER:** *Good. You listened.*
My hands shook as I typed.
**ME:** Who is this?
Three dots appeared.
They lingered.
Then disappeared.
Finally, the reply came:
**UNKNOWN NUMBER:** *Someone who already watched you die.*
The rain outside stopped.
For a terrifying moment, so did I.
I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. The silence pressed against my ears like the walls themselves were closing in. Every instinct screamed that I had just opened a door into something I didn't belong to—a place I couldn't escape.
And then, my phone vibrated again.
**UNKNOWN NUMBER:** *You die in 47 minutes.*
I laughed.
It was a sharp, jagged sound that echoed through the empty apartment, bouncing off walls and ceiling. A joke, a prank, a scam. People didn't text you about your own death. Some bored idiot had found my number and wanted to scare me. That was all.
I tossed the phone onto my mattress and stood, pacing the narrow strip of floor. The air felt thick, heavy, like breathing through wet cloth.
The phone buzzed again.
I froze. Every instinct told me not to look.
I looked anyway.
**UNKNOWN NUMBER:** *You trip on the stairs. Neck snaps. No one finds you until morning.*
I stared at my door.
The old wooden frame. The chipped paint. The handle that always stuck.
I hadn't planned to leave tonight.
But now I couldn't stop thinking about the stairs beyond it.
To prove the message wrong—to prove I was still in control—I grabbed my jacket and stepped into the hallway.
The light above flickered.
The air smelled like rust and damp concrete.
Each step down the stairs felt heavier than the last, my heart hammering like a drum in my chest. Halfway down, my foot slipped. My heart leapt into my throat.
I grabbed the railing just in time, fingers burning as metal scraped my skin.
I didn't fall.
I stood there shaking, staring at the rest of the steps. Alive.
I laughed again—this time with relief.
**ME:** You were wrong.
The reply came after a pause.
**UNKNOWN NUMBER:** *Good. That means the future changed.*
The words glowed on my screen, and in that moment, I realized—everything had just begun.
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