META'S POV:
I ran a hand through my hair, the cold sweat on my brow a testament to the chaos raging in my mind. The image of that man—the scarred, twisted version of my own face from my nightmares—was burned onto the back of my eyelids, a phantom that refused to fade. Am I hallucinating? The thought was a chilling whisper, a seed of doubt I couldn't afford to let grow. This had to be stress. A delusion born from my frantic investigation and the lingering horror of that dream. I needed to focus. I needed to get a grip. There were still leads to follow.
My mind, a frantic compass, pointed me toward the place where this all might have begun: the high school I'd attended in tenth and eleventh grade. The answers I needed might lie buried there, with someone who had known me before… before whatever happened that I can't remember. I was about to open my car door when my eyes caught a flicker of movement down the street.
It was Thyme.
He was a good distance away, a figure of hurried grace, his movements frantic and purposeful as he moved deeper into an unfamiliar side street. The recognition was instant, a jolt that was equal parts warmth and alarm. Where was he going in such a rush? A prickle of unease, a gut feeling that something was off, ran down my spine. My initial plan was forgotten. I had to follow him.
He led me through a maze of narrow alleys, each turn more dilapidated than the last, the air growing thick with the smell of decay. I moved with a quiet focus I didn't know I possessed, keeping a careful distance, making sure my presence remained an unseen shadow. I finally stopped at the mouth of a small, forgotten lane. At the end stood a house, its wooden exterior warped and peeling like sunburnt skin, its windows like dark, empty eye sockets. It wasn't just old; it felt dead, a skeleton waiting for the grave.
Thyme vanished inside, swallowed by the oppressive darkness of the doorway.
My heart hammered against my ribs. Should I follow him in? It felt wrong, a total invasion of privacy. This was someone's home, and I had no right to trespass. I decided to wait, to watch over him. I leaned against a cold brick wall, the rough texture a grounding sensation in my swirling confusion, my eyes fixed on the front door.
But it wasn't Thyme who came out.
The front door, creaking on a hinge that sounded like a weary, final sigh, opened to reveal an old woman. Her face was a road map of a life well-lived, but her posture was unnervingly straight. As she stepped into the fading light, her eyes, dark and sharp, met mine. A flicker of something crossed her face—not recognition, but profound, jarring shock. Her eyes widened, her composure cracking for a split second, as if she were seeing a ghost.
My logical mind, desperate for an anchor, chose this moment to act. I pushed off the wall. "Uh, hello, Auntie," I began, my voice more hesitant than I intended. "I'm sorry to bother you. Do you… do you know me?"
Her composure returned, a mask sliding back into place, but her gaze remained unnervingly intense, as if she were looking straight through me. "No, young man. I don't know you. But you… you look familiar."
The familiar feeling of a puzzle piece almost fitting settled in my gut. "I understand," I said, trying a different approach. "But, Auntie, did you see a young man, about my friend's age, enter this house just now?"
The old woman took a deep, shuddering breath, a sound that seemed to pull all the air from the narrow alley. "Young man, no one has entered this house. Only I am here."
My confusion was a physical weight in my chest. "But I saw him. My friend. He went right inside." My voice, I noticed, was laced with an urgency that betrayed my calm facade. Her expression softened with what looked like pity.
"This house has been my home for decades, young man," she said, her voice low and gentle, yet holding a strange, hypnotic quality. "You seem to be under a great deal of stress. A mind that searches for answers, for something it has lost… it can create its own reality. I suggest you visit the nearby temple. Find some peace."
I was about to ask her what she meant, about answers and lost things, when a familiar voice cut through the air behind me.
"Meta! Who are you talking to?"
It was Non. My heart, a panicked drum, leaped with relief. I turned to face him, the grounded, familiar reality of my best friend a welcome beacon. "I was just talking to the old lady…" I began, turning to point at the woman.
She was gone.
The front door of the decaying house was still open, but the space behind it was a black, silent void. It was empty. There was no one there.
"What are you talking about?" Non asked, his brows furrowed in confusion. "You were just standing here, talking to yourself."
A cold sweat broke out on my skin, a sudden, horrifying chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. I pointed a trembling finger at the empty doorway. "I saw Thyme enter this house… and then an old lady came out. I was just talking to her. Where did she go?"
Non's expression shifted from confusion to grave concern. He stepped forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. "Meta, I think you might be hallucinating. This house has been abandoned since 1990. No one has lived here since the owner died."
The statement hit me like a physical blow. "Stop it, Non. I'm not in the mood for jokes."
Non's eyes, a rare window into his seriousness, held no trace of humor. "I'm not joking." He hailed an old man walking by. "Uncle, sorry to bother you, but my friend won't believe me. This house… it's been abandoned for years, right?"
The old man nodded slowly, his eyes flickering toward the decaying structure with a clear sense of dread. "Yes. Since the early 90s. The old owner, a shaman named Khunying Dawklao, was brutally murdered in that house. They say her spirit still guards it. No one dares to even enter."
My blood ran cold. My head began to spin again, not from stress, but from the horrifying logic of it all. I didn't believe in ghosts, but I believed what I had seen. The old lady's piercing gaze, her unnerving speed, her cryptic words… all of it now fit into a terrifying, impossible framework. Am I going crazy?
"But I talked to her," I whispered, the words feeling alien in my own mouth. "And Thyme… he entered this house and never came out."
The old man's face turned a shade of pale gray, and he backed away, shaking his head. "Young man, I think you have been seen by her spirit. You must go to the temple. Pray. Now." With that, he turned and scurried away, as if fleeing the ghosts I had just conjured.
My mind, a well-oiled machine, began to short-circuit. The only conclusion left that wasn't supernatural was that my own brain was betraying me. The head injury. It had to be.
"Let's go, Meta," Non said, his hand on my back, a solid, real weight. "Let's go to the temple." He began to guide me away, and for the first time in my life, I, a man who never believed in anything he couldn't see or touch, began to fear that my own mind was broken.
The air grew cooler as we walked deeper into the labyrinth of alleys, the scent of damp earth replaced by the sweet perfume of jasmine. "There's a temple here?" I asked, my skepticism warring with a desperate need for any kind of answer.
Tucked away in a small clearing stood a tiny temple, its faded red paint a testament to its age. A quiet, profound peace emanated from it, an anchor in the storm of my mind. My frantic thoughts, the spiraling doubts, began to dissipate, replaced by an unexpected calm.
Non handed me a tray of marigolds and incense. We lit them, the sweet smoke curling toward a gilded statue of the Buddha. I didn't pray about ghosts. I closed my eyes and prayed for clarity, for a single, logical explanation for the impossible connection I felt to Thyme.
We were about to leave when a low, soft voice broke the quiet. "The path you walk is not your own."
I turned. A monk, old and serene, stood a few feet away, his gaze fixed on me. His eyes held an unnerving depth, as if he could see the tangled mess of questions inside my head. Non and I bowed respectfully.
The monk's gaze remained locked on me, and his words felt like a message meant for me alone.
"The future of this one is… blurred," he said, his voice a quiet rumble. "A great discordance has entered his song. An echo of a forgotten past must be resolved. If he does not reclaim what was taken, his very existence will vanish like smoke on the wind."
His words hit me, not as a prophecy, but as a diagnosis. Blurred future. Forgotten past. Reclaim what was taken. The monk was giving me a warning, a cryptic confirmation of everything I feared. He was telling me that my failure to remember something was the key. But the final phrase… his existence will vanish. It felt less like a metaphor for losing my reputation or power, and more like a terrifying, literal threat. I was standing in a storm of confusion, a place where my own mind was the most haunted place of all.