🌙 Chapter 1: The Night the Moon Stopped Shining
The sky was too quiet that night. No crickets. No wind. No clouds. Just the full moon — hanging eerily above Dhaka like an unblinking eye.
Tasnim stood alone on the rooftop of the university's abandoned research wing. Her eyes reflected the pale silver glow of the moon, but her mind was far from peace. The experiment was over. Or so they thought.
"Tasnim… are you still up there?" her best friend Arif's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie.
She pressed the button. "I'm watching. The light's changing again."
Below her, the once-secret team of physicists and dreamers had completed the Lunar Light Phase-Shifter — a device meant to reflect and distort moonlight. Officially, it was a project to "study atmospheric distortion." Unofficially? They were trying to bend time using moonbeams.
It worked. Too well.
Suddenly, the moonlight shimmered unnaturally, like ripples over water. A wave of pressure hit her chest, like the air itself was bending inward. She felt her vision shake, her heartbeat slow… and then—
Blackness.
---
When she opened her eyes, it was morning.
She was lying on the same rooftop. Birds chirped. Life moved on. But something was… off.
She rushed downstairs. The guards looked confused.
"Miss, how did you get in here? This building has been closed for years."
She laughed nervously. "Very funny. I'm part of the moonlight team."
"What team?" he frowned. "We don't allow civilians in restricted zones."
Tasnim's heart sank.
She ran to her lab. Empty. Cobwebs. Dust. No sign of the project.
She called Arif.
"Who?" the voice on the other end said. "Sorry, I don't know you."
---
That was the beginning.
Only she remembered the experiment.
Only she remembered that night.
And now… no one knows her. Not even her family.
Was it an illusion?
Or… had she entered a new version of reality, one where she never existed?
She clenched her fists. "No. I was real. That night was real. And I will prove it."
And thus began Tasnim's journey — to find the truth, recover her identity, and unc
over the twisted results of The Moonlight Experiment.