Chapter 9: Things That Shouldn't Move
Aria left the gallery the next morning at 8:17 AM.
Exactly on time.
Exactly as she always did.
Or maybe not.
The sky was too bright for morning. Painted in streaks of orange and red, it looked like a sunset bleeding through the wrong side of the day—like the world was trying to erase itself backward. She pulled her hood up and adjusted the strap of her book bag. Her fingers clenched it tighter than necessary.
Something felt off.
Not loud.
Not obvious.
Just… wrong.
The kind of wrong that made her skin feel a fraction too thin.
⸻
The streets were quiet.
Not peaceful—dead.
No dogs barking. No car horns. Not even the low hum of morning life. The traffic lights blinked in a broken rhythm—green… red… then both. The crosswalk sound stuttered and fell silent mid-click.
A man stood on the corner.
He wasn't moving. Not even blinking. His skin had the color of week-old paper, and his lips were cracked and dry. One eye twitched. Just once. Just enough to notice.
Aria slowed instinctively.
As she passed, he whispered without turning:
"Not yours.
Not yours.
Not yours."
Each repetition was sharper. Like glass cracking inside her spine.
She didn't look back.
⸻
Campus looked normal from a distance.
But only from a distance.
Up close, the buildings had strange shadows. The windows reflected things that shouldn't be there—people that moved slower than their bodies. Half the students looked half-awake. Others looked… trapped. Like something was wearing their skin too tightly.
In her literature class, half the seats were empty. The professor's hand trembled as he scribbled across the whiteboard, letters slanting too far left.
Outside, the man from earlier stood under the tree. Still watching. Still whispering.
No one noticed.
No one but her.
She tried to focus. Took notes she wouldn't remember. The girl in the front row chewed the end of her pen so hard it bled. Someone's phone kept vibrating, but they didn't check it. No one did.
Aria couldn't breathe right. Not panic—just dissonance.
Like she was out of tune with everything around her.
⸻
At exactly 10:03 AM, it happened.
The girl in the front row dropped her pen.
Then gasped.
Then screamed.
It wasn't a normal scream—it was pitched too high, too long. Something behind her eyes exploded. Her spine twisted like it didn't belong to her. Black veins burst across her skin like poisoned ivy.
She stood. Or rather—something inside her stood her up.
And then she lunged.
Desks crashed. Someone shouted. The professor backed away, horror clawing at his face. The girl bit the closest student—deep, fast. The boy didn't even scream. Just fell.
Another student tried to run and slipped on blood. Another climbed out the window. Another pulled out their phone—only to drop it when the screen went white.
Aria didn't move.
Not at first.
She just watched. Eyes wide. Breath held. Thoughts scattered like broken glass. The room blurred. The air was too thick to inhale.
Then, in the center of it all, something bloomed behind her ribs.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Something older.
A memory that wasn't hers. A voice without a mouth. A whisper that came from the root of her:
"Run."
So she did.
⸻
Aria bolted.
Out the classroom. Down the stairwell. Through the chaos outside. Her feet didn't feel like her own anymore. Every sound was wrong—sirens that didn't sound like sirens, screams that stretched too long, too wide.
People were running.
Falling.
Changing.
Her lungs ached. Her throat burned. Her mind barely kept pace.
She passed a woman gnawing at a mailbox. A child crying under a bench with white eyes. A teacher with blood on her hands laughing at nothing.
Aria didn't stop until the noise thinned.
Until she was alone.
Until she looked up.
And saw it.
The sky was cracked open.
The red seam from before—she'd seen it days ago, just a flicker—had grown wider. It stretched across the horizon like a wound that refused to close.
And something was looking through.
Not a face. Not a body. Just presence.
A thing without shape, dripping with silence.
She fell to her knees.
Not from exhaustion.
But because she remembered something—just for a second.
A flower. A field.
A voice saying: "It's not time yet."
And then it was gone.
⸻
Aria gasped, alone under a bleeding sky,
with the world breaking open around her.
And somewhere—miles away—
Selene opened her eyes.
"She's waking up," she whispered.
"She's starting to remember maybe ."