Author's Note: Hey there! I'm Uyii, and this is my first attempt at writing a novel. I'm excited to share this story with you, and I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I enjoyed writing it. This book is something I've been passionate about for a while, and I'm thrilled to see it come to life. There will be twists, turns, and some characters you might love (or hate!), but I promise it will be an adventure worth reading.
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A chill crept over Sawyer's skin—subtle at first, then steadily sharper, like icy fingers dragging deliberately along his spine. It wasn't just the cold that unsettled him, but the way it seemed to rise from within, crawling up from a place deeper than flesh. The air around him felt distant and distorted, as if he were submerged in something too thick to be real.
His eyelids fluttered, unwilling to stay open, as if the very act of waking required more strength than he currently possessed. He wasn't sure if he was still dreaming or if he had slipped back into consciousness without fully returning. There was no distinct line anymore—just a blur of sensation and shadow, a swirling fog of reality and nightmare colliding.
Had he fallen asleep again? That dreadful kind of sleep that crept up when you weren't paying attention—the kind that dragged you under even when you swore you'd stay awake? The thought loomed like a dark cloud, and with it came a heavy doubt, thick enough to smother reason. The world didn't feel solid. His thoughts didn't feel like his own.
This feeling—it wasn't new. It had visited him before, more times than he cared to count. That drifting, untethered sensation. But tonight—or morning, or whatever this in-between was—it felt stronger. It clung to him, burrowed deep, like a splinter lodged just beneath the skin that no amount of scratching or ignoring could remove. It throbbed with something unspoken, something unfinished.
"No, Sawyer."
The voice wasn't external. It echoed from somewhere inside his mind, neither loud nor soft, but unmistakably clear. Firm, yet kind. Like the memory of someone who once held him during a fever, pressing a cool cloth to his forehead and whispering truths he wasn't ready to hear.
"We talked about this, remember? You just have to trust me, and tell me. You have to let go of the secrets that are choking you."
He recoiled at the voice, though there was no one near him. The words struck something raw and trembling inside his chest. A shudder rippled through his body—not just from fear, but from guilt, from the weight of what he still held tightly to.
"I can't," the thought came sharply, clenched and painful like broken glass in his throat. It wasn't even a whisper—just the desperate echo of his refusal within himself. "She made me promise," he thought, the memory as vivid as it was paralyzing. "I swore I wouldn't tell anyone. It was the last thing I promised her."
That vow wasn't just a memory—it was a burden. A cold, immovable stone pressing against his ribs, making it hard to breathe. It had been spoken in love, in desperation, in dying light—and now it lived inside him like a quiet curse.
"But she's gone, isn't she, Sawyer?"
The voice returned, calm yet persistent, laced with an ache that felt almost heavier than his own. There was something tender about it, like a hand brushing over a scar—it didn't press, didn't demand, but it made its presence known. A soft, mournful caress that wrapped around his heart, squeezing gently but firmly.
"She's not here anymore. You know that… deep down."
"No," Sawyer breathed, barely a sound, more like a reflex than a thought. The word came out brittle, breaking apart the moment it left his lips. His denial wasn't fierce—it was fragile, a thin veil held up against a storm. "She's not gone. She can't be."
His hands trembled slightly, and he drew them into himself, holding his elbows like he was trying to contain something that threatened to spill. Her memory surged behind his eyes—too vivid, too bright. It wasn't one image but many, crashing into each other like waves. Her laughter, that warm, uninhibited sound that could cut through any silence. The light touch of her fingers on his wrist. The soft creases that appeared at the corners of her eyes when she smiled, like tiny sunbeams.
He could almost feel her again—standing behind him, just out of reach. The ache she left behind wasn't some quiet sorrow. It was sharp and alive, a wound that refused to close. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, each thud reminding him of the space where she used to be.
"Sawyer," the voice said again, gentler now, like it had knelt beside him and lowered its voice to match his pain. "We have to move on. I know it hurts… but we have to accept that she's gone. Even if it feels like you're breaking to do it. That's the only way healing begins."
He closed his eyes. The darkness behind his lids didn't offer comfort. It only amplified the storm inside him.
