What the hell just happened? What was that? Who was that?

  My breathing won’t slow down. The air comes in jagged and leaves too fast, like my lungs have forgotten how to work. My muscles burn. Long cuts trace my legs. I feel them without looking—a dry, pulsing pain at every step. I know these cuts. I just don’t know why.

  My skull throbs. My stomach climbs. I swallow.

  I stare at the ground ahead. Not by choice. My gaze refuses to rise. Every time it drifts toward the faces around me, something clenches in my chest and pulls it back down. I move around the debris without really looking, my feet deciding on their own. A broken bottle. A twisted piece of metal. I avoid them. My body knows why. I don’t.

  Then a laugh.

  I stop dead.

  No one around me is laughing. The faces are hollow, expressionless, turned toward the ground or toward nothing. No sound matches what I heard. I turn my head slowly. Once. Twice. Nothing.

  My skull is playing tricks on me.

  My fingers close around something. Cold. Metallic. I open my hand. A key. My breathing slows slightly. When I look at my palm again, it’s gone.

  That’s me.

  Who am I?

  My eyes drift around me. A crowded street, loud, reeking of sweat and iron. I move mechanically, every motion dragged out like my body is running on manual. One step. Another.

  My gaze lifts without me deciding to.

  Buildings stack up on both sides, planks nailed wherever, salvaged metal sheets, structures that tilt but refuse to fall. Roots split through walls. Plants push through cracks as if the stone always belonged to them. The place looks like it’s collapsing in real time, slowly enough that no one bothers to worry.

  My gaze catches a red brick. My heart skips. I look away immediately, but it’s too late. Something surfaces—an image, just for a fraction of a second—and my hands start to shake.

  I fix my eyes on the ground and keep moving.

  Stares follow me. Some people step aside. Others whisper behind my back. My clothes don’t match theirs, and they can tell. I clench my teeth and push on. Sweat runs down my forehead. The faces around me are dirty, the clothes worn thin.

  I can’t get control back.

  Breathe. Move.

  My stomach growls. I haven’t seen food since I started walking. My legs grow heavy, my pace drops without me deciding to slow. I give myself a few more meters. The next time my stomach makes itself known, I’m sitting in a corner and dying.

  That’s it.

  A wall of blue sheet metal and chain-link. I stop in front of it, bend my knees to sit on the ground. But something’s off. The sensation beneath me is wrong, not the dirty ground, not the earth. I stand back up and look down.

  Hm. What’s that?

  A chair. It wasn’t there two seconds ago. I watch it without moving. The cushion is clean, too intact for a place like this. Then I sit down anyway. It’s comfortable.

  And yet it just appeared.

  A sensation moves through my chest. Something withdrawing gently, not pain, more the opposite. A pressure I hadn’t noticed, releasing. My energy. I have energy.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I close my eyes. My skull resists for a moment, like a door that sticks. Then something opens.

  I’m standing somewhere. The ground is a narrow point of dark rock rising above a sea of grey clouds. I press my hand to the stone beneath my feet. Cold. Rough. The place doesn’t react to my presence. Everything already exists here, before me, without me.

  In the distance, something catches my eye.

  A blue ocean, vast, spreading like a living mass. Its surface moves slowly. The longer I watch it, the more something tightens, gently, in my chest. Between me and that ocean, several doors stand in the way.

  Then something rises inside me.

  A Mots.

  LIBRE.

  I open my eyes and stand. Eat. This Mots. What I am. That’s enough for now.

  Keep moving. There has to be food somewhere.

  My feet find their rhythm again. The ground moves under me. My gaze slides over the walls, the cracks, the roots splitting through stone. Then the key comes back to me. Then the chair. Then this Mots.

  A long breath escapes. My feet protest. My legs are heavy, my head heavier.

  A child runs past, a piece of bread pressed tight to his chest. He trips. The bread falls at my feet, lands in the dust, a few centimeters from my hand. The child looks at me. I look at the bread. He picks it up and leaves without a word.

  I keep moving.

  In front of a building taller than the others, something is wrong. A man in a green polka-dot suit spins a wheel on the tip of his finger. The wheel is as wide as I am. His hat rests on the ground below, open. He plunges his hand into it. Pulls out an entire tricycle. Sets it on the ground. The tricycle rolls by itself to the edge of the platform and stops.

  I stop too.

  His face is painted entirely white. Red makeup starts at his eyes, runs down his cheeks, longer on one side than the other. My mouth goes dry. His actual mouth isn’t painted. Just the mouth. I look again. That’s what’s wrong.

  How the tricycle fits in the hat.

  My stomach growls. This building is cleaner than the others. There might be food inside. I sit on the ground facing the entrance. My legs tremble slightly. Just for a second. Then it stops.

  Someone will walk in eventually, and I’ll follow. But first I want to see how he’s going to put the tricycle back in the hat.

  My stomach is eating me alive. I think I might die before I find out.

  Footsteps approach. I raise my head slowly. A hooded figure stops a few meters away. I can’t see her face, but I can see the basket. And what’s inside it.

  My body moves before I make any decision. I stand, and before I understand how, a pistol is in my hand, aimed at her forehead.

  “Give me your food.”

  She doesn’t answer. She pulls back her hood.

  Her face stops me cold. A small horn juts from her forehead. Her hair is mauve. Her skin is brown. Her eyes are silver, threaded with pale reflections, a fracture running through the center. None of it makes sense.

  Something rises. Not a proper memory—just a sequence of images without order. A pistol pressed against my own forehead. My hand pressing a pistol against another forehead. And now my arm outstretched, the weapon aimed at her.

  Her gaze doesn’t waver.

  My arm grows heavy, impossibly heavy, and lowers on its own. The weapon disappears. She holds out the basket. Her hand trembles slightly, but she smiles anyway.

  “Here. Eat. You must be hungry.”

  I take the bread and eat. My eyes stay on the basket, my hand keeps returning to it. She watches without moving. Fine. I stretch out on the ground, full. The sky above is grey. My stomach is no longer empty.

  What was I curious about?

  Her.

  Her face is singular, the kind you don’t mistake for anyone else. She’s kept her distance since I finished eating. Not exactly fear. Something else. My body reacted strangely when I saw her, and I still don’t know why.

  Her voice cuts through.

  “Heyo, are you okay?”

  The word hits me square in the chest. An image flickers. Fingers closing around my wrist. A warm voice. Then nothing.

  Heyo.

  That’s me. She knows me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Tell me, did anything happen while I was out?”

  “A lot of things happened. It’s going to take a while to explain. You were unconscious for several days.”

  Unconscious. Several days. Why? I stay quiet. She waits. Seconds pass.

  “I don’t really remember my last moments before I went under.”

  Her expression shifts. She takes a step back.

  “You… you were different. I don’t remember much either.”

  She’s lying. Not entirely, but she’s lying. Her posture closes off when she says it. Something in her shoulders.

  What did I do?

  “Nora.”

  A voice in the distance.

  Nora. The name means nothing to me. Yet a faint warmth passes through my chest, brief, without explanation.

  A new figure approaches. Shorter than me. Hooded, a stylized hourglass on the fabric. Clear blue eyes. A small nose piercing.

  The warmth becomes a burn.

  Every muscle contracts at once. My breathing spikes. My gaze locks onto him and doesn’t move. He notices. He steps back immediately and takes a stance.

  “You’re awake.”

  I move toward him. The words come out before I can stop them.

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  He doesn’t answer. He smiles.

  My body and mind move as one. I don’t know who he is anymore. I don’t need to.????????????????