I woke up in a place that shouldn’t exist.
A long hallway—straight, unnaturally neat, yet too worn down to be called maintained. The walls were painted white, but the color felt… dead. Not yellowed, not dirty. Just… tired. The carpet was covered in a thin layer of dust, like it had never been stepped on—yet somehow it held footprints I couldn’t remember making.
The air felt heavy. Not suffocating, not cold. More like pressure. Like the room had a will of its own, and my presence in it was a minor disturbance it hadn’t decided how to deal with yet.
I couldn’t remember how I got there.
Every time I tried, my thoughts slipped. Not forgotten—rejected.
So I started walking.
Each step echoed down the hallway. Sharp. Clear. Like shoes hitting wood.
That made no sense. Carpet should muffle sound. But the echo stayed—too consistent, like the hallway wanted me to hear myself.
There was no end in sight.
No doors.
No markers.
Just repetition.
I let out a short, nervous laugh. “Okay… this is officially weird,” I muttered.
The words felt hollow as soon as they left my mouth. Logic didn’t mean anything here. It never did. From the start, just being here already broke something deeper than common sense.
Then someone called my name.
“Franz…”
It didn’t come from ahead.
Or behind.
Or the sides.
It was… just there. Like the hallway itself was speaking.
“Who’s there?!” I shouted.
No answer.
But the silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was a pause. Like something was waiting—watching how I’d react, deciding if I deserved more.
“Great,” I muttered under my breath. “Yeah, I hate this.”
I wasn’t scared.
Not yet.
It felt more like… being reduced. Like I was too simple to be worth explaining anything to.
I stopped walking.
And that’s when I realized it.
I hadn’t been alone from the beginning.
There was no shadow. No shape. No sound.
But something shifted.
The pressure in the air changed—subtly, but enough. Like the balance of the room had been adjusted, and I was standing in the wrong place.
I wasn’t the one being observed.
I was being… considered.
My skin prickled—not from cold, but from understanding that came too fast:
Whatever was here didn’t need a form to exist.
It didn’t need to be seen.
It didn’t need to be understood.
It just needed to be.
Right next to my left ear—no breath, no footsteps, no sign of arrival—a whisper appeared.
Not a sound.
A thought, forced into my head.
“Don’t say its name.”
BEEP—BEEP—BEEP—BEEP.
The alarm screamed through the room.
I jolted awake, heart racing, breath uneven. My phone read 5:00 a.m. Way too early for anyone who isn’t getting paid or forced.
Chase’s alarm.
My shirt was soaked. Sweat clung to my back like I’d just run a marathon in my sleep. I sat up, trying to steady my breathing.
“What the fu—”
“Franz?” Chase’s voice came from his bed. “You’re up? That’s new.”
I turned. He was half-sitting, eyes still heavy, hair a mess.
“…Dude, you’re sweating,” he said, somewhere between confused and concerned.
I waved him off. “Nah, it’s been hot lately. Totally normal.”
He stared at me for a few seconds. “Franz… it’s like 23 degrees outside.”
“Yeah. Hot. My version of hot.”
He snorted. “What are you on?”
“Nothing.”
“I know temperatures,” he muttered, lying back down. “Who do you think wakes up at this hour?”
…Fair.
I didn’t have the energy to argue at five in the morning. I just pulled the blanket over myself and stayed quiet.
Five days had passed since Chase invited me to his hometown.
Weirdly, those days went by too fast. Sometimes I forgot the whole point wasn’t a trip—it was research.
Or at least… something pretending to be research.
I hadn’t really prepared anything either.
Chase did warn me about his village. Said people there were conservative. Not much interaction with the outside world. Their mindset was… well, “village mindset.”
Honestly, not surprising.
But thinking about it again—did they choose to be isolated? Probably not. Chase made it to Stanford. That means the door exists.
Maybe it’s just rarely opened.
It should be fine, I told myself.
At least, “fine” in the way city students like me assume everything will be.
On day five, it finally hit me: research usually involves preparation.
So I went to a supply store. Alone. With a very vague mental checklist.
The problem was… I didn’t even know what I was researching.
If this was some kind of livestock pathogen, I’d need protection. Masks. Gloves. Maybe even a hazmat suit.
“…A hazmat suit.”
I sighed, standing in the aisle. “This is for an essay. An essay.”
The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it felt.
But at the same time… I didn’t want to look like an idiot if it turned out necessary.
“Man, why am I trying this hard…” I muttered.
That vegan professor was incredible. Even without being physically present, he was still managing to stress me out.
In the end, I bought a few basic things. Not professional. Not careless. Just… enough to not get yelled at, but not overkill.
We agreed to leave on day seven.
Which meant I had one full day to pretend I was a real researcher.
Day six.
I woke up late. Not too late—but not early enough to feel productive either.
After getting ready—dressing like someone who looked serious—I headed to the campus library.
Because going into “field research” with zero reading? That’s not research. That’s a vacation with academic excuses.
Stanford’s library always felt… too quiet. Like it was constantly reminding you that everyone else is more disciplined.
I found a spot in the biology and veterinary section, opened my laptop, and started searching:
sudden sheep death
unexplained livestock mortality
ovine sudden death syndrome
There were… a lot of results.
Which, honestly, was reassuring.
