Reis opened his eyes slowly, as if rising from a long slumber of unknown length. The first thing he felt was a weight pressing on his chest, a weight unlike ordinary fatigue, but a strange burden that stole the body of its ease and turned every movement into resistance against an unseen current.
His gaze wandered across the room. The wall before him kept on aging, faded paint peeling at the edges, damp spots spreading year after year until they resembled continents drifting on a silent surface. Yet something small was different, without clear form, but present like a muffled bell echoing inside him. The room was familiar on the surface, foreign in its depths, as if the soul of the place had shifted secretly during his absence.
He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling the rough wood beneath his cold palms. The air was heavier than before, filling his lungs in a halting rhythm. He breathed deeply several times, trying to awaken his body from stiffness, then rose to his feet. He trembled slightly, but his legs carried him at last.
He stood still for a moment, listening to the silence around him. No sounds came from outside, no movement in the corridor beyond the door. It seemed as if the world had stopped at the threshold of this room. He wondered to himself whether he had returned to life, or whether life had withdrawn around him, leaving him alone as its witness.
He reached toward the small table beside the bed, where he used to leave his things. Dust covered the surface in a thin layer, a keepsake from a time untouched by anyone. He traced his fingers across it, drawing a faint line in the stillness, then let his hand fall slowly. He felt that every gesture revealed a greater emptiness than he had imagined.
He took a first step, then a second. The wooden floor groaned beneath his weight, and he felt as though the house itself breathed with him. As he neared the door, his eyes caught the mirror hanging beside it.
He stopped, a vague fear within him of looking, yet he could not turn away. The moment he faced his reflection, a sudden dizziness seized him. He did not see what he expected, he did not see the man whose shadow he was used to glimpsing in passing mirrors, but the face of a boy no older than fifteen. Slightly taller than his peers, thin enough that the bones showed beneath his faded shirt. His black hair fell over his forehead, strands arranged with a strange neatness, as if unseen hands had combed them just moments before his awakening.
He lifted his hand to his head, running his fingers through the strands, searching for the memory of a recent cut or a familiar touch. He found nothing. And in the instant his eyes met the eyes of his reflection, he froze in place.
Two black eyes stared back at him without depth, without spark. They clung to him like voids swallowing light. Dark circles surrounded them, heavy with years of sleeplessness, of sickness, of something deeper than exhaustion. His heart recoiled before his body could. He did not know this face, did not know the one staring back at him.
A whisper escaped him, barely audible, "What is wrong with me?".
No answer came to him. The mirror did not reply, nor did the silence pressing around him. Only a heavy feeling began to creep inside his skull, his thoughts soaked with fog, his head burdened with a memory he could no longer carry. He pressed his temples with both hands, trying to drive away the dizziness, yet his feet carried him toward the door of the small bathroom in the corner of the room, his body leading him on a path against which he had no will.
He opened the door with a trembling hand, greeted by cold air with the smell of stagnant dampness. The sound of water drops falling from the faucet scattered on the metal sink, a monotonous sound that made him feel the place had been abandoned long ago. He reached for the tap, turned it, and the water burst out in broken spurts, wavering between murkiness and rust, before finally flowing steady.
He bent to wash his face. The cold water pierced his skin to the bone, waking every dormant cell in his body, but it did not dispel the dizziness. He raised his head, his gaze pulled back unwillingly to the small mirror above the sink. Nothing had changed. His eyes were still empty, black without life, alien to his face, belonging to him no more.
He swallowed slowly. He found nothing to say to himself. No familiar features, not a single memory to prove this was truly his body. Everything was strange, even his inner voice when he thought:
"Perhaps I woke up in a body that is not mine."
He turned his eyes away, as if fearing the mirror might devour what remained of his soul. Yet inside he knew that fleeing from it would not change the truth it had revealed to him, that he was a stranger to himself, trapped in a form he did not know when it had claimed his skin.
...
