Encounterlogs
Victorias Odd Encounter Sr Elam 250420
In a luxurious yet eerily quiet living space, Victoria shares a moment of serenity with an orange tabby cat amidst the grandeur of her sleek, modern apartment. Their tranquility is abruptly interrupted by an anonymous call that propels Victoria into a clandestine and dangerous mission. The caller requests her expertise to delve into the troubled mind of a man plunged into catatonia, believed to be ensnared by unseen forces beyond mere human comprehension. With a team, Victoria is tasked to navigate the labyrinth of the man’s psyche, to understand or undo the knots that bind him to his state. Accepting the mission, she prepares to enter this uncharted territory through a dream, leaving behind the physical world and the cat, her silent witness to the threshold she's about to cross.
As Victoria and her team traverse the bizarre and shifting landscape of the man’s mind, they encounter a series of increasingly disturbing and surreal challenges. The environment morphs unpredictably, filled with sinister echoes and grim projections of memories, each corridor and room designed to disorient and distress. When they come across core memories and the very essence of the psychic's torment, they are confronted by a manifestation of the psychic's anguish—a grotesque creature that hunts them ruthlessly. One by one, Victoria’s teammates fall, consumed or obliterated by the entity, until she too meets a gruesome end. However, this climax within the dream folds into an abrupt return to consciousness. Victoria awakens to the stark reality, battered and bloodied in spirit if not in body, to the grim news that their intervention failed and the afflicted man has died. The mission's conclusion leaves her with a blend of relief and sorrow, a stark reminder of the perilous nature of their endeavor and the unyielding darkness that can reside within the human mind.
(Victoria's odd encounter(SRElam):SRElam)
[Sat Apr 19 2025]
In a spacious foyer and living area adorned in white and gold
The foyer greets its visitors with reflective white marble floors, their mirror-like sheen framed by the deep, vertical grain of ebony wood walls. Thin golden inlays trace the edges of the room in a hint of subtle luxury to the monochrome palette. Overhead, a modern chandelier casts a warm golden glow, highlighting the clean, crisp lines of the space where it is situated between the foyer and the living area. A short descent of three wide, shallow steps, rimmed in gold, leads into the expansive living area, where a glass balustrade maintains an open, flowing design.
Grand and inviting, anchored by a massive white sectional couch adorned with black and gold pillows, the living room is soft tranquility, still and silent. Facing it, an ebony-paneled wall holds a large TV unit flanked by geometric floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled with a curated selection of books and artifacts in muted tones. Potted greenery; tall fiddle-leaf figs and birds of paradise in gold planters, punctuates the space, their deep greens adding warmth and life to the sleek modernity. It's a room that balances elegance with comfort, perfect for both quiet evenings and glamorous gatherings.
It is afternoon, about 50F(10C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. Ankle high mist flows through the area.
(Your target and their allies have been tasked with helping to cure someone's insanity by delving into their mind with dream invading to solve the issues keeping them from sanity.
)
One hand holding her phone to read through texts, Victoria has deigned to sit on the floor with the orange tabby, scratching behind its ears and surveying to ensure its not been up to mischief. She sends out a lazy reply here and there, before focusing her attention on the aloof feline.
The marble of the foyer catches the last of the daylight as if it were made for it. The sun, sinking low behind the skyline, casts its farewell in golden slants through the high windows, painting long shapes across the mirror-polished floor. The sheen is almost liquid in places, too flawless to feel real, as though each step might dissolve into reflection instead of sound. The air carries the scent of distant citrus, diffused and faint, likely from a hidden reed diffuser tucked among the tall potted plants that guard the corners with leafy grace. Somewhere near the front door, a faint click echoes now and then as the HVAC adjusts, but the noise is mild, softened by the plushness of the space.
The living room waits just beyond, a deliberate pause in architectural tempo as the steps gently dip into its open arms. Here, the color white asserts dominance, not as sterility but as invitation. The sectional couch sprawls like a throne for the weary and the wicked alike, draped in the measured decadence of gold-trimmed pillows that hold their corners like they know they belong. Shadows fall only where the design intends them to. There is no clutter. There is no accident. Even the books in their charcoal and beige bindings stand with military precision, spines forward, waiting for a reader who might never come.
At the center of this curated calm, a cat has claimed his kingdom. Orange tabby fur, striped with the lazy brushstrokes of something half-wild, gleams under the dimming light. He lies stretched comfortably on the sectional sofa beside Victoria, tail curled close to her thigh. One paw rests over a stray thread from a forgotten toy mouse, torn at the seams. His eyes, golden and half-lidded, follow the shifting glint on the chandelier above with the attention of someone who knows he has time to kill.
Victoria sits beside him with a kind of defiant nonchalance, legs folded where she pleases, fingers absentmindedly scratching behind a pointed ear. He arches slightly into the touch, just enough to acknowledge her presence without giving away his enjoyment. Her phone rests in her other hand, thumb gliding with practiced ease through messages that don't seem urgent. A reply is typed, deleted, rewritten, then sent with a half-smile that doesn't reach her eyes. The world she sits in feels more like a display home than a lived one, but the cat's shed fur on her black jeans offers proof that someone does, in fact, exist here.
The room is so quiet the vibrations of the phone are abrupt when they begin. Her screen lights with an unfamiliar number. No contact name. Just the string of digits, foreign and static in their anonymity. It doesn't ring, only the buzz and a flash. The cat lifts his head and blinks slowly, ears pivoting toward the sound before settling again. Even he seems to be waiting.
Answering the call opens not with a voice but with silence. A full three seconds of nothing, then a crackle. Not static, but close to it, as if the sound had to travel through something thick before reaching her.
