The quiet hospital room was deceptive. While my body lay broken and healing, my mind was a terrifying, chaotic landscape. The medications, the pain, the sheer trauma -- They had cracked open something inside me.
The hallucinations started subtly. A shimmer in the corner of the room, like heat rising off asphalt on a summer day. A scent of jasmine and rain, overwhelming the clean, sterile smell of the sheets. Then came the faces.
I'd see a tall, striking man leaning over my bed, his presence radiating an impossible, chilling perfection. He had those same intense green eyes as the man in the old photograph, but his were somehow brighter, emptier. He never spoke, just watched. I'd blink, and he'll be gone, replaced by the concerned face of my nurse.
Then the places. I'd be drifting, overgrown garden, the light too bright, the shadows absent. I'd hear a faint, distant whisper, ice-thin and urgent: You can't leave.
My internal monologue: This is textbook trauma-induced delirium. My parietal lobe is clearly compensating for the impact. Tall, handsome man? Gardens? Missing shadows? It's classic brain confusion.
But...why always the green eyes? Why that sense of absolute, uncanny perfection? It's like my subconscious is trying to design a flawless character, but forgetting to give him a soul.
I spent weeks trying to rationalize it, to reduce the visions to chemical imbalances. I was a scientist. I dealt in facts and logic. But the memories of the car crash fought against the rational mind.
My second monologue: It doesn't seems like random car crash. That SUV didn't drift. It hit me with purpose. And that woman...Madam Evangel. That was the name the police gave to the only potential,, witness they interviewed. The one who claimed to 'see nothing'. But I saw her. Her face, her smile. It wasn't pity. It was a damn contract being fulfilled.
I remembered the instant before the crash, the feeling of absolute control, and then the sudden, sickening realization that a force completely outside my influence had intervened. It wasn't fate; it was malice.
The illusions continued to chip away at my reality. One night, I saw a flicker of something in the air -- the same shimmer I saw around the perfect man in my visions. This time, it wasn't around him; it was briefly around my arm. As I watched, mesmerized, the light coalesced, and for a terrifying second, my cast didn't look like plaster. It looked like a wreath of dark, twisted metal, exactly like the pin I'd seen in the old photograph, glowing faintly before snapping back to dull white.
I woke up from that vision with a gasp, sweat slicking my skin. I didn't care about the pain in my leg. My focus shifted entirely. My destiny wasn't just ruined -- it had been targeted.
The trauma, the visions, the relentless pain-- they had a singular, specific purpose. My parents wanted me to rest, to focus on recovery. They wanted me to accept the randomness of the accident. But the scientist in me, the one who sought truth in every variable, knew better.
Atlas, the methodical future researcher was dead. In his place was Atlas, the determined hunter, fueled by a brilliant, burning rage and a terrifying sense that he was at the center of a very old, very dangerous conspiracy.
He won't be retuning to his quiet, suburban life to heal. Instead, his desperate need for answers -- who hit him and why the strange woman smiled - will lead him to start investigating his grandfather's past.
Unbeknownst to him, the same day he checks out of the hospital, he saw a news report about a missing teenager named Luna, who disappeared after obsessing over an old family photo and a dream about a man with green eyes. His mission to seek justice for himself will immediately merge with the hunt for this girl, who is somehow tied to the mysterious "Observer" and the strange pin.