Reis left the bathroom with heavy steps, his body weighed down by a trembling within he could not name. The corridor seemed narrower than he remembered, its silent walls following him as if they knew more than they would say. He reached the narrow kitchen, the only place where traces of daily life still lingered.
Everything was arranged along one wall, an old stove blackened at the edges from long use, a dusty electric kettle, and a small wooden cupboard, its doors leaning with time until nearly falling. The metal table occupied the center of the kitchen, cold and unyielding, on it empty cups he had left from a time he could not recall, and a half finished jar of coffee awaiting its last remains.
He stretched out his hand slowly and pressed the kettle switch. Its hum rose little by little, a low murmur filling the kitchen as though pulsing with an old memory. Reis did not notice the sound alone, but caught his reflection in the small window above the sink. The window offered him only a narrow view, another concrete wall rising before him, swallowing the horizon, leaving only a thin strip of gray sky. No birds, no clouds, no life but concrete. He felt the world tightening its circles until nothing remained but this narrow room.
When the water began to boil, he opened the jar of coffee, and the smell of beans filled the air lightly, an ordinary scent yet one that gave him a moment of steadiness, reminding his body it could still cling to something familiar. He poured the powder into an old ceramic cup cracked at the rim, then added the hot water. The steam rose like a soft mist, covering his face for a few seconds before fading. He sat at the table, holding the cup with both trembling hands, and sipped a small taste. The heat of the coffee restored some feeling to his fingers, but his heart remained unsettled.
He reached for the phone lying beside him. a simple black device, its screen faint but still working. He pressed the power button, and the kitchen filled with its sudden light. At the top, the time and date.
09:34
15-07-2230
He stared, his limbs stiff. Fear climbed from his chest to his throat in an instant. The number was no typo, no illusion. 2230. Two hundred years and more leaping before him at once.
Broken words slipped out of him:
"No… no it cannot be… we are not in this year…"
He tried to convince himself the device was confused, that the battery had lost its memory, that the system had stumbled after too long asleep. He flipped through the menus, entered the settings, pressed every option available. Everything appeared normal. The clock moved steadily, the minutes passed. No software fault.
He took another sip of coffee, his hands still shaking. He looked to the top of the screen, the signal bar empty. The phone without a SIM, without connection. No internet, no window to the outside world. Only a device sealed within itself, reflecting the harsh truth without offering explanation.
He leaned his head against the chair, closed his eyes, nightmares swirling around him like a vortex. His question escaped in a whisper this time, carrying barely his voice,
"Did I truly sleep for centuries, or did the world pass and leave me behind?".
But the silence in the kitchen was steadier than any answer, a silence pressing on his chest and making each breath heavier than the one before.
Reis returned to his room carrying the cup of coffee in his hands, the steam drifting into the air in broken threads that twisted before vanishing. He set the cup on the wooden desk, its surface filled with old scratches and the stains of cups that time had never erased, as if it were a silent record of all the long nights he had spent here.
He sat before the laptop, his hand running over the faded black lid. The scattered scratches seemed familiar, yet suddenly stirred a strange feeling in him, as if he were touching something that was not his. He pressed the power button, a faint hum rising before the screen pulsed with a cold light that spread little by little.
The icons began to appear slowly, one by one, but he barely noticed them, for the strange weight in his head overtook him. A slight dizziness rose from the back of his skull to his eyes, a sensation like hidden ground slipping beneath his feet. He raised his hand to his forehead, leaning it into his palm, and whispered in a dry voice:
"Why do I feel so dizzy?".
Moments passed before he opened the browser. For an instant everything looked normal, then his breath froze.
The emblem before him was not the one he had always known. He did not see the three colors he remembered, red and yellow and green. Instead a fiery beast coiled around a globe, two eyes glowing with a dim ember, and flames forming a halo that bound the planet like burning chains.
He swallowed, staring wide eyed at the screen, his doubts rising.
"Was it like this from the beginning? Or did something change without me noticing?"
He clicked on a new tab, and the page filled with a flood of headlines. The words leapt at him like messages from an unknown world.
