Seventeen.
That was his age, and somehow it already felt old.
He lay on his bed staring at the ceiling, watching the slow rotation of the fan above him. It made a faint clicking sound every time it completed a circle, like it was tired too. Outside, the city buzzed quietly—distant horns, a barking dog, someone laughing on the street below.
Normal sounds.Normal life.
He thought about the future a lot these days.
Not dreams of greatness.Not fame.Not power.
Just a good life.
Enough money so he wouldn't have to count coins before buying something. A small house, nothing fancy. A job that didn't crush his soul. Maybe a wife someday. Maybe kids. Maybe weekends that actually felt like rest.
People said he was too young to think like this.
He disagreed.
Being young didn't stop reality from coming.
He turned on his side and picked up his phone. Messages from friends filled the screen—jokes, plans, pointless arguments. He scrolled without replying, his thumb moving automatically.
Somewhere deep inside, a strange thought surfaced.
Is this really all there is?
The thought bothered him more than it should have.
He put the phone down and stared at the wall again. The light from the streetlamp slipped through the curtains, painting long shadows across the room. Everything felt quiet. Too quiet.
A heaviness settled in his chest.
Not sadness.Not fear.
Something closer to… anticipation.
He closed his eyes.
Just for a moment.
Sleep came faster than he expected.
There were no dreams.No falling.No flashing lights.
Just darkness.
Then—
Cold.
He gasped and his eyes snapped open.
The ceiling fan was gone.
So were the walls.
He sat up sharply, heart racing, breath uneven.
The ground beneath him was hard—metallic, smooth, unfamiliar. The air felt different, thin and strangely clean, as if it had never been breathed before. Above him stretched a sky that wasn't really a sky at all—dim, colorless, like a blank screen waiting for an image.
Tall, unfamiliar structures stood far away, silent and unmoving.
He froze.
"This… isn't my room," he whispered.
No answer came.
Only silence.
And the unsettling feeling that the world around him had never seen him before.
Luis Dorgen stood frozen, his breath shallow, afraid that even moving might confirm this wasn't a dream.
The ground beneath his feet felt solid—too solid. Cold metal pressed through the thin soles of his shoes. He bent down slowly and touched it with his fingers. Smooth. Real. Not the warped softness dreams usually had.
"This isn't real," he muttered, but his voice sounded wrong here—too small, swallowed instantly by the open space around him.
He straightened up and looked around properly.
The place was vast. Empty in a way that made his chest tighten. Structures rose in the distance, tall and angular, their surfaces reflecting faint, shifting lights. Some floated slightly above the ground, as if the idea of weight was optional. There were no roads, no trees, no signs—nothing that felt made for people.
No wind.No birds.No life.
Luis turned in a slow circle, his pulse hammering louder with every step. Wherever this was, it wasn't abandoned. It was maintained. Clean. Purposeful. Like a place that expected something to arrive… just not him.
"How did I get here?" he whispered.
He tried to remember falling asleep. The fan. The ceiling. His thoughts drifting toward a future that felt far away and pointless. Then nothing.
No tunnel.No light.No voice calling his name.
Just sleep.
A sharp chill crawled up his spine.
If there was no journey… then there was no explanation.
A faint hum vibrated through the ground, so subtle he almost missed it. Luis froze again, straining to locate the sound. It didn't come from one direction—it came from everywhere, like the world itself was breathing.
He took a cautious step forward.
Nothing happened.
Another step.
Still nothing.
The silence pressed in harder, and for the first time, fear truly settled in his stomach—not panic, not terror, but the slow realization that he was completely alone in a place that didn't care if he existed.
"Okay," he said, louder now, forcing calm into his voice. "Think. Just think."
He checked himself instinctively. No injuries. No changes. His hands were still his hands. His body felt normal. Human. That, at least, hadn't been taken from him.
But everything else?
Gone.
Luis rubbed his face and let out a shaky breath. "This has to be some kind of experiment. Or a hallucination. Or—"
The hum deepened.
A faint light flickered far ahead, then vanished.
His words died in his throat.
Something was out there.
Watching?Scanning?
He didn't know. And that uncertainty was worse than any visible threat.
Luis took a step back without realizing it.
"I don't belong here," he said, as if the place might argue. "You've got the wrong person."
The world didn't respond.
Instead, the air felt heavier, charged with a presence he couldn't see. A strange pressure brushed against his thoughts—not reading them, not invading them, but noticing them.
Like a cursor hovering over a file.
Unopened.
Unchecked.
Luis swallowed.
Whatever this place was, it hadn't brought him here with purpose.
That scared him more than anything.
Because if no one had meant for him to arrive…
Then no one would come to take him back.
Somewhere, far beyond his sight, unseen systems began to move.Logs searched.Records scanned.
And for the first time since this world existed, they found a problem they could not define.
Luis Dorgen stood at the center of it—unaware, unregistered, and completely out of place.