Maya did not wake up.
She returned.
Consciousness seeped back into her like poison into water—slow, invasive, wrong. Her eyes opened, but what she saw was not the apartment.
There was no floor.
No ceiling.
No walls.
She floated in a vast, colorless expanse where distance had no meaning. Shapes existed and didn't exist at once—outlines folding in on themselves, geometries that hurt to look at. Time pulsed here, not in seconds, but in decisions.
Her body felt intact, but unfamiliar, as if reality had forgotten how to assemble her properly.
The journal drifted nearby, closed.
Then the watching began.
She felt it before she saw anything. Pressure. Attention. The unbearable sensation of being examined by something so immense that her existence was an afterthought.
And then they appeared.
Not as bodies.
As presences.
Vast, layered intelligences unfolded around her, each one a convergence of countless realities. They were not shadows. They were not alternate selves.
They were older than universes.
Older than division.
The Watchers.
Their voices did not speak. They rewrote meaning directly into her mind.
You stabilized the convergence.
You rejected absorption.
You are an anomaly.
Maya tried to scream. No sound came.
"I didn't ask for this," she thought desperately.
The void responded.
No anchor ever does.
Fragments of memory exploded around her—visions of collapsing universes, infinite Mayas screaming across realities, entire timelines folded into nothingness. She saw civilizations rise and die in heartbeats. She saw anchors like herself—countless others—fail.
Consumed.
Broken.
Repurposed.
Her terror deepened when she realized the truth.
She wasn't special.
She was rare.
The multiverse fractures endlessly, the Watchers conveyed.
But it requires anchors to prevent total annihilation.
You have demonstrated resistance.
The space around her shifted. The apartment appeared—her apartment—but stripped of detail, skeletal, like a memory drained of warmth.
"This isn't life," she thought bitterly. "This is imprisonment."
The Watchers did not deny it.
Life is good in a year, they responded.
If the year survives.
Something moved closer. One presence unfolded more fully than the others, its shape defined by absence—where it existed, reality thinned.
You will be given choice, it conveyed.
Serve as an anchor willingly.
Or fracture until resistance ceases.
The journal burst open.
Pages tore free, floating around her like dying birds. Each page showed a future—different versions of her fate.
One showed her apartment stable but empty. No breaches. No voices. Just silence forever.
Another showed her mind shattered, her body alive but her identity dispersed across realities.
Another showed her becoming something else—a living junction, no longer human, no longer singular.
Maya's fear crystallized into rage.
"You don't get to decide what I become."
The void trembled.
Defiance detected, the Watchers acknowledged.
Defiance increases instability.
Pain exploded through her being—not physical pain, but conceptual pain. Her memories began to peel away. Her name echoed, distorting.
Maya clutched at herself, forcing identity to hold.
"I am not your tool," she thought. "I survived myself. I'll survive you."
For the first time, something like hesitation rippled through the Watchers.
You do not understand what refusal costs, they warned.
"I don't care."
The void cracked.
A裂—an impossible fracture—split through the presence around her. The Watchers recoiled slightly as something unexpected occurred.
The journal burned.
Symbols carved themselves into Maya's consciousness—not imposed, but claimed. She wasn't stabilizing the multiverse anymore.
She was rewriting her relationship to it.
The Watchers pulled back.
Anomaly escalation confirmed, they transmitted.
Subject is no longer passive.
The apartment slammed back into existence.
Maya collapsed onto the floor, gasping, screaming, whole again—but changed. The walls were cracked, scarred by symbols that pulsed faintly, responding to her presence.
The shadows were gone.
The breaches were sealed.
For now.
The journal lay open beside her, its final page no longer written by anything else.
The words were hers.
"They are afraid."
Maya stared at the ceiling, tears streaming down her temples.
She had seen what waited beyond infinity.
And worse—
She had made herself visible to it.
Life was still good.
But the year had teeth.