"@Victoria. I was told the Forged Fortune recommended you." The voice is male, low, and refined in the way of people who don't waste breath. No introduction, no location, no title. He continues before she can speak. "There is a man who has lost all grasp of the real. A psychic, we think. Sensitive to forces beyond the veil. For weeks now, he has been locked in catatonia. Eyes open. Breathing. Responsive to neither voice nor touch. No drugs. No poisons. No spells, at least not in any form we've recognized."
The voice pauses, and there's the faintest rustling, fabric against fabric, perhaps a movement of someone seated. It resumes. "But the inside of his mind is not empty. We've had others try to make contact. Telepaths. Seers. One came back screaming and burned their eyes out before she could be restrained. The rest never returned."
A deep breath. Then, more softly, "I am not asking you to heal him. I am asking you to go in. Find what binds him. Unravel it, if you can. Report it, if you cannot. You are not expected to fight what lies there, only to know it." The call crackles again, less harsh this time. "You will not be alone. Your team will be briefed upon arrival. But the entry must come through dream. Willfully. The patient's subconscious is thick with barriers. To enter it, you must bring something of your own to the threshold. A memory, perhaps. A regret. Whatever it takes."
The line goes quiet for a long second. Then a final note.
"When you sleep, we will find you. Say yes, and close your eyes."
someone the line dies.
The cat stretches, indifferent to the gravity that just entered the room. His back arches in a perfect crescent, claws flexing against the soft fabric before he flops back down, closer now to Victoria's side. His purring resumes, a low, steady thrum against the silence. Above them, the chandelier flickers once, a brief stutter in the golden glow, so brief it might be a trick of the eye. Outside the window, the sun is no longer shining. The sky is turning violet, the final edge of day sinking below the buildings, and the warmth left behind is only in the memory of light.
And somewhere, something has stirred.
And it is waiting.
The marble of the foyer catches the last of the daylight as if it were made for it. The sun, sinking low behind the skyline, casts its farewell in golden slants through the high windows, painting long shapes across the mirror-polished floor. The sheen is almost liquid in places, too flawless to feel real, as though each step might dissolve into reflection instead of sound. The air carries the scent of distant citrus, diffused and faint, likely from a hidden reed diffuser tucked among the tall potted plants that guard the corners with leafy grace. Somewhere near the front door, a faint click echoes now and then as the HVAC adjusts, but the noise is mild, softened by the plushness of the space.
The living room waits just beyond, a deliberate pause in architectural tempo as the steps gently dip into its open arms. Here, the color white asserts dominance, not as sterility but as invitation. The sectional couch sprawls like a throne for the weary and the wicked alike, draped in the measured decadence of gold-trimmed pillows that hold their corners like they know they belong. Shadows fall only where the design intends them to. There is no clutter. There is no accident. Even the books in their charcoal and beige bindings stand with military precision, spines forward, waiting for a reader who might never come.
At the center of this curated calm, a cat has claimed his kingdom. Orange tabby fur, striped with the lazy brushstrokes of something half-wild, gleams under the dimming light. He lies stretched comfortably on the sectional sofa beside Victoria, tail curled close to her thigh. One paw rests over a stray thread from a forgotten toy mouse, torn at the seams. His eyes, golden and half-lidded, follow the shifting glint on the chandelier above with the attention of someone who knows he has time to kill.
Victoria sits beside him with a kind of defiant nonchalance, legs folded where she pleases, fingers absentmindedly scratching behind a pointed ear. He arches slightly into the touch, just enough to acknowledge her presence without giving away his enjoyment. Her phone rests in her other hand, thumb gliding with practiced ease through messages that don't seem urgent. A reply is typed, deleted, rewritten, then sent with a half-smile that doesn't reach her eyes. The world she sits in feels more like a display home than a lived one, but the cat's shed fur on her black jeans offers proof that someone does, in fact, exist here.
The room is so quiet the vibrations of the phone are abrupt when they begin. Her screen lights with an unfamiliar number. No contact name. Just the string of digits, foreign and static in their anonymity. It doesn't ring, only the buzz and a flash. The cat lifts his head and blinks slowly, ears pivoting toward the sound before settling again. Even he seems to be waiting.
Answering the call opens not with a voice but with silence. A full three seconds of nothing, then a crackle. Not static, but close to it, as if the sound had to travel through something thick before reaching her.
"@Victoria. I was told the Forged Fortune recommended you." The voice is male, low, and refined in the way of people who don't waste breath. No introduction, no location, no title. He continues before she can speak. "There is a man who has lost all grasp of the real. A psychic, we think. Sensitive to forces beyond the veil. For weeks now, he has been locked in catatonia. Eyes open. Breathing. Responsive to neither voice nor touch. No drugs. No poisons. No spells, at least not in any form we've recognized."
The voice pauses, and there's the faintest rustling, fabric against fabric, perhaps a movement of someone seated. It resumes. "But the inside of his mind is not empty. We've had others try to make contact. Telepaths. Seers. One came back screaming and burned their eyes out before she could be restrained. The rest never returned."
A deep breath. Then, more softly, "I am not asking you to heal him. I am asking you to go in. Find what binds him. Unravel it, if you can. Report it, if you cannot. You are not expected to fight what lies there, only to know it." The call crackles again, less harsh this time. "You will not be alone. Your team will be briefed upon arrival. But the entry must come through dream. Willfully. The patient's subconscious is thick with barriers. To enter it, you must bring something of your own to the threshold. A memory, perhaps. A regret. Whatever it takes."
The line goes quiet for a long second. Then a final note.
"When you sleep, we will find you. Say yes, and close your eyes."
And the line dies.
