ROMAN
I was lying there, not quite asleep, not fully awake, when it began—the voice. Low at first, almost like a whisper brushing against the edges of my mind, pulling at something deep within me.
It was a language I had never heard. The sounds twisted through the air, curling into shapes I could almost see. Strange consonants, vowels stretched unnaturally, syllables that seemed to echo both near and far at the same time.
I tried to turn over, tried to tell myself it was nothing, that it was just my imagination running loose, but the voice persisted. And then, slowly, fragments began to make sense. Just pieces at first—words, ideas, commands that flickered in my brain like shards of glass.
My limbs refused to move. I tried to lift my arm, to reach for something, anything, but it was as
