Ch.2

  Connect enough dots and you'll make a star, but stars don't exist in this world, and so do you.

  You don't remember when you first noticed it. The unraveling. A thread at the edge of your sightline, loose but not yet frayed. Maybe it was the way the days started blending together, or how time seemed to hiccup—seconds stretching too long, minutes collapsing in on themselves. Or maybe it was when the faces around you stopped being distinct, melting into a single expression, a single presence that surrounded but never truly touched you.

  How could you look for the answer if there was no question?

  But that's what you do, isn't it? You search. For a gap in the pattern. For something that tells you this is wrong, this is not how things are supposed to be. But what if this is how it's always been? What if the only thing that changed... was you?

  Once you notice threads coming loose, you can't sit tight without wanting to pull it out.

  So you do. You ask something you shouldn't. You hesitate when you're expected to move forward. You watch the way their mouths form words before their voices catch up. You notice the way they all blink at the same time, inhale at the same time, laugh at the same time. You feel the silence in between, stretching, waiting for you to fill it.

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  The world feels thinner now, its edges curling at the seams. You reach out, hesitant, fingers grazing the surface of reality itself. It bends—just slightly, just enough to know that something is wrong. And then, like a thread pulled too hard, it unravels.

  The faces of those around you flicker. Their expressions distort, slipping between familiarity and something unrecognizable. A mouth that stretches too wide, eyes that blink out of sequence, hands that move with a delay. A distortion, a smudge on the canvas of reality.

  And then they notice you noticing.

  The air stills. The world holds its breath. The silence is deafening, thick and heavy, pressing against your skull. One by one, they turn to look at you, their gazes empty yet full of knowing.

  You are not making a book. You are not making a story. You are not even making a life.

  I'm not making a book, I'm making you want to question everything.

  A voice—not your own, but inside your head—laughs, soft and amused.

  "Now you see it, don't you?"

  And the moment you do, the moment you stop and truly look—the world exhales. And everything tilts.

  A crack runs through the air itself.

  The last thing you see before the darkness swallows you whole...

  ...is your own reflection, staring back, smiling...

  Are you brave enough to face yourself?