III

She woke up in a field.

Tall golden grass swayed around her, warm wind brushing her cheeks. The sun was low in the sky, casting long shadows—but there were no shadows beneath her feet.

Just grass. And silence.

She stood up slowly, heart thudding like a trapped bird.

And then—

A whisper beside her ear, as if carried by the wind.

“You ran. That was smart. But you’re still inside.”

She spun around.

Iven stood there, barefoot, wearing a white coat stained at the edges. In his hand was a mirror shard. It flickered like it was trying to remember what it had reflected.

“You said this wasn’t a simulation,” Nara said, her voice sharp. “You said it was a someone. A self.”

“Yes,” he said. “And you’re a thought inside it. A rogue one.”

He held the shard out to her.

It showed her face again.

But this time—it blinked.

Not in sync with her.

“She’s dreaming you,” Iven said. “But you’re starting to think on your own. And that means…”

He didn’t finish the sentence.

Because the grass around them began to tilt.

No—not tilt. It was rotating, like the page of a book being turned.

Nara clutched the mirror shard as the sky started melting, dripping colors like ink in water.

“I don’t want to disappear,” she whispered.

“You won’t,” Iven said, wrapping a hand around hers. “But you may have to rewrite yourself.”

The world folded in half.

And everything went dark.

When the dark lifted, it didn’t lift all the way.

Nara found herself in a place that wasn’t lit, but wasn’t exactly dark either. The sky was a dull static gray, like a TV stuck between channels. The ground beneath her feet rippled like paper in water, and far off in the distance, she saw a version of her school, half-sunken and stretched at the edges like it had been remembered wrong.

Iven was gone.

But the shard was still in her hand.

She looked into it.

This time, the reflection was no longer her face. It was an eye.

Huge.

Unblinking.

Watching.

She dropped it. The shard didn’t fall—it floated, then dissolved into a fine dust that shimmered and vanished into the air.

A sound rose behind her.

Footsteps.

Not real ones. Not human. They were too even. Like audio on loop. The same four steps. Over and over.

She turned around.

It was Mia.

But not her.

This Mia’s head twitched every few seconds. Her smile was wider. Her eyes were just… too still. Like she was being played.

“Did you do the homework?” she asked.

Nara didn’t answer.

Mia stepped closer.

“Did you do the homework?”

Step.

“Did you do—”

Nara ran.

She didn’t know where she was going, only that she had to move. The sky above glitched. The sun rewound in place like a broken reel.

She sprinted toward the warped school in the distance, its windows flashing random images—her room, her mother's face, the melting mirrors.

When she burst through the front doors, it wasn’t a school anymore.

It was a hallway of doors.

Endless.

Each one labeled.

“Day 4,290”

“First Doubt”

“Mia’s Loop”

“Looked in the Mirror”

“Almost Woke Up”

She moved down the corridor, breath sharp in her throat.

Then she saw it:

“You.”

A single black door.

No knob.

Just a slit of red light spilling out from underneath.

She reached toward it—and the world shook.

A low rumble, like something huge shifting just outside the thin walls of this reality.

Then—

A voice.

Not in her ears.

In her head.

“She’s approaching the threshold. Begin termination of unstable thoughtline.”

And a second voice—softer. Closer.

“No. Let her open it. Let her see.”

The red light flared under the door, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Nara placed her hand on the surface.

It was warm.

Alive.

Breathing.

And then, with a sound like paper tearing inside her skull, the door opened.

Inside—

Was her.

Hooked up to wires.

Sleeping.

And something was whispering into her ear.

Over and over.

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