"Now… tell me. Is this a dream? Or is it real? Can you feel it—the weight of this moment? The texture of the air around you?"
Sawyer swallowed hard, his throat dry and tight. His eyes fluttered open again, searching the dim room for some kind of anchor—something solid, something certain.
"It's… real," he murmured, then hesitated, his voice faltering. "Of course. It has to be… right?"
But even as he said it, doubt slithered through his mind, quiet and cold. A creeping thing that whispered of illusions and half-truths. Nothing felt grounded. Nothing felt safe.
The air, the floor beneath him, even his own breath—it all felt like smoke trying to mimic something solid.
And in that moment, he wasn't sure if he was still holding on… or already letting go.
"How do you distinguish dreams from reality, Sawyer? How do you know what is true, and what is simply a fabrication of your mind?"
The question lingered in the air, sharp and intimate, like a whisper meant only for him.
He hesitated, his eyes narrowing slightly, brows knitting in quiet concentration. There was a tremor in his breath as he tried to gather his thoughts. "Um… objects, time, faces, themes, location…" he murmured, almost to himself. The words stumbled out unevenly, like he was reciting from memory, not meaning. His voice lacked conviction. These were the things he had been taught—textbook markers of reality—but now they felt like empty phrases. Like signs on a road he no longer believed led anywhere real.
He swallowed hard, clinging to the list as if it were a raft in open waters. His mind, once sharp and certain, now drifted, unfocused and murky. Every answer he gave felt like it belonged to someone else, like he was impersonating a version of himself that used to know better.
"And now? What do you think, Sawyer?"
The voice was softer now, probing, but not unkind. "Now, when you're lost and confused… what is the answer?"
A slow, creeping dizziness began to climb up the back of his neck. It wasn't just his thoughts anymore—it was his body, betraying him too. A cold sweat beaded at his temples. The air in the room felt heavier somehow, like it had thickened without warning. He blinked, but the walls seemed to waver, their lines no longer straight. The light twisted in on itself, warping shadows into unnatural angles that crawled across the floor like living things.
He pressed his palm against his temple, trying to steady himself, trying to feel something that made sense. But even the weight of his hand didn't feel right. It was as if he'd been dipped into another world, one that looked like reality on the surface but was wrong underneath—just wrong.
"I… I think I'm dreaming," he said at last, his voice barely more than a whisper. The words were fragile, reluctant. A quiet surrender.
It felt like admitting something dangerous. Like opening a door you know you can't close again. The moment the words left his mouth, something in him folded—some thread of denial he'd been holding onto snapped in silence. He had no control anymore, and he knew it.
And in that raw, suspended moment, Sawyer felt himself slipping—bit by bit—into something he couldn't name. Something deeper than confusion. Something terrifyingly real.
"Why do you think so, Sawyer? Why do you believe this is a dream, and not the reality you know?"
The voice, soft yet insistent, hung in the air like mist. It didn't echo—it lingered, touching something deep in him. A gentle, probing presence, it seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, threading through the silence with unsettling ease. It wasn't confrontational. It wasn't harsh. But it made him feel exposed—like it saw through the mask of his mind and into the cracks beneath.
"I… I can't see your face!" he burst out, his voice breaking at the edges.
The realization hit him like a steel rod to the chest—sharp, cold, final. A sudden clarity that tore through the haze and left him breathless. His eyes darted toward the speaker—or where the speaker should be—but there was nothing. No eyes. No skin. No expression. Just a formless, empty presence that stirred the air without occupying space.
In his dreams, the faces were always wrong. Always blurred, smeared like oil paint left out in the rain. Indistinct, shifting, like memories warped by time and trauma. And this… this facelessness was no different.
He squinted into the gloom, willing his mind to make sense of the shape before him, but the harder he focused, the more it dissolved—like mist parting before light. There was no human anchor. No gaze to meet. No presence to lean into. Just the vast, vacant confirmation that he was drifting in the hollow corridors of his own subconscious.
That absence chilled him more than any scream ever could.
And then—he gasped.
Sawyer jolted upright in bed like a man pulled from drowning, chest heaving, lungs searching for air that didn't want to come fast enough.
