Mara's first breath was sharp and painful. The world around her was blurred, her vision struggling to focus as she lay motionless in the wreckage of her car. The air was thick with the scent of gasoline and wet earth, the sound of distant rain tapping against twisted metal.
She was alive. Somehow.
Her fingers twitched, finding purchase on the jagged remains of the dashboard. She forced herself to sit up, wincing as pain lanced through her skull. Blood trickled down her temple, but it wasn't the injury that unsettled her the most. It was the silence.
The world around her was too still.
The road, the trees, the sky—it all felt wrong, as if she had woken up in a place just slightly out of sync with reality. The headlights of her ruined car flickered weakly, casting long, shifting shadows across the broken asphalt.
Mara swallowed hard, trying to remember the moment before the crash. The flicker—the impossible change in the road. And then… that shape. Had there really been something there? Or was her mind playing tricks on her?
She turned her head, scanning the surroundings, and that was when she saw it.
The trees in the distance, the ones she had passed hundreds of times before, were… different. Their shapes were the same, but something about them felt altered, as if they had moved when she wasn't looking.
Mara pushed herself up, stumbling as dizziness overtook her. She needed help. Her phone.
She reached into her coat pocket with shaking hands. The screen was cracked, but it lit up. No service.
A deep unease settled in her chest. She was only a few miles from town—she should have at least some signal.
Then, just as she was about to step away from the wreckage, a whisper of movement caught her eye.
Not from the trees.
From the road.
She turned sharply, her breath hitching.
There was someone standing there.
A figure, barely illuminated by the failing headlights, watching her.
Mara's pulse pounded.
She could barely make out the details—a tall silhouette, unmoving, features obscured by the dim light. A chill ran down her spine. There was something off about them, something that sent every instinct screaming.
"Hello?" she called out, her voice hoarse.
The figure didn't respond.
Then, in the blink of an eye—
They were gone.
Mara's breath caught. She took a shaky step forward, but there was nothing. No sound, no footsteps, no sign that anyone had been there at all.
She was alone.
And yet, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched.
Something had changed.
Something was very, very wrong.
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