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The apartment was always too quiet.
Rei sat curled up on her worn-out couch, the glow of her laptop screen casting eerie shadows across her face. Another night, another game—something dark and labyrinthine, the kind where the protagonist wanders through cursed places, searching for answers that don't exist. She liked those. They felt familiar.
Her fingers moved mechanically across the keyboard, guiding her character through a crumbling castle. The in-game narrator whispered cryptic lines about forgotten memories and portraits that watched you when you weren't looking. She barely paid attention.
Outside, the rain tapped against the window like impatient fingers.
Her apartment was a museum of absence. Three years ago, her parents had disappeared. No note. No struggle. Just an empty house and a single photograph left behind—her mother's soft smile, her father's face smeared into an indistinct blur, as if the universe itself had erased him.
Rei didn't remember him.
Every time she tried, her mind hit a wall. Doctors called it trauma. She called it something worse.
A sharp pain lanced through her temple.
She winced, rubbing her forehead. The game screen flickered. For a second, the pixels twisted, the colors bleeding like wet ink. The character on-screen—*her* character—turned its head. Looked at her.
*"The truth is hidden in the frame."*
The voice wasn't from the game.
Rei's breath caught.
Her vision swam. The shadows in the room stretched unnaturally, crawling up the walls like grasping hands. The air thickened, pressing against her skin. She tried to stand, but her legs gave way.
Then—
Darkness.
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Cold.
That was the first thing she registered. A damp, biting cold that seeped into her bones.
Rei groaned, pushing herself up from the ground. Her palms pressed into wet grass, the blades shimmering with an unnatural silver hue. She blinked, her vision swimming as she took in her surroundings.
This wasn't her apartment.
This wasn't *anywhere* she knew.
A forest stretched before her, but not like any forest from her world. The trees were too tall, their bark black as charcoal, veins of crimson pulsing beneath the surface like slow-beating hearts. The sky was a bruise—purple and black swirling around a sickly, too-large moon.
And the silence.
No cars. No people. Just the whisper of leaves, rustling in a language that made her skin prickle.
*"What the hell…?"* Her voice sounded too small in the oppressive stillness.
Then she saw it.
A massive, ornate picture frame stood half-buried in the earth ahead, its edges cracked and weathered. Inside it—no painting. Just an abyss, darker than the night itself.
Words were carved into the bottom in peeling gold letters:
**"Find the face you lost, or become part of the canvas."**
Her stomach twisted.
A dream. It had to be a dream.
But the cold was real. The damp earth under her nails was real. The way her pulse hammered in her throat was *too* real.
She looked down at herself—still in her hoodie and jeans, but the fabric was stained with something dark. Ink? Blood? She couldn't tell.
Her pocket buzzed.
Fumbling, she pulled out her phone. The screen flickered to life, but instead of her home screen, there was only a single line of text:
**[Welcome, Lost One. The Duke of Shattered Memories awaits.]**
Then the screen died.
Rei's hands shook.
This wasn't a game anymore.
This was a nightmare.
And she had no idea how to wake up.
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