Chapter 9: Things That Shouldn't Move
Aria Solenne left the gallery the next morning at 8:17 AM.
Exactly on time.
Exactly as she always did.
Except she didn't remember having a routine.
Her boots echoed too loudly against the pavement, like the world had been replaced overnight with a hollow replica. The sky above was the wrong color — striped with rust and bruised orange, smeared like oil in water. It should've looked like morning, but it felt like dusk trapped in rewind.
She adjusted the strap of her book bag. It was heavier than she remembered. Her fingers clutched it like it was ballast keeping her from floating off the edge of something invisible. Her breath misted in the air even though it wasn't cold.
Something was wrong.
Not loud. Not obvious. Just… wrong in the subtle, molecular way that made your breath catch before your brain caught up.
The streets were too clean. Too still. Not peaceful — hollow. The wind didn't move the leaves. The birds didn't chirp. There weren't even cars. Just rows of parked ones that looked like they'd been left behind in a hurry, still warm, still ticking.
The air smelled like metal and static. A sparrow lay on the sidewalk nearby, perfectly intact, eyes glassy. Dead, but posed like it was still mid - flight. Its wings fluttered every few seconds, like a glitch in a broken animation loop.
A crossing light blinked between red and green without pause. A coffee shop's neon open sign flickered so fast it blurred into a steady white glow.
And then she saw him.
The man on the corner.
He wore a suit that looked borrowed from an old photograph — creased, sun-faded, one sleeve slightly too long. He didn't move. He didn't even breathe. His pupils looked drawn on.
As she walked past, he whispered, lips barely parting:
"Not yours. Not yours. Not yours."
Each repetition was sharper than the last, like a blade slipping between her ribs.
Aria kept walking. She didn't look back.
She didn't know why.
But her bones did.
Looking back was a mistake.
Campus loomed ahead, deceptively familiar. Brick buildings, ivy - covered walls, statues with chipped noses and blank stone eyes. But the deeper she walked into the quad, the more the details didn't line up.
The banners were written in languages she couldn't read. The trees had no birds. The grass was the wrong color — green, but veined with something gray, like it had been stitched together. A student walked by, blinking out of sync with their footsteps.
It was like someone had drawn this place from memory and got the shading wrong.
Inside the humanities building, the fluorescent lights buzzed louder than they should've. The hum rose and dipped like breathing. She stepped into her literature class and froze.
Half the desks were empty. The students who were there stared straight ahead, pupils too dilated. One girl was mouthing words that didn't match the sound. Another tapped a pencil that bent too far with each tap, like it was made of something soft.
The professor wrote on the whiteboard with wild speed — words slanting sideways, unreadable. His arm jerked like he was fighting the motion. He didn't blink.
Outside the classroom window, the suited man stood under a dying tree. Still whispering. Still watching.
No one else noticed.
No one but her.
She sat in the back, as far as she could from the window, and tried to pretend she was dreaming. Her fingers trembled as she took out her notebook. The page had already been written on. In her handwriting.
"I am not supposed to be here."
At exactly 10:03 AM, it started.
The girl in the front row dropped her pen. Bent down to pick it up. Then jerked upright with a sound like a wet snap.
Her body twisted. Veins darkened like ink bleeding through skin. Her mouth stretched in a scream that didn't fit inside the room — it was too high, too long, like it had been waiting to escape for days.
She launched at the nearest student.
And chaos bloomed.
Desks scattered. Screams clashed like broken alarms. The professor stumbled backward, knocking over his podium. Blood sprayed across the front row — dark, syrupy, unreal. A boy tried to run and slipped. A girl texted frantically until her phone screen cracked open, leaking smoke.
One student climbed out the window. Another didn't move, just rocked back and forth whispering, "Wake up, wake up, wake up."
Aria didn't scream. Didn't move.
Her body froze, but her mind roared.
The air grew thick and wrong. Reality bent inward, like she was inside a lung being exhaled. Her heart pounded too slowly. Her thoughts fragmented. Words didn't line up in the right order.
Then something clicked. Or unlocked.
She felt it.
Behind her ribs, behind the layers of not - remembering — a pulse. Ancient. Familiar. A word not made of language, rising like mist.
Run.
So she did.
She tore down the stairs, past students bleeding from their eyes, past walls that rippled like water, past a janitor mopping a floor that didn't exist.
The world melted around her.
The sky screamed — no thunder, no clouds, just a tearing sound like skin splitting. People ran, but their shadows didn't follow. Windows reflected rooms that weren't real.
She passed a girl chewing on her own wrist. A dog barking soundlessly from inside a phone screen. A man holding a baby that blinked with black static for eyes.
A scream echoed behind her. Then a laugh. Then something worse — a lullaby in reverse, like childhood unraveling.
She ran until her lungs collapsed inward. Until her legs buckled and her vision doubled.
She collapsed behind a chain - link fence behind the abandoned theater.
She barely registered her own breath, her hands, the way her skin tingled like static trying to peel her open.
And then she looked up.
And saw the sky.
It was broken. No, not broken — peeled.
A long, red seam split the horizon open, pulsing. Like the world had a heartbeat. Like something on the other side was pressing against it, testing the weight of its cage.
There was no face. Just presence.
Something vast. Silent. Patient. Watching.
It was bigger than belief. Bigger than fear.
She fell to her knees, not because she was weak, but because something deep inside her remembered.
A hand in hers. A voice saying, "It's not time yet."
A field full of color. A sky with two suns.
A flower made of mirrors.
Gone.
Her body shook, but her mind was unnervingly still. Like it was rebooting.
She wasn't panicking. Not anymore. There wasn't space for it.
Because now she understood.
The things in the world — the wrongness, the glitches, the people moving too slow or not at all — they weren't the problem.
She was.
She was the thing out of place.
Or the thing waking up.
Miles away, in a half - submerged facility lit by flickering red emergency lights, Selene opened her eyes.
"She's waking up," she whispered to the silence.
Dust settled on her shoulders like ash. Machines hummed with ancient code. A monitor behind her flickered to life, showing a live feed: Aria, kneeling beneath the cracked sky.
M
"She's starting to remember."
Her voice didn't sound relieved.
It sounded afraid.