I woke up staring at a blinding expanse of white.
A strange, heavy lethargy weighed down my limbs, and a dull fog clouded my mind. I sat up with a start, my eyes darting around the room in confusion.
It was a small, boxy space. The walls, the floor, the ceiling—everything was a clinical, sterile white. The furniture was sparse: just a metal desk, a single hard chair, and the narrow bed I was sitting on. There was one window, but the light pouring through it was diffused and artificial.
Panic surged through me, sudden and primal. Ignoring the room for a moment, I frantically looked down to inspect myself.
I was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of loose, drawstring shorts.
The more I looked, the more my stomach churned. I tasted sour bile rising in my throat and had to swallow hard to keep it down. This body was a wreck. I was skin and bones—literally. My ribs poked out against my pale chest like a cage, and my stomach was hollowed out, looking like I hadn't eaten in weeks.
I tried to rub the goosebumps on my arms, but my limbs felt… wrong.
My elbow moved in a jerky, stiff way, like a rusty door hinge that refused to open smoothly. When my fingers brushed against my chest, the skin didn't just feel cool; it was ice-cold, like meat straight out of a freezer. The muscles underneath felt weirdly hard, locked up tight even though I wasn't flexing. It was a struggle just to get my fingers to unclench.
What is wrong with me?
I needed to see my face. I forced my stiff legs to move, shuffling across the floor like a puppet with tangled strings. Every step sent a dull ache through my frozen joints. I practically fell against the nearest door, fumbled with the handle with clumsy fingers, and stumbled into a small bathroom.
I gripped the sink to keep from collapsing and looked into the mirror.
I froze.
Staring back at me was a stranger. He had stark white hair and eyes the color of ice-blue glass. Under different circumstances, this guy might have been handsome—the bone structure was sharp, the jawline perfect. But right now? I looked like a monster.
My cheeks were so hollow they looked like caves, and my skin was pulled tight over my skull, pale as a sheet. The contrast between those striking blue eyes and the sunken, dark sockets around them was terrifying. I didn't look like a person. I looked like a handsome corpse that someone had dug up and forgot to bury.
My breath started coming in short, shallow hitches. The air in the bathroom felt too thin, like someone had sucked all the oxygen out of the room. I gripped the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles turned white, trying to ground myself, but the floor beneath me felt like it was swaying.
"Who are you?" I whispered to the reflection.
The voice that came out wasn't mine. It was dry and raspy, like dragging sandpaper over stone.
I squeezed my eyes shut, desperate to force the image of my real face to the front of my mind. I reached into the fog, searching for anything—brown eyes? Black hair? A scar on my chin?
But there was nothing. Just a blank, grey wall.
My heart started to hammer against my ribs—a frantic, bird-like fluttering that hurt my chest. The panic spiraled into terror. I couldn't remember my nose. I couldn't remember my height. I couldn't even remember what I did for a living or if I had a family waiting for me.
My entire past was gone, wiped clean.
Then, a single sound cut through the silence of my mind—loud and sharp, vibrating inside my skull like a struck church bell.
Vann.
It echoed again, persistent and undeniable. Vann.
That was it. That was the only thing left in the empty room of my head. I didn't know what I looked like, but I knew my name. I was Vann.
The realization hit me like a physical blow. The room started to spin.
A high-pitched ringing filled my ears, drowning out the hum of the lights. My vision blurred at the edges, dark spots dancing across the mirror. I tried to suck in a deep breath to calm down, but my chest... it wouldn't expand. My ribs were locked tight, refusing to move. It felt like an iron band was welded around my torso, crushing me.
"Can't... breathe..." I wheezed, clawing at my throat.
My fingers went numb, a prickly static spreading from my hands up to my elbows. The strength left my legs completely. I didn't even feel the impact when my knees hit the hard tiles. I slumped sideways, my cheek pressing against the freezing cold floor.
The face of the white-haired stranger in the mirror slid out of view as the world turned grey, then black. The panic finally gave way to the dark, and the last thing I heard before the silence took me was that name, fading into the distance.
Vann.