The cat stretches, indifferent to the gravity that just entered the room. His back arches in a perfect crescent, claws flexing against the soft fabric before he flops back down, closer now to Victoria's side. His purring resumes, a low, steady thrum against the silence. Above them, the chandelier flickers once, a brief stutter in the golden glow, so brief it might be a trick of the eye. Outside the window, the sun is no longer shining. The sky is turning violet, the final edge of day sinking below the buildings, and the warmth left behind is only in the memory of light.
And somewhere, something has stirred.
And it is waiting.
Victoria stares to the phone and sets it down beside her when the call drops. "Of course they did." She watches the last of the daylight bleed from the sky, the dark violet deepening to ink, drawing a slow inhale. She reaches for the chain at her throat, fingers brushing the cold metal once before letting it fall. The cat nudges against her hip, and she scratches behind his ear without looking. "I'll be back soon enough." She speaks to it as though the animal understands her, seeming regretful to have to cut her attentions to the purring animal short. Leaning back into the couch, she closes her eyes.
Sleep arrives without protest. There is no fade to black, no dissolve into quiet.
There is only the moment Victoria breathes out and the world turns inside out.
The couch beneath her is gone. The warmth of the cat pressed to her side, the scent of citrus in the air, the whispering click of the HVAC, gone. It is replaced by something else entirely, something vast and cold, like a silence waiting to become sound. There is no clear moment of transition. One heartbeat she is reclining in a golden lit apartment, the next she stands at the center of an impossible space.
It is not a room.
It is not a place.
The air is dense, not with humidity, but with memory. It clings. The horizon is an endless field of cracked porcelain tiles underfoot, stretching in all directions, veined like bone, slick in places with what looks like ink but shifts as she looks, red, then black, then something clear and starlit. Above her, the sky is far too close, like a dome hung with canvas. It ripples faintly, and behind it something presses outward in slow pulses. There is no sun, but everything is illuminated. Too evenly. Too wrong. There are no shadows.
And then the voices begin. Soft at first, indistinct. Whispers between teeth, fragments of language that twist backward as soon as they form. They do not come from any direction, but instead from the seams in the porcelain beneath her boots, from the folds in her coat, from the stillness of the air itself. And then, figures. They do not arrive. They are simply there, at the edge of her perception. Four of them. As if blinked into existence when she wasn't looking. They are not close together. Each stands apart, separated by meters of tile, examining the space, or each other, or their own hands. One is pacing. One has already knelt and pressed gloved fingers to the tile, eyes closed in concentration. One is watching her directly.
The one who speaks first is tall, wrapped in a long grey coat that sweeps behind him in an invisible wind. His face is angular, weathered, the kind that could be thirty or seventy depending on the lighting. "That you? Victoria?" His voice is normal. No reverb. No dream distortion. That, somehow, makes it worse.
Before she can answer, another joins in. A woman this time. Short, dark haired, wearing fatigues that don't match any modern military but bear symbols that seem familiar in the way half remembered nightmares are. She clicks a thin blade back into a sheath strapped to her thigh. "I don't like the symmetry of this place. Too neat." The man in the grey coat nods once. "Agreed. You're all here, good. No introductions, we were told you'd be briefed when we landed."
"Landed," the last figure scoffs, a lanky shape hunched in a black duster. His voice is pitched low and sour. He carries a twisted length of metal like a walking stick, or a weapon. "Sure. Landed. Like falling into a trash compactor made of glass and existential dread." The woman glances around again, more alert now. "We're still in the outer layer. These tiles are the entry schema. They're shaped by fragments of real memories. Once we move further in, nothing familiar will hold."
The man in grey addresses Victoria again, voice sharper now. "They said you'd know what you're doing. Hope that wasn't exaggerated." A sound echoes from the far edge of the horizon. It isn't a scream, not exactly. It is what a scream might look like if it were stitched into the folds of sky and then ripped free. The tiles under their feet vibrate once, like something massive just turned over beneath them.
The man sighs and adjusts the cuffs of his coat. "We start walking. East, if such a thing applies." And they do. The tiles stretch endlessly, fracturing now and then into brief rises or dips, as though trying to shape terrain without ever forming it. In the distance, something like a building rises, but as they approach, its angles shift, windows flicker between shapes, corners fold in impossible geometries, and doors open onto staircases that go nowhere. None of the team speak again for a long time. The air grows heavier. The light grows colder. The voices never stop.
And something has begun to follow.
Its footsteps do not sound.
But it is always behind them.
They do not stop walking, but the tension deepens with every step. Each footfall echoes across the tile, swallowed quickly by the oppressive air, as if the space resents the intrusion. Nothing speaks again, not even the whispers that once slithered through the seams of the dream. The silence now is complete, but it is not peace. It is anticipation.
Eventually, the building swallows the horizon. Its form is no more coherent up close than it was at a distance. The structure stretches upward, neither tower nor fortress, its walls composed of architectural afterthoughts. Window frames without glass, doorways that open into walls, staircases that hang midair and vanish into the ceiling. Each piece contradicts the last. The building is not built, but remembered badly, shaped from fragments of something real and half-forgotten, as if someone's memory attempted to sculpt a structure but lacked all sense of order.
A moment of stillness comes when they reach its threshold. The man in grey puts a hand out, stopping the others with a sharp gesture. His eyes trace the frame of the doorway, flicking briefly toward Victoria. "Once we're inside, this place will react to us. It won't stay static. Keep track of each other. If we separate, even for a second, we won't find each other again."
Victoria blinks. Once, twice, then a third time, as if the act might clear some invisible film from her vision. The world around her feels thick, half-formed, strange in a way she cant immediately name. She takes her time, gaze flickering across her surroundings with a mixture of muted wonder and lingering confusion. Her lips part slightly as though she might speak, then close again when no words come.