Turns out, sheep dropping dead suddenly isn’t that rare.
First possibility: acute infection.
Clostridium, for example. Brutal bacteria. Lives in soil, gets into the body, releases toxins fast. Sheep can look perfectly fine in the morning—dead by evening. No wounds. Minimal external signs.
Makes sense.
But there’s a problem. Cases like that usually show patterns—age groups, feeding conditions, early symptoms.
The article said there were none.
I wrote it down: possible, but weak.
Second: environmental poisoning.
Toxic plants. Mold in feed. Pesticide contamination.
Also plausible. Happens fairly often.
But again—the sheep were from different farms, different feed sources.
I scratched my head.
Third: extreme stress.
This one was interesting.
Sheep are incredibly sensitive. Sudden noise, environmental changes—even routine disruptions—can trigger something like capture myopathy. Muscles fail. Heart collapses. Death.
Usually happens during chasing or relocation.
But what if… the stressor isn’t something humans notice?
I stopped typing.
Okay. Focus. Don’t start reaching.
The more I read, the clearer one thing became:
There’s no single explanation that fits everything.
Every theory works… up to a point.
Then it falls apart.
After a few hours, I leaned back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.
My brain felt full—but not satisfied.
I’m used to answers. Diagnosis. Cause. Solution.
This?
This was just a pile of “maybes.”
I opened a new note:
Initial Hypothesis – Field Observation Required
Classic. Safe. Academic.
I closed my laptop.
Enough PDFs. I needed something else.
I leaned back in the stiff library chair. Uncomfortable, but good enough to think.
A lot of research always feels incomplete. Like the data’s missing something.
At one point, it even crossed my mind—half-joking—that maybe the sheep were just… taken. Like something reached in and turned them off.
Science didn’t have a clean answer for this.
Which meant I’d have to go to the field.
I started packing my things—but something felt off.
The research felt unfinished.
And I hate unfinished things.
Since I was already in the library, I figured… why not check books?
Even though, honestly, I don’t usually bother.
Books feel old-fashioned. Journals are faster. Easier. Sometimes already summarized by someone kinder than me.
But if I was going to do this…
Might as well go all in.
Old books.
Most people would go for scientific texts.
I didn’t.
I went to the archive section. The one in the corner. Barely touched.
Translations of old texts. Theology. Village chronicles. Monastery records.
I picked up random books—basically anything with titles that sounded borderline ridiculous but still vaguely related.
At first, nothing strange.
Medieval texts mentioning livestock deaths? Normal.
What wasn’t normal… was how they described it.
Not as disease.
Not as curse.
More like… a presence.
“In the third winter, the sheep died without blood and without cry. They were found lying as if asleep.”
I flipped the page. A modern translator’s note:
“Some chronicles describe this not as a plague, but as a ‘threshold keeper’—something that appears when the boundary between life and the understanding of life becomes blurred.”
I paused.
“…Threshold keeper?” I muttered.
Another book. Different region. Same pattern.
Then I found something in an old Middle Eastern manuscript.
One word kept appearing:
Watchdog.
Not a literal dog.
The translation explained:
“That which watches not to protect, but to ensure. It does not consume flesh. It stands, and those not aligned cease to breathe.”
I slowly closed the book.
…Okay.
This was definitely not relevant to my essay.
I knew that.
My brain knew that.
But my hand kept writing.
Another excerpt:
“The villagers agree that speaking its name draws attention. So they call it guardian. Or dog. Or not at all.”
I leaned back.
“Watchdog…” I muttered.
At first, it felt like a minor note.
Something ignorable.
But it didn’t feel that way anymore.
I shifted to comparative theology.
Almost every belief system has some concept of a keeper.
Not angels.
Not demons.
More like… administrators.
Things that don’t create. Don’t destroy. Just maintain order.
In early Christianity: custodes. Silent cosmic keepers. Not worshipped. Not named.
In Islam: hafazhah. Guardians—but they record, not act. Though some obscure interpretations mention unnamed beings guarding the natural order itself.
Then I moved to etymology.
And that’s when things started to feel… disproportionate to a college assignment.
Different cultures. Different languages.
Same function.
Same idea.
In one Latin manuscript: canis vigilans.
In another: qui manet—“the one who remains.”
In the Middle Eastern text—the original term was never fully written.
Just phonetic fragments. Repeated. Then replaced.
Like even the writer didn’t want to write it twice.
Then I found a footnote.
19th-century theologian. Also a linguist.
One line stuck with me:
“If God is the law, then it is the reminder that the law still applies.”
I stared at my notes.
This wasn’t supposed to be a theology paper.
And yet… none of this felt random.
Different times. Different places.
Same pattern.
Like there was a thread connecting all of it.
Something consistent.
Something… watching.
“…Seriously,” I muttered, rubbing my face. “I just wanted a decent grade. Why am I knee-deep in theology now?”
Maybe I was overthinking.
Maybe I was just tired.
Either way…
This wasn’t something Chase needed to hear.
Not yet.
I didn’t want to ruin the trip.
Didn’t want to be that guy.
So I decided to keep my mouth shut.
At least for now.
Maybe I could still go back to the dorm, lie down, and pretend this was all just an overcomplicated assignment.
Yeah.
That sounded easier.