The waiting room no longer feels like a room—it feels like a wound, raw and aching, pulsing with a slow, merciless rhythm that I can't escape. The walls, once dull and pale, now seem to breathe, expanding and contracting in time with the faint hum of the ceiling lights. Shadows pool in the corners, thick and heavy, twisting like smoke that refuses to dissipate.
Around me, the others sit like ghosts tethered to the same silent suffering. Their faces are drawn tight with exhaustion and fear, eyes wide and haunted. The pale cream of the walls presses inward, closing like the pages of a book folding shut. Time itself feels suspended, a breath held and never released.
The cryptic message we grasp at—fragile as a spider's thread—hangs between us like a solemn promise and a curse.
"Within the shadow where time sleeps."
We say it aloud, voices trembling, as if speaking the words might either unravel the fragile thread holding us together or somehow unlock the door we cannot yet find.
The tall one breaks the silence, his voice a low, cautious murmur that feels too loud in the thick stillness.
"The next word… it's coming," he says, eyes fixed on the cracked door at the far end of the room. His fingers drum an uneven rhythm against his knee, the only steady sound in the heavy quiet.
The woman in black shifts, her gaze never leaving the door as if willing it to open by sheer force of will.
Then the voice comes again, not inside my head this time but echoing through the room—soft, strange, like a melody sung beneath water, warped and distant.
"…glin…"
A fragment, barely there, slipping between heartbeats.
The boy repeats the sound, twisting it around his tongue as if tasting a memory long forgotten.
"Glin?"
The old man exhales slowly, his breath a rasp in the thick air.
"Glin… could it mean 'light'?"
That one word—light—hangs in the air like a fragile spark, fragile enough to shatter or to ignite.
For a moment, the shadows seem to recoil, as if caught off guard by the faint glimmer of hope. The darkness pulls back just enough to let the barest thread of something warm and real seep through.
But the room remains hostile, the walls pressing closer, their slow pulse growing heavier, more deliberate, as if the space itself resents our presence.
The scent returns, stronger now—the damp earthiness of a forest floor after rain, mixed with something fouler, like decay buried just beneath the surface. It curls in my throat, thick and choking, making my lungs ache.
Eyes stare from the darkness, unblinking and unseen. I can feel their gaze crawling across my skin, cold and merciless.
I want to run. I want to flee back to the cold comfort of nothingness, but my legs refuse to obey. I am rooted, trapped in this liminal nightmare.
Then the voice returns again, faint but insistent, curling around my mind like smoke twisting in the wind.
"…glin… in… the…"
Fragmented, broken, like pieces of a puzzle scattered in the dark.
The others murmur their guesses, voices tight and urgent.
"Within the light… within the shadow…" the woman breathes, eyes distant.
"It's a place… a passage," the tall one says, voice barely steady.
"Or a warning," the old man adds, grim and certain.
I feel the words slip through me, half-remembered like a dream fading at dawn.
But in the darkness, beneath the choking scent and the pressing walls, a fragile thread of light shivers—uncertain, trembling—but undeniably there.
The waiting room waits with us—silent, patient, unyielding.
And we wait back, caught between the heartbeat of time and the endless void beyond.
In this place where shadows whisper secrets and time sleeps, we are prisoners of silence.
But maybe, just maybe, the message is a key.
And the key might yet turn.