At last, her eyes find the man addressing her. She studies him in silence for a heartbeat longer than is polite, grey eyes refusing to blink. "Were supposed to remove some bindings."
Without another word, they start walking. Her steps are steady but cautious, and every so often she glances back over her shoulder, eyes scanning the path theyve left behind. Theres no real expectation of seeing anything, yet she looks all the same. When they come to a stop, she gives a short, affirming nod. "Got it."
The woman with the short hair draws in a shallow breath and murmurs, "Smells like something dead in there." No one argues. Victoria's team exchanges a few silent nods, the only affirmation they need. Then they step in. The interior is worse. The moment their feet touch the warped floorboards beyond the threshold, the air becomes claustrophobic. It's not that the space is smaller. It isn't. But the angles warp inward, creating the illusion that the walls lean just enough to press against their shoulders. The colors here are pale and sickly, as if the room is lit by a sun filtered through stained bone. Nothing here is firm. Everything feels like it was made soft.
Everything is slightly wet. The air tastes of mildew and vinegar, old copper and damp cloth. Long hallways stretch out in all directions, lined with doorways, most closed, some half ajar. Faint sounds trickle from behind them: a girl humming tunelessly, the ticking of a clock, shallow breathing. None of it is directional. None of it is trustworthy. As they walk, the building shifts around them. The hall behind them no longer matches what it was moments before. The man with the walking stick scratches a line into the wall with the edge of his twisted metal, but when they glance back, the wall has become fabric, or maybe fur, shifting subtly as if breathing. The mark is gone, erased like it never happened.
At a bend in the corridor, they find the first mirror. It is tall, oval, antique in style. Its surface is polished to clarity, too perfect. It does not reflect the corridor. It reflects a room. The same living area Victoria just left. Down to the faint imprint of her body in the couch cushion. The lighting, the cat, even the echo of still air, all perfectly preserved. "That's not real," the woman says, voice low but firm. "Doesn't matter," replies the man in grey. "It's bait. Ignore it."
But as they pass, the mirror shifts. It no longer shows the apartment. It shows something darker. A hospital room, long disused. A figure sits slumped in a wheelchair, face obscured by a curtain of tangled hair. Something small and wet writhes in their lap. The mirror pulses faintly. A heartbeat. Not an illusion. A memory. Real, or at least real to the one who dreamed it. They keep walking.
The building gets louder. Not with voices or speech, but the kind of sound that fills silence with meaning. The walls groan. Doors slam somewhere distant. A child's laughter echoes off the ceiling beams and dies into a dry rattle. The porcelain tiles they'd left behind are gone entirely now. The floorboards beneath them bend subtly as they move. Something soft scuttles just underfoot, always too quick to catch, always just beyond reach.
The next hallway they enter is different. It smells like lavender, but not the kind found in soap or candles. It is chemical and sharp, as if remembering the scent from a hospital ward. The walls are lined with wallpaper patterned in ornate flowers, faded to a jaundiced yellow. Dozens of framed photographs hang crookedly, their glass warped. All of them show the same figure: a young man in his twenties, sharp-jawed and bright-eyed, sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman and child. Sometimes those companions are missing their faces. Sometimes the background shifts to other rooms. In one, the wallpaper in the photograph matches the wallpaper around them. The correspondence is exact.
Victoria's team slows here. There is something dense in the air, almost magnetic. "This is it," the grey-coated man murmurs. "Core memory layer. We're near the anchor." As he speaks, the floor splits open behind them. No impact. No noise. Just sudden rupture, like the tiles outside but deeper, endless. Something pale and many-limbed begins pulling itself up from the chasm. Its face is not a face, only a wide surface that stretches and trembles like something trying to remember what faces are, what a mouth should look like, where eyes belong.
All of them, the team, they begin to run. Doors open to their left and right. Rooms spill out with memories, half-formed and incomplete. One is a hospital hallway lit in red. One is a child's bedroom filled with decaying stuffed animals. One is a church made entirely of books, each one whispering as they pass. The dream reacts now, desperate and fevered, as if vomiting memories to delay their progress. The thing follows without sound. It does not breathe. It does not drag itself loudly or hiss or groan. It does not hurry. It does not need to. It knows the shape of fear. It knows they will lead it exactly where it needs to go.
And they do.
Only a single door remains in the distance of this vast place of cluttered emptiness where all material is that of worthlessness. It parts, slowly, brazenly -- And that's exactly when it slams into the nearest of them. To Victoria's left, there is a scream where a woman used to be. Now, there is just red - an explosive mist of gore, crunched into the ground beneath many-limbs that thunder and charge through. It leaps from one broken structure to the next, like a spider - and gone is the next, and she's suddenly alone with herself and their leader.
But all good things are saved for last. Like dessert.
Like her.
Before her very eyes, just an inch from the door, the man leading them on through the nightmare of memories, of invaded dreams, he's caught within a jaw that manifests. Of many fangs, of many teeth, of a large, humongous mouth that devours the man down to his midsection with one bite as the behemoth feasts. It no longer needed any of them, now within reach of its destination, after all. She's left staring at it, face-to-face. At least, for a second or two.
Then it moves with a shrill sound spilling with blood, down its faceless face, down the whiteness of its body to taint it. It is not just a blur, but disappearing to appear in front of her, slam with a very real weight. Something cracks inside of her - and she can only feel it to be her spine, then another buffet of limbs does the same while the thing mauls her into the fractures below. Arms, legs, shoulders, clavicle, ribcage - she's made to endure being a puddle of gore beneath a monster's rampage.
That's when she takes her last breath.
And the one she takes next is in her waking.
