Time slowed in a way that didn't feel right. The forest, already silent, somehow grew even quieter—no wind, no rustling leaves, not even the usual hum of shadowy creatures. It felt like the air had stopped moving, like the whole place was holding its breath.
Moments passed, then stretched. Minutes blurred together until it was hard to tell how long it had been. The stillness wasn't peaceful—it pressed in from all sides, heavy and stifling.
Then the ground beneath the collapsed cave gave a low, unsettling groan. A soft tremor ran through the soil, and the debris started to shift—not from any outside force, but as if something inside had decided it was time to change.
Rocks moved on their own, not randomly, but with purpose. The cave slowly rebuilt itself, stone by stone, until it stood as though it had never fallen. No cracks, no dust, no sign it had ever been touched.
....
Inside the cave
The scene was as grim as ever.
Torture tools lay scattered across the floor, stained dark with dried blood. At the center stood a chair, and in it sat a corpse, bound tightly with a coarse metal cord. The body was headless, the metals still digging into its arms and ankles. Just in front of it lay a gruesome pile of cranial matter and shattered bone—what remained of the missing head, crushed beyond recognition.
Then, something changed.
Without warning, the mess on the floor began to twitch. Bone fragments and shredded tissue inched toward one another, slowly reassembling into the shape of a head. The newly formed skull lifted from the ground and drifted back to the corpse. Where the right eye had once been an empty socket, it was now whole again, hidden behind closed lids.
Simultaneously, the blood spattered across the tools and floor flowed in reverse, slithering back into the body. Severed fingers reattached. Torn flesh stitched itself together. Missing nails regrew.
Then, with a sudden, ragged gasp, the bound body jolted upright—alive once more.
....
With a ragged gasp, my body jerked, and my eyes shot open. My chest heaved with each desperate breath as my surroundings blurred into focus. Once again, I found myself strapped to the cold, unforgiving chair, metal cords biting into my skin.
'I am alive,' I thought, but the weight of death clung to my mind, dragging me into a dizzying abyss. The overwhelming sensation of dying—of my life slipping away—was so vivid that I could taste the bile rising in my throat. And then, I vomited, the sickening warmth splattering across my chest.
I forced my gaze to my neck. It should have been severed—clean, bloodied—but it was intact. My hands shot up in a panic, fingers trembling as they fumbled, but all I heard was the relentless clinking of metal cords as they restrained me.
Then came the strangest sensation. My right eye—bloodshot, aching—was open again. The pain still lingered, like a fire behind my skull, but I could feel my eyelid blinking as if nothing had happened.
I glanced down at my body, expecting the worst, expecting to see the damage of a thousand tortures. But instead, it was... whole. New. As if nothing had ever touched it. My fingers, which should have been mutilated or missing, were whole again. Nails that had been torn away had regrown, smooth and undisturbed. My jaw, which had once been cracked, was once again intact. There were no marks, no bruises, no signs of the agony this body had endured.
It should have been a relief. But it wasn't. The sight only twisted my stomach further, nausea flooding my throat as I struggled to breathe.
And then, like a cruel joke, a sharp, blinding pain erupted in my skull.
"Hahahaha," I laughed—a brittle, jagged sound that shattered the silence, manic and tinged with exhaustion.
'What the fuck is happening?'
The pain twisted deeper, spreading like wildfire, and with it, memories—strange, foreign memories—rushed into my mind. They didn't feel like they belonged to someone else. They felt like mine. Happiness. Sadness. Guilt. Anger and much more. A life lived through the body I now inhabited, each memory more suffocating than the last.
But then came the torture. The memories of it. The agony. I felt it all over again, every brutal moment that had been etched into this body's soul, and with it came the excruciating pain, magnified a thousand times.
I couldn't take it. The world spun as my stomach churned. And before I could even brace myself, I vomited again—my body betraying me, unable to withstand the storm inside me.
And then, darkness. Silence. The world faded once more.
....
I dragged my eyes open once again, lashes heavy with exhaustion and pain. Every blink felt like lifting weights, every breath like dragging glass through my lungs.
New memories clawed their way into my mind—strange, disjointed, yet eerily familiar. They weren't just fragments. They were whole scenes, moments… experiences. It felt like I was watching a life that wasn't mine—except it was. Like a second life that had been quietly unraveling behind the curtain, and now, that curtain was gone.
The realization hit me like a blade to the heart—sharp, sudden, and terrifying. My breath caught, and my eyes widened in raw, instinctive fear. What if this really was true? What if I could never go back?
Then it struck me, all at once—a horrifying clarity washing over my dazed thoughts. The memories were no longer faint echoes—they were vivid, detailed, undeniable. My pupils dilated. My lips quivered. I whispered the words aloud, barely able to believe them:
"I'm in a novel."
For a moment, hope stirred. A fragile, desperate thing.
'Maybe it's all a dream,' I thought.
But deep down, I knew.
I wasn't hoping.
I was bargaining.
Trying to explain away the impossible.
Trying to justify what had already happened.
I didn't want to face the truth.
Was I a coward? Yeah... yeah, I was. But could anyone really blame me?
I'd lived a normal life—nothing special, nothing crazy—just quiet, ordinary days. And then, suddenly... it all ended. Just like that. One moment, everything was fine.
The next, I was being torn apart.
Then killed.
Then opening my eyes somewhere unknown.
Then tortured again—In ways no one should ever go through.
And then—Killed again.
And as if that wasn't enough, I came back.
Alive, somehow, only to find I was in someone else's body.
Waking up in someone else's skin, someone else's life, with memories that weren't mine leaking into my head like a broken faucet—it was terrifying.
And then the thought hit me. Insane, impossible, but it wouldn't leave:
'This… this was the world of the novel I'd just been reading.'
How the hell was that even possible?
It was like someone was playing a sick joke on me.
"Fucking hell," I muttered.
'Why,' I just wanted to ask, 'Why me?'
I wasn't special.
I wasn't brave.
I wasn't the kind of person who changes the world or fights destiny or whatever else protagonists were supposed to do.
I was just… me.
So...'WHY'