The first thing I remember is the sound of shattering glass.
Not a single cup or window—but hundreds of panels crashing down all at once, screaming against concrete. A rainstorm of jagged light.
That sound... I've heard it before.
A mall. An explosion. The sky filled with glittering shards. Screams. Bodies.
I didn't look up—I just ran. Dove behind a potted fern like it could save me. No tables, no cover. Just instinct and blind luck.
The glass missed me.
It didn't miss everyone else.
I snap out of the memory like waking from a dream. Without thinking, I curl into a ball, arms over my head, training taking over. Make yourself small. Protect your vitals.
The glass falls for what feels like forever.
Then—
Silence.
I wait, counting slow breaths. Nothing.
Cautiously, I lower my arms.
And something is wrong.
My forearms feel... hollow. Like someone scooped chunks out of me.
I unfurl slowly, careful not to disturb any nearby shards. My palms press against cold concrete as I push myself upright. I open my eyes—and freeze.
Something's off with my vision.
My right side is flickering, like a broken screen. Blind spots bloom and vanish.
I blink—nothing changes. Blink again—total darkness.
Only when I alternate eyes do I realize: my left one doesn't respond.
Then I see my hands.
Or what used to be hands.
They're translucent. Glass-like. My arms too. Cracked, chipped, hollow in places.
I lift them to the light and stare through the empty spaces where flesh should be.
No blood. No pain.
Just... stillness.
I rise to my feet.
The hall around me is massive. Concrete walls stretch endlessly in both directions, lined with doors—white, metallic, identical. Strange symbols shimmer faintly on the plaques.
But they're not all grounded.
Some doors are embedded high above, meters off the floor. Others are sunken halfway into the concrete, as if a building had been ripped apart and stitched back together by someone with no sense of physics.
There's no ceiling. Or if there is, it's lost in the same darkness that devours the end of the hall.
I glance down.
Glass litters the floor. Shards of some dark, glossy material. I kneel and pick one up. Cold.
Intricate symbols are etched into its surface. When I tilt it, something flickers—a reflection. But there's no light source here. No lamps, no glow strips, no sun.
So why can I see?
That's when I notice it.
The hall isn't lit. I am.
A soft radiance pulses from beneath my skin—or whatever this cracked glass shell is. It's subtle, barely brighter than moonlight, but it chases the darkness away as I move.
I raise my hand and watch the glow respond, casting faint shadows across the floor.
I'm glowing.
Like a torch.
Like a ghost.
"...What is this place?" I whisper. My voice echoes too loud in the silence. "Why can't I remember how I got here? Or... anything?"
I try to recall my name. Nothing.
Just a blank, gnawing space where identity should be.
Who am I? What am I?
I stare at my hands again. Still glass, still fractured—but they feel like skin. They function like skin.
I clench my fist and the glow flares slightly, as if it's responding to my thoughts.
"Focus," I mutter, shaking my head. "Now's not the time for existential breakdowns. One step at a time."
I glance down at the shard still resting in my hand. It's long and narrow, no larger than a dog tag. Something about it feels familiar—not just in the symbols etched along its surface, but in its shape, like it was meant to be held.
I turn my arm and examine the hollow of my right bicep. There, nestled deep within the transparent muscle, is a shallow recess. An exact match.
Hesitantly, I slide the shard into the cavity.
A soft click.
The glass pulses. The dark tint fades, clearing like fogged glass beneath warm breath. A ripple of light flows through the shard—then through me.
It's subtle.
But for a brief moment, I feel... more whole.
Not healed. Not fixed. Just... closer to something I used to be.
"These pieces," I murmur, staring at the shimmering fragment lodged in my arm. "They're a part of me."
I lift my gaze to the towering walls around me. "I must've... broken during the fall."
The walls rise at least a dozen meters before surrendering to the dark above. If I fell from that height, how am I still moving? Still intact at all?
I crouch again, scanning the floor.
"Well," I mutter, "no sense leaving pieces of myself behind. I've got enough identity issues as it is."
One by one, I start collecting the shards—my shards. Some click into place with gentle precision, like puzzle pieces long lost. Others don't seem to belong anywhere, their shapes foreign or jagged. I tuck those into the larger hollows inside my body—my chest, my abdomen—sealing them in with the broadest shards like lids on broken containers.
It's not perfect.
But it's something.
And with each piece I reclaim, I feel just a little less... scattered.
I turn to the nearest door.
Unlike the others, it's at ground level. No floating nonsense. No awkward angles.
Just a white, metallic door with a plaque at eye level, symbols dancing faintly across its surface like they're alive.
I take a breath.
And step toward it.
Up close, the symbol on the plaque becomes clearer—and somehow stranger.
It's circular, but clumsy. Uneven. Like it was scrawled by a child or carved with trembling hands. A wobbly loop, etched into the metal like it didn't belong.
I blink.
The symbol shifts—just a little.
Still round. Still shaky. But not static.