One can only gasp at the suddenness of it. Of how swiftly she found herself aching all over as if a bulldozer, a roadroller ran her flat against the concrete. The mental fatigue lingers in a throbbing headache, with a line of blood that runs down her nose. Something mild, as far as anything's considered - but at least she is evidence that the rest have only woken up, too.
Beside her, her phone beeps. Just one text:
He's dead. We failed.
Nothing more. But oh well. No one is a winner in Haven, right?
As Victoria and her team traverse the bizarre and shifting landscape of the man’s mind, they encounter a series of increasingly disturbing and surreal challenges. The environment morphs unpredictably, filled with sinister echoes and grim projections of memories, each corridor and room designed to disorient and distress. When they come across core memories and the very essence of the psychic's torment, they are confronted by a manifestation of the psychic's anguish—a grotesque creature that hunts them ruthlessly. One by one, Victoria’s teammates fall, consumed or obliterated by the entity, until she too meets a gruesome end. However, this climax within the dream folds into an abrupt return to consciousness. Victoria awakens to the stark reality, battered and bloodied in spirit if not in body, to the grim news that their intervention failed and the afflicted man has died. The mission's conclusion leaves her with a blend of relief and sorrow, a stark reminder of the perilous nature of their endeavor and the unyielding darkness that can reside within the human mind.
(Victoria's odd encounter(SRElam):SRElam)
[Sat Apr 19 2025]
In a spacious foyer and living area adorned in white and gold
The foyer greets its visitors with reflective white marble floors, their mirror-like sheen framed by the deep, vertical grain of ebony wood walls. Thin golden inlays trace the edges of the room in a hint of subtle luxury to the monochrome palette. Overhead, a modern chandelier casts a warm golden glow, highlighting the clean, crisp lines of the space where it is situated between the foyer and the living area. A short descent of three wide, shallow steps, rimmed in gold, leads into the expansive living area, where a glass balustrade maintains an open, flowing design.
Grand and inviting, anchored by a massive white sectional couch adorned with black and gold pillows, the living room is soft tranquility, still and silent. Facing it, an ebony-paneled wall holds a large TV unit flanked by geometric floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, filled with a curated selection of books and artifacts in muted tones. Potted greenery; tall fiddle-leaf figs and birds of paradise in gold planters, punctuates the space, their deep greens adding warmth and life to the sleek modernity. It's a room that balances elegance with comfort, perfect for both quiet evenings and glamorous gatherings.
It is afternoon, about 50F(10C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey stormclouds. Ankle high mist flows through the area.
(Your target and their allies have been tasked with helping to cure someone's insanity by delving into their mind with dream invading to solve the issues keeping them from sanity.
)
One hand holding her phone to read through texts, Victoria has deigned to sit on the floor with the orange tabby, scratching behind its ears and surveying to ensure its not been up to mischief. She sends out a lazy reply here and there, before focusing her attention on the aloof feline.
The marble of the foyer catches the last of the daylight as if it were made for it. The sun, sinking low behind the skyline, casts its farewell in golden slants through the high windows, painting long shapes across the mirror-polished floor. The sheen is almost liquid in places, too flawless to feel real, as though each step might dissolve into reflection instead of sound. The air carries the scent of distant citrus, diffused and faint, likely from a hidden reed diffuser tucked among the tall potted plants that guard the corners with leafy grace. Somewhere near the front door, a faint click echoes now and then as the HVAC adjusts, but the noise is mild, softened by the plushness of the space.
The living room waits just beyond, a deliberate pause in architectural tempo as the steps gently dip into its open arms. Here, the color white asserts dominance, not as sterility but as invitation. The sectional couch sprawls like a throne for the weary and the wicked alike, draped in the measured decadence of gold-trimmed pillows that hold their corners like they know they belong. Shadows fall only where the design intends them to. There is no clutter. There is no accident. Even the books in their charcoal and beige bindings stand with military precision, spines forward, waiting for a reader who might never come.
At the center of this curated calm, a cat has claimed his kingdom. Orange tabby fur, striped with the lazy brushstrokes of something half-wild, gleams under the dimming light. He lies stretched comfortably on the sectional sofa beside Victoria, tail curled close to her thigh. One paw rests over a stray thread from a forgotten toy mouse, torn at the seams. His eyes, golden and half-lidded, follow the shifting glint on the chandelier above with the attention of someone who knows he has time to kill.
Victoria sits beside him with a kind of defiant nonchalance, legs folded where she pleases, fingers absentmindedly scratching behind a pointed ear. He arches slightly into the touch, just enough to acknowledge her presence without giving away his enjoyment. Her phone rests in her other hand, thumb gliding with practiced ease through messages that don't seem urgent. A reply is typed, deleted, rewritten, then sent with a half-smile that doesn't reach her eyes. The world she sits in feels more like a display home than a lived one, but the cat's shed fur on her black jeans offers proof that someone does, in fact, exist here.
The room is so quiet the vibrations of the phone are abrupt when they begin. Her screen lights with an unfamiliar number. No contact name. Just the string of digits, foreign and static in their anonymity. It doesn't ring, only the buzz and a flash. The cat lifts his head and blinks slowly, ears pivoting toward the sound before settling again. Even he seems to be waiting.
Answering the call opens not with a voice but with silence. A full three seconds of nothing, then a crackle. Not static, but close to it, as if the sound had to travel through something thick before reaching her.
"@Victoria. I was told the Forged Fortune recommended you." The voice is male, low, and refined in the way of people who don't waste breath. No introduction, no location, no title. He continues before she can speak. "There is a man who has lost all grasp of the real. A psychic, we think. Sensitive to forces beyond the veil. For weeks now, he has been locked in catatonia. Eyes open. Breathing. Responsive to neither voice nor touch. No drugs. No poisons. No spells, at least not in any form we've recognized."