"Exploration of floor 65, infinite equipment and resources."
"An awakener from Britain raises his rank to 60 and his value rises."
"Sharp conflict between the Awakener Association and Astria Academy, the future of generations at stake."
He read slowly, his brows furrowed, his heart pounding hard against his chest. He whispered:
"What the hell is this? A new game? A digital novel? An advertisement?"
He stopped at the first headline and clicked it. The report burst open in large letters,
Breaking news, World Awakener Agency.
"Exceptional success for the Flame Dragon clan on floor 65."
The words poured before him, names and events with no origin he could trace. Arthur Lewin leading the clan, level 60, a gate to the next floor, strategic resources, black energy crystals, rare aetheric alloys. Numbers speaking of billions, of military and economic power doubling.
His fingers trembled over the keyboard. He reread the lines slowly, breaking them down word by word. Floor, gate, level, value, awakener.
All strange, each letter deepening his alienation. No meaning. No reference. No logic.
He closed the tab sharply, his hand trembling on the mouse, muttering in a pleading voice:
"It is not a game, but it is not ordinary news either."
He moved to the next report.
"Rising conflict between the Awakener Association and Astria Academy."
The words struck his mind like a rain of arrows, disputes over forming an independent army, monopolizing talent, accusations of dragging new generations into struggles, responses speaking of the future of humanity in the higher floors. Each sentence added another layer of mystery, a picture of a whole world moving outside his grasp.
Reis sat rigid, his eyes locked to the screen, an inner voice whispering that this was no coincidence, that this was no fault of memory nor error of the machine. Something else was happening, something beyond his power to understand.
He felt the coffee grow cold on the table, its steam gone, leaving him before one truth, that everything he knew was falling apart before his eyes.
Reis drew back from the screen, his hand still pressing his forehead, as if the touch of his fingers were the last barrier between him and collapse. His hair fell across his eyes, and he brushed it back nervously, catching the reflection of his image on the dim screen. A faint, wavering reflection that gave him no certainty, only deepened his estrangement. He murmured in a hoarse voice:
"What is happening here? Did the world change since I woke up this morning?".
He leapt suddenly from his seat, his movement sharp enough to make the chair screech against the floor in a metallic cry. He snatched up the coffee cup as if clinging to something that tied him to reality, then hurried toward the window beside his bed. His grip shook on the handle, and with each push he felt he was opening more than a window. The hinges groaned with a long creak, and the air rushed in all at once.
He stood stunned. A cool breeze, ordinary at first, filled his lungs and woke something unknown within him. His chest swelled with a dormant energy buried deep inside, a rush of vitality coursing through his blood until his heart hammered against his ribs. His muscles loosened for a moment, then drew taut like a tightened string. He whispered haltingly:
"Why is my body responding like this?".
He lifted the cup and drank deeply, searching for comfort in the familiar taste. But the coffee was no longer the same. Its bitterness was heavier, its flavor struck his throat with unusual force, as if it were an entirely different drink. Each sip flowed through him with a warm pulse, as though he were swallowing more than liquid.
He raised his head slowly, his eyes scanning the sky above the crowded buildings. He did not see the blue he had known since childhood. The sky seemed veiled, heavy with thick gray clouds tinged with black, tangled like armies lined for battle. The whole expanse was shrouded, with no clear sun, only faint flashes slipping through the gaps like strangled breaths.
The question slipped from his lips before he knew it:
"When did the sky become like this? Where has its blue gone? Where has the sun disappeared?".
He stood long at the window, the air striking his face, the wind playing with his black hair, his body swaying between awe and fear. He lifted the cup again, drank the last of it, then exhaled slowly and closed his eyes.
He spoke in a heavy voice, as if writing a vow with himself:
"Everything will become clear."
But the depth in which the words echoed carried no certainty. Inside him, contrary to what he tried to convince himself of, he knew that what awaited him was not clarity, but a deeper collapse, a drowning in a maze that revealed no bottom.