I narrow my eyes and concentrate. That's when I see it.
The symbol isn't just moving—it's alive.
It writhes beneath the surface like something organic. A hollow ring undulating, twitching with a pulse of its own. Not ink. Not engraving. Something else.
A living mark.
I reach for the handle.
Instantly, the air changes.
The silence, once heavy, deepens into something oppressive. A pressure so complete it swallows sound itself. Even my thoughts feel too loud, echoing inside my skull like shouts in a cathedral.
Then—
A sound.
Distant. Barely audible. A chime, delicate as a needle dropping onto marble.
It grows.
Slowly at first, resonating in layers. Quiet becomes clear. Clear becomes loud.
What once sounded like a pin drop now rings like a struck gong—deep, resonant, almost holy.
And then, the wave hits me.
A ripple in the fabric of space, folding through the hall and slamming into me—not violently, but undeniably. Like a breath I didn't know I'd been holding suddenly let go.
It carries something more than sound.
A message.
A pull.
A yearning.
A call from something—someone—connected to me.
Another shard, far away, crying out through whatever force binds us.
The moment hangs in the air, vibrating with meaning. But just as quickly as it came, the pressure releases. The echo fades. Silence returns, no longer supernatural—just quiet again.
I exhale, shaky.
None of this makes sense.
But it doesn't have to. Not yet.
I focus. Step forward. Wrap my fingers around the cold metal handle and steel myself for what waits behind the door.
I twist.
...
It's locked.
...
I blink again.
Tilt my head.
Then, quietly:
"Oh. Cool. Awesome. That's fine."
I give the door an extra jiggle, just to be sure. It doesn't budge.
"Well, I guess some doors only open when the universe stops being dramatic about it," I mutter.
A pause.
"Maybe I need a key. Or maybe I just got spiritually sucker-punched by a deadbolt."
With a sigh, I back away and glance down the endless hallway again.
"Right. Onward. Very epic. Very mysterious. Definitely not emotionally exhausted already."
And with that, I trudge toward the next door, still glowing faintly, still cracked, still… me.
...
Each door after the first was the same.
I'd walk up, place my hand on the handle, and feel that now-familiar shift—the strange hum through the air, the ripple through space, the quiet ping that always followed.
Another shard.
Another piece of me.
Always distant. Always out of reach.
At first, the whole process felt meaningful. Like I was doing something sacred. Reaching into the unseen and touching some deep cosmic connection.
But after the first few dozen?
It just felt... repetitive.
And the worst part?
Every single door was locked.
Every. Single. One.
They resonated with me—each one humming with a part of my presence, like they knew who I was. Or who I used to be. And still... nothing. No answers. No opening. Just corridors that went on forever and silence that settled into my bones.
I mean, yeah, I look like a glass sculpture held together by spit, spirit, and sheer willpower—but I'm mostly intact. Statistically speaking, one of these doors should've opened by now. The universe can't be that cruel.
…Right?
Still, I've learned a few things about this place.
First: the halls don't just stretch endlessly in one direction. They branch.
Some go upstairs. Some downstairs. Some… sideways.
Yeah. Sidestairs. That's apparently a thing here.
This place is a labyrinth—and one that doesn't care about logic.
Second: I'm changing.
Not just physically. Something inside me is shifting.
I've noticed it in the way I think, the way I talk—to myself, mostly. It's like the more shards I find, the more expressive I become.
Maybe it's just cabin fever with extra echo. Or maybe the pieces I've placed back inside me are slowly reassembling more than my body.
Maybe they're putting my soul back together, too.
A glass soul, sure. But it's something.
Third: the shards.
They're out there. Scattered like breadcrumbs through this impossible maze.
Sometimes I walk for what feels like hours before I find one. Each one hums with that same familiarity, like a heartbeat I forgot was mine.
Some snap perfectly into place. Others… don't. I keep those tucked inside me—my "me-trunks™," as I've decided to call them. I might be falling apart, but hey, at least I'm efficient.
Still, it's strange—how far these pieces are from where I woke up.
It makes me wonder what the hell happened to me. How far I must've been broken to leave pieces of myself this far flung.
(And yes—I just said hell. That's a cuss word. I'm evolving.)
Then there's the weirdest discovery of all.
The shards don't reflect.
At least, not like mirrors.
When I looked into one again, I realized—these things are windows. Views into… something deeper. Beneath reality.
Darkness stretches on within each one—thick and silent—but always, in the distance, a tiny speck of light.
Like a star. A signal. A direction.
What's more, that light never moves.
At every junction, every twist and stair, its orientation stays the same—like it's pointing somewhere.
Guiding me.
And it's not just one.
Different shards reveal different stars—some brighter, some shaped strangely, like they're not just lights but things. Places. Maybe even… people?
I don't know. Not yet.
But I've kept four of the misfit shards and aligned them to the directions they point.
North. South. East. West.
At least now I won't get lost.
And even if I do…
I know I'll find myself again.
Piece by piece.