His heart slammed against his ribs, wild and erratic, a caged bird flinging itself at the walls of its prison. Cold sweat soaked his shirt, gluing it to his back, and his sheets clung to his legs like damp vines. His breath came in short, jagged bursts, and for a moment, he couldn't remember how to breathe properly.
The room was too still. Too quiet.
He reached for something—anything—to ground himself. His eyes found the clock on his nightstand, its red digits glowing through the dark like a warning: 2:15 AM. The time didn't soothe him. If anything, it made the silence louder. It reminded him of how long the night could stretch when you were afraid to close your eyes.
"Fuck," he muttered, the word slipping from his lips like a blade meant to cut through the stillness.
He raked his fingers through his damp hair, the strands curling and clinging to his forehead. He could still feel the echo of that voice, like it had followed him back from wherever he had just been.
His sheets were a mess, twisted and soaked, as though he'd been wrestling something in his sleep. Maybe he had.
With a grunt, he threw back the covers and swung his legs off the side of the bed. His bare feet touched the cold floor, and it grounded him a little, made him wince—but he welcomed it. At least that felt real.
"Man… I need a fucking coffee," he muttered under his breath.
It wasn't just about caffeine—it was about ritual, about anchoring himself in something familiar. He reached for his robe, slinging it over his shoulders, the fabric still holding yesterday's warmth. Then, slowly, he shuffled toward the kitchen, dragging the weight of his body—and something heavier than that—into the waking world.
Something had followed him out of that dream.
And he wasn't sure if it had ever really ended.
As he stepped out of his room and into the narrow corridor that led to the kitchen, a strange unease crept over him like a slow, tightening vine. It started small—a whisper at the back of his thoughts, a subtle tension just under the surface of his skin. Almost dismissible. Almost.
It was the kind of feeling you get when you sense someone watching you, even though you're alone. The kind that makes the hairs on your arms lift before you can explain why. At first, he ignored it, brushing it off as the lingering weight of a bad dream, chalking it up to the hour or the cold floor under his bare feet. But with every step forward, that sense of wrongness expanded.
The air felt heavier now. Dense. As though the corridor had filled with invisible smoke or thick mist, unseen but impossible to breathe through normally. It pressed against his chest with quiet insistence, making each breath just a little harder, each movement feel oddly delayed—like walking through water, or trying to run in a dream.
His limbs no longer obeyed the way they should. There was a subtle drag to every motion, like gravity itself had deepened in this part of the house. His knees bent reluctantly. His feet shuffled, not out of laziness or tiredness, but resistance—as if the floor wanted to hold him back.
He slowed, then stopped.
One hand reached out to steady himself, his fingers grazing the wall to his left—cold wood, polished smooth over the years from habit and familiarity. But this time… it didn't feel right.
He expected the usual chill of the lacquered surface, the quiet grounding comfort of something known. But instead, the wood felt faintly warm. Too warm. And there was a give to it. Not soft, exactly, but pliable—like skin stretched tight over something solid.
He frowned.
His fingers lifted slowly, hesitant now, and he stared at his palm as though expecting to find a trace of something left behind—moisture, dust, blood. But there was nothing. Nothing except that quiet, gnawing dread crawling further beneath his skin.
He blinked, hard. Once. Twice.
The fog in his mind wasn't clearing. If anything, it was thickening. Wrapping around his thoughts, dulling the clarity in his eyes, whispering nonsense he couldn't quite hear at the edges of his awareness.
His breath hitched, just slightly.
Something was off. Something in the air. In the silence. In the way his own home—the place that should have been safe—suddenly felt like it was holding its breath.
And maybe, he realized with growing discomfort, so was he.
Then he looked down.
And the world—the small, familiar world of his hallway—tilted.
His eyes widened, the breath catching in his throat before he could fully inhale. A sharp jolt of adrenaline surged through his chest, cold and immediate. Where there should have been clean, varnished floorboards—warm brown, always creaking in the same spots—there was now… nothing familiar at all.
The corridor in front of him had vanished.