The voice pauses, and there's the faintest rustling, fabric against fabric, perhaps a movement of someone seated. It resumes. "But the inside of his mind is not empty. We've had others try to make contact. Telepaths. Seers. One came back screaming and burned their eyes out before she could be restrained. The rest never returned."
A deep breath. Then, more softly, "I am not asking you to heal him. I am asking you to go in. Find what binds him. Unravel it, if you can. Report it, if you cannot. You are not expected to fight what lies there, only to know it." The call crackles again, less harsh this time. "You will not be alone. Your team will be briefed upon arrival. But the entry must come through dream. Willfully. The patient's subconscious is thick with barriers. To enter it, you must bring something of your own to the threshold. A memory, perhaps. A regret. Whatever it takes."
The line goes quiet for a long second. Then a final note.
"When you sleep, we will find you. Say yes, and close your eyes."
someone the line dies.
The cat stretches, indifferent to the gravity that just entered the room. His back arches in a perfect crescent, claws flexing against the soft fabric before he flops back down, closer now to Victoria's side. His purring resumes, a low, steady thrum against the silence. Above them, the chandelier flickers once, a brief stutter in the golden glow, so brief it might be a trick of the eye. Outside the window, the sun is no longer shining. The sky is turning violet, the final edge of day sinking below the buildings, and the warmth left behind is only in the memory of light.
And somewhere, something has stirred.
And it is waiting.
The marble of the foyer catches the last of the daylight as if it were made for it. The sun, sinking low behind the skyline, casts its farewell in golden slants through the high windows, painting long shapes across the mirror-polished floor. The sheen is almost liquid in places, too flawless to feel real, as though each step might dissolve into reflection instead of sound. The air carries the scent of distant citrus, diffused and faint, likely from a hidden reed diffuser tucked among the tall potted plants that guard the corners with leafy grace. Somewhere near the front door, a faint click echoes now and then as the HVAC adjusts, but the noise is mild, softened by the plushness of the space.
The living room waits just beyond, a deliberate pause in architectural tempo as the steps gently dip into its open arms. Here, the color white asserts dominance, not as sterility but as invitation. The sectional couch sprawls like a throne for the weary and the wicked alike, draped in the measured decadence of gold-trimmed pillows that hold their corners like they know they belong. Shadows fall only where the design intends them to. There is no clutter. There is no accident. Even the books in their charcoal and beige bindings stand with military precision, spines forward, waiting for a reader who might never come.
At the center of this curated calm, a cat has claimed his kingdom. Orange tabby fur, striped with the lazy brushstrokes of something half-wild, gleams under the dimming light. He lies stretched comfortably on the sectional sofa beside Victoria, tail curled close to her thigh. One paw rests over a stray thread from a forgotten toy mouse, torn at the seams. His eyes, golden and half-lidded, follow the shifting glint on the chandelier above with the attention of someone who knows he has time to kill.
Victoria sits beside him with a kind of defiant nonchalance, legs folded where she pleases, fingers absentmindedly scratching behind a pointed ear. He arches slightly into the touch, just enough to acknowledge her presence without giving away his enjoyment. Her phone rests in her other hand, thumb gliding with practiced ease through messages that don't seem urgent. A reply is typed, deleted, rewritten, then sent with a half-smile that doesn't reach her eyes. The world she sits in feels more like a display home than a lived one, but the cat's shed fur on her black jeans offers proof that someone does, in fact, exist here.
The room is so quiet the vibrations of the phone are abrupt when they begin. Her screen lights with an unfamiliar number. No contact name. Just the string of digits, foreign and static in their anonymity. It doesn't ring, only the buzz and a flash. The cat lifts his head and blinks slowly, ears pivoting toward the sound before settling again. Even he seems to be waiting.
Answering the call opens not with a voice but with silence. A full three seconds of nothing, then a crackle. Not static, but close to it, as if the sound had to travel through something thick before reaching her.
"@Victoria. I was told the Forged Fortune recommended you." The voice is male, low, and refined in the way of people who don't waste breath. No introduction, no location, no title. He continues before she can speak. "There is a man who has lost all grasp of the real. A psychic, we think. Sensitive to forces beyond the veil. For weeks now, he has been locked in catatonia. Eyes open. Breathing. Responsive to neither voice nor touch. No drugs. No poisons. No spells, at least not in any form we've recognized."
The voice pauses, and there's the faintest rustling, fabric against fabric, perhaps a movement of someone seated. It resumes. "But the inside of his mind is not empty. We've had others try to make contact. Telepaths. Seers. One came back screaming and burned their eyes out before she could be restrained. The rest never returned."
A deep breath. Then, more softly, "I am not asking you to heal him. I am asking you to go in. Find what binds him. Unravel it, if you can. Report it, if you cannot. You are not expected to fight what lies there, only to know it." The call crackles again, less harsh this time. "You will not be alone. Your team will be briefed upon arrival. But the entry must come through dream. Willfully. The patient's subconscious is thick with barriers. To enter it, you must bring something of your own to the threshold. A memory, perhaps. A regret. Whatever it takes."
The line goes quiet for a long second. Then a final note.
"When you sleep, we will find you. Say yes, and close your eyes."
And the line dies.
The cat stretches, indifferent to the gravity that just entered the room. His back arches in a perfect crescent, claws flexing against the soft fabric before he flops back down, closer now to Victoria's side. His purring resumes, a low, steady thrum against the silence. Above them, the chandelier flickers once, a brief stutter in the golden glow, so brief it might be a trick of the eye. Outside the window, the sun is no longer shining. The sky is turning violet, the final edge of day sinking below the buildings, and the warmth left behind is only in the memory of light.
