Maya POVI was seventeen again, and the basement door was locked.In the dream, I knew it was a dream the way you sometimes do—some small, rational corner of my mind standing off to the side, watching, saying *this already happened, you already survived this, none of it can touch you now.* But knowing didn't stop the cold from seeping into my skin, didn't stop the darkness from pressing in around me the way it always had, thick and total and endless.I was on my knees on the concrete floor. My hands were shaking too hard to hold the pen Marcus had given me. *Sign it,* he was saying, his voice coming from everywhere and nowhere, the way voices do in dreams. *Sign it and the pain stops. Sign it, Maya, or you'll stay down here until you rot.*Except this time, when I looked up, it wasn't Marcus standing over me.It was no one. An empty space where his face should have been, his voice pouring out of nothing, out of the dark itself, and somehow that was worse—because at least when I could
Last Updated : 2026-07-15 Read more