I was just lying in my safe, quiet hospital bed a few moments ago, my mind shrieks in absolute disbelief. How could I have come to this place so fast, and what on earth is this terrifying void? Is anyone there?! Please, save me!
As I continue to drift downward, completely helpless, a strange, eerie sensation crawls down my spine. The freezing, empty weightlessness...it feels horribly familiar. Wait a minute... I know this place. Have I been here before?
Memory sparks like fire through my frozen veins. Oh, god. It's that place. It is the exact, terrifying threshold I crossed when I left Elanore's world to wake up as Sara in the hospital ward. It is the void where the boundary between realities thins.
Last time, I heard a mysterious, echoing voice here. I can't remember the face or the exact tone of who spoke, but the words are carved into my mind: It is time to go back to your world.
Fear turns into outright denial. No, no, no! That was a hallucination! I scream to myself, my mind fighting against the heavy currents pulling me under. The doctor said it was all made up by my sick mind! It's just a symptom of my illness! This is just another false, hallucinated nightmare! It wasn't true! It's just a symptom of my chaotic vitals! I need to hold onto myself! Wake up, Sara! Wake up!
With a final, desperate burst of willpower, I swing my arm and slap my own face as hard as I can, trying to shatter the illusion and force my eyes open back in the safe, sunlit hospital room.
But my eyes don't open. The darkness remains absolute, and I keep sinking deeper into the abyss.
The stinging pain of the slap lingers on my cheek, a sharp, undeniable proof of my own consciousness. But the scenery doesn't shatter. The sterile walls of the hospital ward do not reappear. The rhythm of the heart monitor is entirely gone, replaced by the deep, rushing roar of an invisible ocean swallowing me whole.
My analytical, corporate brain instantly goes into overdrive, frantically trying to calculate the logic of my situation. If this were just a hallucination born of my illness, a physical slap should have disrupted the neurological loop. I should have blinked. I should have seen a flash of the ceiling lights.
But there is nothing. Only the heavy, suffocating pressure of the void.
A cold, devastating certainty begins to take root where my panic just was. The medical charts, the doctor's grave diagnosis, the gentle, pleading look in my mother's eyes as she told me to rest—it all begins to feel incredibly distant, like a fragile script written for a world I am rapidly slipping away from. I am not losing my sanity. My mind didn't invent a fantasy to cope with a physical collapse.
I am completely awake, my senses are entirely sharp, and yet I am falling. The terrifying truth is no longer a symptom I can treat with pills or a quiet environment. As the last lingering warmth of my modern life fades from my skin, I realize the storm didn't pass when I accepted their reality. It was just waiting for the midnight hour to drag meright back to where I truly belong.
The realization hits me like a physical shock wave, sharper and colder than the water surrounding me.
The doctor was wrong. His analysis, his charts, his medical baselines—they were all completely wrong. They didn't believe me because my experience sounds utterly impossible to a rational mind. But I am an analytical person; I know how my own brain functions. This sensory data is too flawless, the freezing pressure too intense, the stinging on my cheek too raw. It isn't a fracture in my sanity.
Elanore's world was real. The daggers, the palaces, the crossing—it was all real. I didn't imagine a single thing.
The moment the denial shatters, a surge of raw adrenaline cuts through my paralysis. I open my mouth, fully expecting the freezing water to rush into my lungs and choke me.
"What—?!"
The word explodes from my throat, loud and completely clear.
I freeze, my eyes widening in the absolute darkness. Wait... I can speak?
A sudden, vivid memory flashes through my mind, sending a different kind of chill down my spine. I remember the last time I was trapped in this very void, suspended between realities. Back then, when that mysterious voice had echoed through the dark to tell me it was time to return to my world, I had been completely paralyzed. I remember trying to scream, trying to demand answers, but my lips wouldn't move. It had felt as though an invisible, heavy hand was clamped tightly over my mouth, suffocating my voice and forcing me to be nothing but a silent witness.
But now? The invisible hand is gone. The heavy restriction has vanished.
The shock transforms into a desperate, furious demand for answers. If I am no longer silenced, if I have been given the power to speak, then I can fight.
"What is going on here?!" I scream into the black abyss, my voice cracking with a mixture of terror and frustration. "Where am I? What is this place?! Who is controlling me?!"
I thrash against the weightlessness, my hands clawing at the empty space. "Can someone tell me what is happening?! Anyone?!"
My mind racing, my corporate logic automatically begins calculating the physics of my environment. I look up, down, and around into the pitch black. It feels exactly like I'm drowning... but if this is water, how am I breathing? How am I surviving?
I pause, forcing myself to count the seconds as I drift deeper. Ten. Thirty. Fifty. A full minute passes. My chest rises and falls normally. There is no burning in my lungs, no lack of oxygen, no suffocating pressure forcing me to black out. Even after a whole minute at this depth, my body is perfectly stable. It violates every law of medicine and science I've ever known.
How is this possible?
The sheer absurdity of the rules in this place breaks the last of my restraint. Realizing that logic cannot save me here, I draw in a massive, deep breath of the impossible air and scream again, letting all my terror and fury echo out into the endless, silent void.