And somewhere, something has stirred.
And it is waiting.
Victoria stares to the phone and sets it down beside her when the call drops. "Of course they did." She watches the last of the daylight bleed from the sky, the dark violet deepening to ink, drawing a slow inhale. She reaches for the chain at her throat, fingers brushing the cold metal once before letting it fall. The cat nudges against her hip, and she scratches behind his ear without looking. "I'll be back soon enough." She speaks to it as though the animal understands her, seeming regretful to have to cut her attentions to the purring animal short. Leaning back into the couch, she closes her eyes.
Sleep arrives without protest. There is no fade to black, no dissolve into quiet.
There is only the moment Victoria breathes out and the world turns inside out.
The couch beneath her is gone. The warmth of the cat pressed to her side, the scent of citrus in the air, the whispering click of the HVAC, gone. It is replaced by something else entirely, something vast and cold, like a silence waiting to become sound. There is no clear moment of transition. One heartbeat she is reclining in a golden lit apartment, the next she stands at the center of an impossible space.
It is not a room.
It is not a place.
The air is dense, not with humidity, but with memory. It clings. The horizon is an endless field of cracked porcelain tiles underfoot, stretching in all directions, veined like bone, slick in places with what looks like ink but shifts as she looks, red, then black, then something clear and starlit. Above her, the sky is far too close, like a dome hung with canvas. It ripples faintly, and behind it something presses outward in slow pulses. There is no sun, but everything is illuminated. Too evenly. Too wrong. There are no shadows.
And then the voices begin. Soft at first, indistinct. Whispers between teeth, fragments of language that twist backward as soon as they form. They do not come from any direction, but instead from the seams in the porcelain beneath her boots, from the folds in her coat, from the stillness of the air itself. And then, figures. They do not arrive. They are simply there, at the edge of her perception. Four of them. As if blinked into existence when she wasn't looking. They are not close together. Each stands apart, separated by meters of tile, examining the space, or each other, or their own hands. One is pacing. One has already knelt and pressed gloved fingers to the tile, eyes closed in concentration. One is watching her directly.
The one who speaks first is tall, wrapped in a long grey coat that sweeps behind him in an invisible wind. His face is angular, weathered, the kind that could be thirty or seventy depending on the lighting. "That you? Victoria?" His voice is normal. No reverb. No dream distortion. That, somehow, makes it worse.
Before she can answer, another joins in. A woman this time. Short, dark haired, wearing fatigues that don't match any modern military but bear symbols that seem familiar in the way half remembered nightmares are. She clicks a thin blade back into a sheath strapped to her thigh. "I don't like the symmetry of this place. Too neat." The man in the grey coat nods once. "Agreed. You're all here, good. No introductions, we were told you'd be briefed when we landed."
"Landed," the last figure scoffs, a lanky shape hunched in a black duster. His voice is pitched low and sour. He carries a twisted length of metal like a walking stick, or a weapon. "Sure. Landed. Like falling into a trash compactor made of glass and existential dread." The woman glances around again, more alert now. "We're still in the outer layer. These tiles are the entry schema. They're shaped by fragments of real memories. Once we move further in, nothing familiar will hold."
The man in grey addresses Victoria again, voice sharper now. "They said you'd know what you're doing. Hope that wasn't exaggerated." A sound echoes from the far edge of the horizon. It isn't a scream, not exactly. It is what a scream might look like if it were stitched into the folds of sky and then ripped free. The tiles under their feet vibrate once, like something massive just turned over beneath them.
The man sighs and adjusts the cuffs of his coat. "We start walking. East, if such a thing applies." And they do. The tiles stretch endlessly, fracturing now and then into brief rises or dips, as though trying to shape terrain without ever forming it. In the distance, something like a building rises, but as they approach, its angles shift, windows flicker between shapes, corners fold in impossible geometries, and doors open onto staircases that go nowhere. None of the team speak again for a long time. The air grows heavier. The light grows colder. The voices never stop.
And something has begun to follow.
Its footsteps do not sound.
But it is always behind them.
They do not stop walking, but the tension deepens with every step. Each footfall echoes across the tile, swallowed quickly by the oppressive air, as if the space resents the intrusion. Nothing speaks again, not even the whispers that once slithered through the seams of the dream. The silence now is complete, but it is not peace. It is anticipation.
Eventually, the building swallows the horizon. Its form is no more coherent up close than it was at a distance. The structure stretches upward, neither tower nor fortress, its walls composed of architectural afterthoughts. Window frames without glass, doorways that open into walls, staircases that hang midair and vanish into the ceiling. Each piece contradicts the last. The building is not built, but remembered badly, shaped from fragments of something real and half-forgotten, as if someone's memory attempted to sculpt a structure but lacked all sense of order.
A moment of stillness comes when they reach its threshold. The man in grey puts a hand out, stopping the others with a sharp gesture. His eyes trace the frame of the doorway, flicking briefly toward Victoria. "Once we're inside, this place will react to us. It won't stay static. Keep track of each other. If we separate, even for a second, we won't find each other again."
Victoria blinks. Once, twice, then a third time, as if the act might clear some invisible film from her vision. The world around her feels thick, half-formed, strange in a way she cant immediately name. She takes her time, gaze flickering across her surroundings with a mixture of muted wonder and lingering confusion. Her lips part slightly as though she might speak, then close again when no words come.
At last, her eyes find the man addressing her. She studies him in silence for a heartbeat longer than is polite, grey eyes refusing to blink. "Were supposed to remove some bindings."
Without another word, they start walking. Her steps are steady but cautious, and every so often she glances back over her shoulder, eyes scanning the path theyve left behind. Theres no real expectation of seeing anything, yet she looks all the same. When they come to a stop, she gives a short, affirming nod. "Got it."