In its place stretched an uncanny expanse of deep red sand, coarse and uneven, spreading endlessly ahead like the shore of some forgotten, godless desert. It wasn't still—no, it moved. Shifted. The grains rippled as if stirred by some unseen breath, a silent inhalation beneath the surface. The sand clung to his bare feet, rising past his ankles now, gritty and abrasive against his skin.
It wasn't just sand. It felt alive.
Sawyer staggered backward, but the ground gave way beneath him. His foot sank deeper than expected, and he nearly fell. There was no resistance, no solid anchor. Only the slow, deliberate drag of the sand wrapping around his calves like soaked cloth, clinging and refusing to let go.
Panic flared in his chest—sharp, sudden, and undeniable.
He tried to lift his foot again, to break free of the grainy pull, but it resisted him. Every motion was a struggle. The sand moved like quicksand but without the logic, without the explanation. It didn't belong. It didn't make sense.
A sick, creeping realization bloomed in his gut—cold and paralyzing. He wasn't standing on stairs anymore. He wasn't in a house anymore.
He was in something else entirely.
Something that felt wrong.
Something that should not exist in the world he knew.
This wasn't just a hallucination. This was a violation—an intrusion of something unspoken and vast, something ancient crawling in through the cracks of his sanity. And the worst part? A small, whispering voice at the back of his mind wasn't even surprised.
It was almost like some part of him had known it was coming.
His chest tightened.
A rising wave of panic swept through him, cold and consuming. It was the kind of fear that bypassed logic, that didn't wait for explanations. His breath caught, shallow and sharp. He opened his mouth to scream—to beg for help—but no sound came. Just a rasp of air, dry and useless.
His voice was stuck, strangled by terror.
He flailed, arms outstretched, reaching for the banister, for the wall, for anything solid—but they slipped away from him like shadows in fading light. The space around him stretched, warped, distorted. The hallway elongated. The walls curved like glass melting under fire. Everything he knew—everything he trusted—was bending under the weight of something unreal.
The world had turned unfamiliar.
He squeezed his eyes shut, sweat trickling down his temples, heart slamming in his chest like it was trying to break free. His mind begged for an end, for a return to normalcy, to wakefulness, to anything that wasn't this surreal horror.
But there was only the sand.
It clung to his skin like a second layer, rough and hot. It hissed against his flesh as it climbed higher, brushing his thighs, wrapping around him like a living, breathing thing.
And all he could do was brace for the moment when it would take him completely.
Pull him under.
And drown him in the depths of his own fear.
He opened his eyes again, slowly, as if peeling back a layer of resistance he didn't remember putting there. His eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, swollen with exhaustion and something heavier—fear, maybe, or confusion.
A ragged gasp tore from his throat as he dragged air into his lungs. It came in hot and sharp, burning like he'd been held underwater, suffocated by something unseen and relentless. He coughed once—dry and harsh—and instinctively pressed a hand to his chest. His ribs ached with every breath, like they'd been crushed, like something immense had sat on him and only just lifted its weight.
The sand—God, that awful, suffocating red sand—was gone.
He blinked hard, trying to steady the vertigo twisting in his gut. He was on the corridor again, bare feet planted firmly on the smooth wood. The same corridor he had walked through a thousand times in his life. And yet… everything was wrong. The air was too still. The shadows too deep. The light—if it could be called that—had a strange, off-color tint, like the world had been run through a filter he didn't understand.
His home, once familiar and comforting, was no longer intact. The walls stood at odd angles, and the hallway stretched farther than it ever had before. Doors were in the wrong places, their frames crooked, their handles missing. It was his house, but twisted—as if someone had taken the blueprint of his life and folded it in half, then crumpled it with their fists.
Sawyer's chest heaved. Each breath was shallow and uneven, stolen from the air as if he didn't have permission to breathe it. He reached for the railing, but even it felt different beneath his palm—coarse, dry, and warm, like stone left out in the sun.
His gaze dropped, scanning his body, searching for something familiar—some thread to anchor him—but there was none. His pajamas were gone. The soft cotton, the loose comfort of the shirt he always wore to bed, had been replaced by stiff, unfamiliar clothing. The fabric scratched and clung in all the wrong places, thick and abrasive, like something he might've seen in a post-apocalyptic movie.
