CHAPTER 1 — THE DAY NOTHING CHANGED (AND YET EVERYTHING DID)
I didn't wake up expecting my life to split in two.
Honestly, I woke up cold.
Half my blanket was on the floor, the ceiling fan groaned like it hated its job, and my phone alarm stabbed into my skull the same way it did every morning. Nothing heroic. No lightning in the sky. Just the familiar heaviness in my chest — the kind that feels like a second gravity.
I dragged myself up anyway.
People think awakenings come with desire.
Truth is, mine came on a day I didn't desire anything.
The street outside was already boiling from the heat, the kind that makes metal smell like it's sweating. Neighbours were shouting about bills again. Nothing new. The kind of noise so constant it becomes a wallpaper.
I walked past all of it on the way to work. Same cracked pavement. Same stray dogs. Same faces pretending they weren't tired. I wondered if they knew I was pretending too.
I didn't know it yet, but something inside me had already started to shift — like a fault line deep under the ocean floor quietly pulling apart.
The First Sign
It happened around noon.
I was unloading crates in the back of the shop, hands aching, sweat stinging my eyes. The air smelled like old wood and stale dust. My mind wandered, the way it always did when work became numb.
And then the crate slipped.
It should've smashed my foot.
I should've cursed, or jumped back.
But instead—
the world slowed.
Not dramatically.
Not like the movies.
Just… a tiny fraction.
A breath that didn't belong to me.
I saw the crate falling, the small floating particles of dust, the edge of the box tilting toward my toes. My body moved before I understood anything. My hand shot out and caught it mid-fall.
The moment snapped back to normal.
The crate was heavy.
My breathing wasn't.
I stared at my hand like it belonged to someone else.
Maybe my brain was tired.
Maybe I imagined the slowdown.
Maybe life was finally messing with me properly.
Whatever it was…
it didn't stop there.
The Second Sign
During lunch, someone shouted outside the shop. A kid — maybe ten — sprinted into the road chasing a torn kite. A bus was screeching toward him, the driver yelling, brakes crying.
Everyone froze.
Including me.
Except my body didn't.
My legs moved before thought, before fear. Like instinct had reached out and grabbed the wheel of my life.
I reached the kid faster than I should've been able to.
Pulled him back.
Felt the air punch past us as the bus roared by.
The boy was crying.
I was trembling.
Not because of the bus.
But because my heartbeat wasn't racing.
It was steady.
Too steady.
Like something inside me had woken up and was watching everything quietly.
When the mother thanked me, I couldn't speak.
Not from shock — I'd been shocked before.
This was something else.
Recognition.
Something in me had recognised the danger long before I had.
And reacted as if it had been waiting.
Waiting for what?
I didn't know.
But the world felt… sharp.
Every sound had shape.
Every movement had weight.
Every moment felt like it came with a second meaning hidden under the first.
I didn't feel stronger.
I just felt more me than ever — and that was terrifying.
The Night That Split My World
I spent the whole evening pretending I was okay.
Pretending nothing had shifted.
Pretending I wasn't seeing things before they happened, like hints around the edges of reality.
But when I got home, the room felt too small. Too silent. Even the shadows looked like they were waiting for me to say something.
So I whispered into the dark:
"What's happening to me?"
My voice cracked.
Not with fear.
With the strange, painful hope
that maybe—
finally—
life was giving me something other than repetition.
Maybe this was my chance to escape the version of myself I'd been forced to be.
Maybe I was waking up.