The woman with the short hair draws in a shallow breath and murmurs, "Smells like something dead in there." No one argues. Victoria's team exchanges a few silent nods, the only affirmation they need. Then they step in. The interior is worse. The moment their feet touch the warped floorboards beyond the threshold, the air becomes claustrophobic. It's not that the space is smaller. It isn't. But the angles warp inward, creating the illusion that the walls lean just enough to press against their shoulders. The colors here are pale and sickly, as if the room is lit by a sun filtered through stained bone. Nothing here is firm. Everything feels like it was made soft.
Everything is slightly wet. The air tastes of mildew and vinegar, old copper and damp cloth. Long hallways stretch out in all directions, lined with doorways, most closed, some half ajar. Faint sounds trickle from behind them: a girl humming tunelessly, the ticking of a clock, shallow breathing. None of it is directional. None of it is trustworthy. As they walk, the building shifts around them. The hall behind them no longer matches what it was moments before. The man with the walking stick scratches a line into the wall with the edge of his twisted metal, but when they glance back, the wall has become fabric, or maybe fur, shifting subtly as if breathing. The mark is gone, erased like it never happened.
At a bend in the corridor, they find the first mirror. It is tall, oval, antique in style. Its surface is polished to clarity, too perfect. It does not reflect the corridor. It reflects a room. The same living area Victoria just left. Down to the faint imprint of her body in the couch cushion. The lighting, the cat, even the echo of still air, all perfectly preserved. "That's not real," the woman says, voice low but firm. "Doesn't matter," replies the man in grey. "It's bait. Ignore it."
But as they pass, the mirror shifts. It no longer shows the apartment. It shows something darker. A hospital room, long disused. A figure sits slumped in a wheelchair, face obscured by a curtain of tangled hair. Something small and wet writhes in their lap. The mirror pulses faintly. A heartbeat. Not an illusion. A memory. Real, or at least real to the one who dreamed it. They keep walking.
The building gets louder. Not with voices or speech, but the kind of sound that fills silence with meaning. The walls groan. Doors slam somewhere distant. A child's laughter echoes off the ceiling beams and dies into a dry rattle. The porcelain tiles they'd left behind are gone entirely now. The floorboards beneath them bend subtly as they move. Something soft scuttles just underfoot, always too quick to catch, always just beyond reach.
The next hallway they enter is different. It smells like lavender, but not the kind found in soap or candles. It is chemical and sharp, as if remembering the scent from a hospital ward. The walls are lined with wallpaper patterned in ornate flowers, faded to a jaundiced yellow. Dozens of framed photographs hang crookedly, their glass warped. All of them show the same figure: a young man in his twenties, sharp-jawed and bright-eyed, sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman and child. Sometimes those companions are missing their faces. Sometimes the background shifts to other rooms. In one, the wallpaper in the photograph matches the wallpaper around them. The correspondence is exact.
Victoria's team slows here. There is something dense in the air, almost magnetic. "This is it," the grey-coated man murmurs. "Core memory layer. We're near the anchor." As he speaks, the floor splits open behind them. No impact. No noise. Just sudden rupture, like the tiles outside but deeper, endless. Something pale and many-limbed begins pulling itself up from the chasm. Its face is not a face, only a wide surface that stretches and trembles like something trying to remember what faces are, what a mouth should look like, where eyes belong.
All of them, the team, they begin to run. Doors open to their left and right. Rooms spill out with memories, half-formed and incomplete. One is a hospital hallway lit in red. One is a child's bedroom filled with decaying stuffed animals. One is a church made entirely of books, each one whispering as they pass. The dream reacts now, desperate and fevered, as if vomiting memories to delay their progress. The thing follows without sound. It does not breathe. It does not drag itself loudly or hiss or groan. It does not hurry. It does not need to. It knows the shape of fear. It knows they will lead it exactly where it needs to go.
And they do.
Only a single door remains in the distance of this vast place of cluttered emptiness where all material is that of worthlessness. It parts, slowly, brazenly -- And that's exactly when it slams into the nearest of them. To Victoria's left, there is a scream where a woman used to be. Now, there is just red - an explosive mist of gore, crunched into the ground beneath many-limbs that thunder and charge through. It leaps from one broken structure to the next, like a spider - and gone is the next, and she's suddenly alone with herself and their leader.
But all good things are saved for last. Like dessert.
Like her.
Before her very eyes, just an inch from the door, the man leading them on through the nightmare of memories, of invaded dreams, he's caught within a jaw that manifests. Of many fangs, of many teeth, of a large, humongous mouth that devours the man down to his midsection with one bite as the behemoth feasts. It no longer needed any of them, now within reach of its destination, after all. She's left staring at it, face-to-face. At least, for a second or two.
Then it moves with a shrill sound spilling with blood, down its faceless face, down the whiteness of its body to taint it. It is not just a blur, but disappearing to appear in front of her, slam with a very real weight. Something cracks inside of her - and she can only feel it to be her spine, then another buffet of limbs does the same while the thing mauls her into the fractures below. Arms, legs, shoulders, clavicle, ribcage - she's made to endure being a puddle of gore beneath a monster's rampage.
That's when she takes her last breath.
And the one she takes next is in her waking.
One can only gasp at the suddenness of it. Of how swiftly she found herself aching all over as if a bulldozer, a roadroller ran her flat against the concrete. The mental fatigue lingers in a throbbing headache, with a line of blood that runs down her nose. Something mild, as far as anything's considered - but at least she is evidence that the rest have only woken up, too.
Beside her, her phone beeps. Just one text:
He's dead. We failed.
Nothing more. But oh well. No one is a winner in Haven, right?