I woke wrong.
Or maybe I didn't wake at all.
Stone beneath me. Cold. Smooth. But not normal cold—remembered cold. Like the floor itself knew what it was to be warm once, and hated me for not knowing the difference.
Everything was dim. Not dark. Just… hushed. The light was green, like the pool. Like envy, or rot. Walls rose around me—too close, too wide, too shifting. A maze. A temple. A wound in the world. I wasn't sure where one ended and the next began.
My body felt slow. Not heavy. Just… delayed. Like I was moving a second behind myself. Like each step had to decide if it wanted to exist.
I walked.
Because there was nothing else to do.
Bare feet on stone. No echo. Just silence that pressed in like wet cloth. I wasn't sure how long I'd been walking. Minutes? Hours? Since I was born?
The walls pulsed.
Not visibly. But in my bones. Like the air itself had a heartbeat. Not mine.
I turned left at a mural that shifted when I looked away. A woman on her knees. Or was it me? The face changed. Smiled. Bled. Spoke in a voice I didn't hear but tasted—brine, honey, and rust.
I kept walking.
The floor sloped downward. Or upward. The sky—wait, was there a sky?—breathed. Just once.
"Hello?" I said.
My voice didn't echo. It just vanished, like it had never been born.
The hallway ended in a doorway shaped like an eye.
Inside, a pool.
Not the pool.
But a version of it. Smaller. Still. The water was not water. It was glass. No—it was memory.
I looked down.
And I was bathing again. Nude. Smiling. Glowing from within.
And something beneath the surface was watching me.
Something that wore my face.
I reached toward it. She reached back.
Fingertips brushed the surface—and reality cracked.
I fell.
Or floated.
Or folded inside myself.
And then I was on my knees, in the dark, in a circle of stone, surrounded by walls that whispered my name in every language I didn't speak.
The symbols on my skin were glowing.
Had they always been there?
Was this real?
Had any of it been?
I reached up.
And touched my own cheek—
Only it wasn't my hand.
It was wet. And scaled. And familiar.
And I whispered, "I'm not alone."
The stone pulsed once more.
And everything went black.
...
I wandered.
Through a door that wasn't there a moment before. Past a stairway that curled up into smoke. I walked because there was nothing else to do. Because not-walking felt like surrender.
The walls breathed now. I heard it. Wet stone inhaling slowly. Something deeper than lungs. Ancient as rot.
Then I saw him.
The Dragon.
Sort of.
His shape filled the corridor ahead—massive, coiled, regal—but wrong. Scales slick, like oil on water. Horns longer. Sharper. Mouth curled in a smile I'd never seen on him before. A hungry smile. One that didn't argue, or sass, or mutter about gout and heresy.
This one grinned like he wanted to peel my soul.
"Dragon?" I said.
His head tilted. "Little worm."
My stomach flipped.
"Is this a dream?" I whispered.
"Does it matter?" he purred, voice deep and velvet and echoing from everywhere. "You came here. You called me."
"I didn't—"
"You bathed in me."
The corridor went colder.
"You let me in."
He moved forward. Slow. Silent. Eyes glowing a deep, dead green. The kind of glow you see reflected in the bottom of a well when you know nothing good lives there.
"You're not him," I said.
He chuckled, low and rich. "I'm the part of him you forgot he had."
I backed away. "No. You're—You're just a dream."
"Then why are you shaking?"
I turned to run—
—and slammed into her.
I stumbled back, breath gone. She stood barefoot, arms folded, lips smirking.
Me.
But not me.
She was cleaner. Shinier. Not covered in dirt and mistakes. She stood taller. Straighter. Her hair was braided in coils like a temple dancer's. Her eyes… they glowed like emeralds. Cold ones.
"Finally," she said. "You shut up long enough for me to speak."
I opened my mouth.
She slapped me.
Hard.
"Enough with the whining," she said. "The trauma. The jokes. The petty theft. You had potential. You had power. And you pissed it away with dick jokes and cheap wine."
"What—what are you?"
She leaned in. Grinning.
"I'm you. Unleashed."
Behind her, the wrong-Dragon coiled. Watching.
And both of them were smiling now. Like they were waiting.
Next thing I knew, I was being dragged.
Chains bit into my wrists, heavy and wet with something I refused to identify. My feet scraped over slick, moss-covered stone, slipping with every struggling step. I kicked. I twisted. I screamed.
"Let me go!"
"No," came the voice. My voice. Laced with amusement, as if this were all a silly game. "You've made such a mess of things, darling. I'm just cleaning up."
"Where are you taking me?!"
My other self—my better-groomed, better-postured, better-at-being-awful self—just chuckled. "I haven't decided. Maybe I'll sell you in Seebulba. Get five silver and a tin of eel paste for you. Maybe six if I throw in that mouth of yours."
I stumbled. Scraped my knee. She kept walking, dragging me like luggage through the liminal corridors of this rotting temple-maze.
"Or maybe I'll just drown you in that well," she said lightly. "Let you stare into the abyss from the inside."
I tried to dig my heels in. The moss gave way. My shoulder slammed into a pillar. I grunted.
"You're not me," I spat.
She glanced back, all painted lips and emerald eyes. "No, sweetheart. I'm the part of you you keep trying to laugh away. I'm the one who remembers. The one who could've ruled. Before you got distracted by shiny things and dicks with good hair."
She yanked the chain harder. I gasped.
"You," she hissed, "are a rock around your own neck."
And she dragged me onward. Toward something dark. And wet. And waiting.