Because for the first time since he had picked me up, since he had pulled me into this bed, into his arms, I felt something shift.
It wasn’t resistance, not entirely, but something softer, something that felt…safer.
“Thank you,”I murmured softly, and a quiet chuckle followed.
“Are you thanking me for forcing you into my bed now?” he asked, amusement threading through his voice. I huffed a small laugh, shaking my head slightly.
“Well… you were right. You’re definitely warmer.”
“And the couch?” he prompted.
“Terrible,” I replied without hesitation.
“Honestly, what were you thinking?” I teased, granting myself a soft laugh from him.
“Who knew an uncomfortable couch would prove so useful?” I smiled before giggling softly, nudging him with my elbow, telling him,
“Goodnight, Wye,”
His arm tightened just slightly around me before he whispered the sweetest…
“Goodnight, Eliza.”
It started with a feeling rather than a sound. A subtle shift that crept in so quietly it almost went unnoticed at first. As though the world itself had drawn in a slow, unnatural breath. The warmth at my back, the steady presence I had only just begun to relax into, didn’t vanish all at once. No, instead it seemed to thin, to fade in a way that felt wrong rather than abrupt. Like something slipping just out of reach, no matter how tightly I tried to hold onto it. And with it came the silence. Not the gentle quiet of sleep, but something far heavier. Something thatpressed in from all sides with a suffocating weight that made my chest tighten before I had even fully opened my eyes.
But when I did,there was nothing.
No ceiling above me, no bed beneath me, no trace of the room I had fallen asleep in. Only an endless expanse of darkness that stretched so far in every direction, it felt as though it might swallow the very concept of distance itself. It wasn’t empty in the way darkness should be, though. Because there was something else there. Something unseen yet unmistakable. The kind of something that made the air feel thick against my skin.
“Wye?” I called, my voice sounding strange to my own ears. Too loud and yet somehow muffled at the same time. It made no sense. As if the darkness itself had reached out and caught the sound before it could fully escape me.
The silence that followed was beyond creepy, and that’s when it hit me. Not as a thought but as something deeper, something instinctive and cold that settled into my chest with quiet certainty.
Wye wasn’t there, and I was all alone.
I pushed myself upright slowly, the movement unsteady as my hands met a surface beneath me that didn’t feel quite like anything I recognized. The faint echo of my movement followed a second too late, the sound lagging behind in a way that made the space around me feel distorted. As though time itself wasn’t behaving the way it should.
“It’s just a dream,” I whispered, the words meant to steady me, though they felt hollow the moment they left my lips. Because nothing about this felt like a dream. Dreams didn’t feel like this, they didn’t carry this kind of weight. This kind of awareness and ominous sense that something was watching, waiting.
The first sound came then, low and distant, barely there at first. But impossible to ignore once I heard it. A slow, draggingnoise that seemed to stretch across the darkness toward me, a sound that made my skin tighten. I froze instinctively, every muscle in my body going still as the noise came again, closer this time. A sort of scraping sound.
“Hel… lo?”I tried again, though the word faltered slightly as it left me, smaller now, less certain.
Something shifted.
Not in a way I could see, but in a way I could feel. As though the space itself had drawn inward, focusing, tightening around me. Doing so with a quiet, suffocating awareness that made my pulse spike sharply. And then, ahead of me, something began to take shape. Not fully, but enough to suggest form where there had been none before. A distortion at first, a deeper shadow within the darkness. But as I stared, unable to look away, it grew into something more defined.
Something that watched me.
My breath caught as a faint glint cut through the void, something metallic catching what little light there wasn’t, and before I could fully process it, I felt it. Something cold… Sudden…Unyielding.
Chains.
They suddenly shot out of the darkness and wrapped around my wrists without warning. The bite of them digging in before they tightened painfully. Then they dragged my arms back with a force that pulled a cry from my throat as my balance faltered beneath me. The sound of metal echoed unnaturally, ringing out far louder than it should have, as though the space itself amplified it, feeding on it.
“No!” I tried, the word breaking apart as I stumbled, my body instinctively fighting against the pull as panic surged through me. Blinding panic had my pulse racing as I twisted against the restraint. But it didn’t give. It didn’t even shift. The chains heldfirm, as though they had been made for this exact purpose, as though they had always been waiting for me.
The shape ahead shifted again, and for the briefest moment, just a flicker, something else revealed itself behind it.
