And I wake gasping, clutching at sheets soaked with sweat, my heart hammering so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t crack my ribs.
I lie there for a long time afterward, staring at the ceiling while my pulse slowly drags itself back into something survivable.
My memory is a blank slate with whole days gone. Faces I’m told I should recognize are reduced to names spoken gently by strangers. And yet what I just saw, what I felt, lingers with a weight that refuses to fade. The table beneath my hands. The numbers I understood without knowing why. The borders I traced like they belonged to me.
Andhim.
The image of those glacial-blue eyes won’t loosen their hold, bright and intent in the darkness behind my eyelids. There was grief in them, fury, a terrible, restrained longing that made my chest ache like something vital had been misplaced, and my body hadn’t stopped searching for it yet.
I don’t remember what happened to me.
But I remember that.
The unfairness of it settles in my ribs. Whatever I lost in that crash, it wasn’t everything. Something survived the impact, intact and waiting, and chose to surface in dreams rather than in daylight.
I curl onto my side, pressing my face into the pillow like it might anchor me back there, back to the world where things made sense in ways this one doesn’t anymore. My sheets are cool now, sweat dried, but the heat of the dream hums under my skin.
For one reckless moment, I hope sleep will take me again.
I hope I’ll find my way back to that table.
To that flame.
To those eyes.
But exhaustion doesn’t oblige longing.
It drags me under without ceremony, dreamless and empty this time.
Three Days Later
After doing as many tests as humanly possible, they discharged me with aftercare instructions and a prescription for painkillers I won’t take.
Everything is slightly off. Colors are too bright, sounds too loud, the city is cramped and suffocating in ways it never was before. But my apartment is exactly how I left it. Dishes in the sink, camera equipment scattered across the kitchen table. A half-finished coffee is growing mold on the counter.
I stand in the center of my living room and try to remember being the person who lived here. Try to reconnect with the Roxy who drank that coffee, loaded those cameras, and walked out the door, planning to return in a week.
She’s gone.
Erased.
And in her place is this hollow girl who can’t stop dreaming about ice and fire.
That night, I don’t sleep. I sit on my bed with my laptop, searching for anything about the mountains, about Route 16, about Johnathan Jones. The official reports give nothing.
Man found dead.
Suspicious circumstances.
Investigation ongoing.
But there are other things. Whispers on forums dedicated to conspiracy theories and unexplained phenomena. Stories about the Appalachians stretching back centuries, warnings about territories where people disappear.
One phrase appears repeatedly, posted by different users across different platforms…
Stay away from the Kings.
The words punch through me, recognition flaring bright before guttering out.