And then there was the pain.
A dull, persistent throb pulsed in his right side. It wasn't sharp enough to be blinding, but it was constant—like a slow drumbeat echoing beneath his skin. With every movement, it flared slightly, radiating out into his ribs and hip like a warning. He reached down to touch it and winced. There was no blood, but the ache was real. A bodily signal. A reminder.
Something was wrong.
Something had changed.
And it wasn't just in his surroundings—it was in him.
He looked down, his gaze drawn by a strange heaviness nestled in his arms.
There, cradled against his chest, was a girl.
She felt fragile in his grasp, like something broken—too light, too still. Her head lolled lifelessly to the side, resting against him with no will of its own. Her limbs hung limp, unmoving, as if the strings of her body had been cut. Panic stirred in his chest, raw and immediate, but it was muted by the sheer unreality of what he was seeing.
Her hair caught his attention first. It was long and matted, the dark red strands clinging to her pale face in sticky tangles. The color was almost unnatural, too deep, like rust or dried blood, and the strands stuck to her skin as though she'd been running through something wet, something thick. A cold realization began to form in his chest as he stared—this wasn't just a stranger. This was someone hurt. Someone dying.
Her skin was the color of bone—ashen, bloodless. It carried the stillness of death, and Sawyer felt a chill snake down his spine, an instinctual fear that whispered of funerals and final breaths. But worse than her pallor was the fact that he couldn't see her clearly. Her features were obscured—blurred, like the edges of a dream slipping away upon waking. Shadows clung to her face like a mask, hiding her identity, refusing him even the comfort of understanding who she was.
She looked like a ghost. Like a memory he wasn't supposed to have.
She wore armor—at least, what was left of it. A bronze chest plate, scratched and battered, hugged her torso. The metal was old, scorched in places, dented like it had seen years of war. It was cold to the touch, and he could feel its chill seeping through his own skin where it pressed against him. The weight of it, though not much, added to the heaviness he felt inside.
Beneath the armor, her clothing was torn, revealing a dark, bloodied patch that stained the fabric near her ribs. The blood wasn't bright red—it was darker, thicker, soaked into the cloth like oil into sand. His heart clenched at the sight of it. It wasn't a surface wound. Whatever had happened to her had been violent, intentional.
In the distance, a sound rose—a sharp, metallic rhythm.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The sound of weapons.
Steel on steel.
Each strike echoed, bouncing through the distorted world around him, a chilling percussion that didn't belong anywhere near his home. The distant violence made the moment feel even more surreal. This wasn't the quiet, warm corridor of his house anymore. This was a battlefield.
And he was on it.
His own body felt strange. He became suddenly aware of the armor he was wearing—light, unfamiliar, foreign to his touch. It creaked with every step he took, shifting against his sweat-dampened skin. The shoulder straps dug into his muscles. The weight of it wasn't unbearable, but it was enough to slow him, to remind him that he wasn't meant for this. This wasn't his world.
But it was happening.
He looked back down at the girl. Her chest moved—barely. A faint rise and fall, as delicate as a whisper in a storm. She was alive. Barely. That thread of breath, that weak, faltering rhythm, was all that kept her tethered to this world.
And then he saw it.
The gash.
On her shoulder, a wound stretched open like a mouth, ugly and wet. Blood oozed from it slowly, dark and viscous, coating her arm, dripping onto the ground in thick, reluctant drops. It was deep. Deep enough to make his own skin crawl, his fingers tighten around her instinctively. The kind of wound that spelled silence. Finality.
He wanted to stop. To set her down. To wake up.
But none of those things were an option.
So he kept walking.
One step at a time, his arms tightening protectively around the dying stranger in his arms, carrying her deeper into a world he didn't understand, with a heart pounding like a war drum in his ears.
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Notes: If you noticed I'm doing a reedit of pervious chapter as my laptop is back, this is the initial saved clean file and i will be providing PDF downloadable format and Audiobook versions on my Patreon with username: osamii. You can go check it out.