The first thing I noticed was the silence.
Not the gentle quiet of early morning. Not the soft stillness of snow. This silence felt wrong. It pressed against my ears like deep water, like the moment just before a storm breaks. Heavy. Waiting. Unfinished.
Then came the sound.
A sharp crack, as if the air itself had split open.
I opened my eyes.
For a moment, I thought I was still dreaming. The sky above me was too wide, too clear, stretching in an impossible shade of pale gold that faded into violet at the edges. There were no buildings. No distant hum of traffic. No voices. No wind.
Just me.
I was lying on my back in the middle of a field of tall, silver grass that shimmered like metal in the light. Each blade bent slowly, though I couldn't feel any breeze.
My chest rose sharply as I took a breath.
Air. Real air. Cold and clean enough to sting.
"…What?"
My voice sounded small. Too small for how big everything felt.
I sat up too fast and the world tilted. A wave of dizziness hit me, followed by a strange pressure behind my eyes. It felt like trying to remember something important that stayed just out of reach.
I knew who I was.
I knew my name. My apartment. The dull buzz of my phone alarm in the mornings. The taste of cheap coffee. The weight of routine.
But the last thing I remembered was nothing.
There was no accident.
No dramatic moment.
No final memory.
Just a blank space where something should have been.
I stood slowly, brushing the grass from my clothes. I was still wearing the same dark jacket. Same shoes. Even the same faint tear near the sleeve from months ago.
Everything was the same.
Except the world.
In the distance, black shapes rose from the horizon. At first, I thought they were mountains. But as I narrowed my eyes, I realized they were too sharp. Too tall. Some of them curved unnaturally, like claws reaching into the sky.
A deep hum rolled through the ground beneath my feet.
I froze.
It lasted only a second, but I felt it clearly. A vibration, low and powerful, like something massive shifting far below the surface.
Then it was gone.
My heart began to pound.
"Okay," I whispered, mostly to myself. "Okay. Think."
I turned slowly, scanning the endless field. No roads. No power lines. No planes overhead. Not even birds.
Nothing familiar.
And yet something felt different.
There was a strange sensation in my chest. Not fear. Not exactly. Something heavier. Like I had stepped into a place that already knew me.
A place that had been waiting.
Another sound broke the silence.
This one was softer.
A faint ringing, like glass being tapped somewhere very far away.
I looked down.
For the first time, I noticed the mark on my left hand.
It had not been there before.
A thin circle, dark and faint, etched into the skin just below my thumb. It looked almost like a burn, but it did not hurt. The lines forming it were too precise, too clean. Symbols were woven into the ring. Shapes I did not recognize but somehow felt familiar.
As I stared, the mark pulsed once.
A quick flash of warmth spread up my arm and vanished.
And with it came something else.
A memory that was not a memory.
A sensation of falling. Not through air, but through something thicker. Pressure around my body. A distant voice. Not speaking words, but calling. Urgently. Desperately.
I gasped and stumbled back.
The field was quiet again.
No voice. No falling. Just the mark, faint and still on my skin.
"What happened to me?"
The question slipped out before I could stop it.
I was not expecting an answer.
But somewhere, far off near the black shapes on the horizon, something moved.
Not fast. Not sudden.
Just enough to break the perfect stillness of the world.
And for the first time since waking up, I felt it clearly.
I was not alone.