Elias froze. His breath hitched as his eyes locked onto the shadowed figure standing at the foot of his bed. The room felt colder than before, an unnatural chill seeping into his bones. He blinked rapidly, hoping the figure was merely a trick of his half-waking mind. But it remained—watching, waiting.
His fingers dug into the sheets, his body paralyzed by an overwhelming sense of dread. The shape was indistinct, a void where a person should be. No face, no features—just a dense darkness that felt more like an absence than a presence.
Then, it moved.
A step forward. Slow, deliberate.
Elias's breath turned shallow. "Who…who are you?" His voice barely made a sound, trembling with uncertainty.
The figure did not respond, but the air around him seemed to shift. A weight pressed against his chest, as though invisible hands were pushing down, making it harder to breathe. The walls of his apartment felt distant, warped, as if they no longer belonged to the world he knew.
The clock on the nightstand flickered. 7:42 AM. The same time. The same moment. Again.
The realization struck him with a terrifying certainty. This was no dream. This was something else—something outside the realm of his understanding.
The figure took another step. Shadows stretched unnaturally across the room, bending toward him, swallowing the edges of the light filtering through the blinds.
Elias scrambled back against the headboard, his pulse thundering. "What do you want?"
For the first time, the figure responded. A whisper, faint and fragmented, like echoes of a voice lost to time.
"Wake up."
The moment the words reached him, the walls shuddered, the floor trembled, and the entire world seemed to tilt sideways. Elias felt himself being pulled—dragged—out of his own reality, as if the very fabric of existence had come undone.
The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him was the figure, now standing inches away, its featureless face impossibly close.
And then, silence.