The impact punched the air out of my lungs.

  It wasn’t a clean hit. It was a brutal jolt that ripped me back to my most basic instinct.

  Survive.

  Everything was liquid—heavy motion, thick density.

  Nothing had shape except panic.

  I plunged into a lake—shallow, maybe—but it didn’t matter. There’s no such thing as shallow when fear turns into an ocean.

  My eyes burned open, blurred by water and the adrenaline detonating inside me. My body—clumsy, useless—searched for the surface with no grace and no hope.

  The echo of my escape still rang through every fiber of me. The forest. The voice. The mask.

  And that name that wasn’t mine.

  Alek sa…

  I didn’t know what part of me was still running—my body, my soul, or my memories.

  Bubbles slipped from my mouth like drowned thoughts. And right then, just before the urge to scream underwater took me, a memory cut across my mind with cruel precision.

  I was six.

  My swim instructor—a man with a deep voice and very selective patience—decided the best way to teach me was to throw me into the deep end without warning.

  Learn with your body, not your head, he’d shouted before shoving me.

  I remembered the slap of water. The endless falling. The helplessness of arms slicing through something that wouldn’t give.

  And I remembered, most of all, his face when he dove in after me—when two minutes passed and I still didn’t come up.

  That was my first lesson in life.

  Not everyone who throws you into the water is willing to pull you back out.

  And the second lesson—one that hurt more now than it ever had—

  I never learned how to swim.

  The present snapped back with its teeth.

  Cold locked my hands. My muscles screamed past their limit. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold my breath—pressure built in my chest like an icy fire, burning from the inside out.

  This wasn’t normal water.

  There was something wrong with its texture. A supernatural thickness, as if every molecule weighed more than it should. Water that knew who went in…

  and who didn’t come out.

  I kicked hard. My shoes became anchors.

  My arms felt like stiff sticks moving in slow motion.

  I searched for anything.

  A branch. A rock. A miracle.

  All I found was darkness and broken reflections.

  And still, a stubborn thought clawed its way up through the chaos.

  I can’t end like this.

  But exhaustion is a kind traitor. Sometimes it dresses itself up as acceptance.

  I felt it creeping closer—sweet, resigned.

  Let go, it seemed to whisper. Let the water decide.

  My muscles loosened. Shoulders sank.

  I closed my eyes.

  I let myself drift.

  Then—

  a flicker.

  A blink of light, right in front of my eyelids, forced them open.

  It wasn’t the sun. It wasn’t a reflection.

  It was its own light. Alive. Stubborn.

  I frowned, dizzy, and followed it.

  It came from the rocky edge of the lake, where darkness blended into the bottom.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  And there it was.

  A door.

  Strange. Rotten-looking. Like it had been torn from another world and forgotten under the water.

  The wood was old, but it didn’t fall apart. The frame—choked in algae and slime—pulsed with a faint golden glow. And on the door itself, burned into the planks and drowned for centuries, there were symbols I couldn’t read…

  yet they shimmered anyway.

  I didn’t know what they said.

  But inside my mind, a foreign word rang clear as a bell.

  Nebenbei.

  The word went through me and vibrated in my bones with an unsettling familiarity.

  When I thought it, the symbols on the door pulsed twice.

  Like they’d heard me.

  A sign?

  A call?

  My body moved without asking permission.

  I pushed with my legs, with what little strength I had left, toward that relic suspended in the water.

  My clothes tangled. My hair floated around me like a dark halo. The lake pulled at me—down, down—like it was claiming what it already considered its own.

  When I reached the door, I touched it.

  The wood was ice-cold. The contact sent a shiver through my fingers.

  I pressed both palms against it.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  A third time—desperate, like a final prayer.

  Still, the frame didn’t budge.

  The door gave me silent mockery.

  And then the last air in my lungs started to hurt.

  Every second became an invisible knife. My heartbeat thundered so loud it blended with the water’s hum. My throat clenched. My brain screamed for oxygen.

  And then pain bloomed fully—

  sharp, expanding—

  the kind you can’t even scream, because there’s no air left to carry it.

  I tried to resist.

  But the oldest reflex won.

  My body tried to breathe.

  Even if there was only water.

  The freezing liquid invaded my lungs with violent force—bitter, thick.

  Strength slipped away from me.

  Darkness arrived without ceremony. It didn’t crash in.

  It slid.

  Patient.

  First it swallowed the edges of my vision.

  Then my thoughts.

  Until everything was wrapped in quiet.

  I fell.

  Not downward.

  Inward.

  .

  .

  .

  “Are you really going to leave her here?” A woman’s voice, light as it drifted through the gloom. “Last time you did that, it didn’t end well.”

  A man answered—firm, tired in that way only people who are always right get.

  “Zenhaff. You know better than anyone what happens if we leave her outside.”

  “Toshi…” The woman sighed. “Oh. Too late. She’s waking up.”

  The sound of water vanished.

  Darkness shattered into pieces of light.

  And between them—

  I breathed.

  My first inhale was harsh and raw, scraping my throat like I’d swallowed liquid fire. I coughed, and the echo of my own voice yanked me back into the world.

  I blinked until the lights stopped sliding.

  I was lying on something soft.

  Warm.

  Too warm to be real.

  A mask hovered over me—

  a dog mask.

  A pug.

  So close I could hear the brush of breath against it.

  I flinched back.

  Behind the mask, eyes gleamed with curiosity more than threat.

  I looked past it.

  There was a counter.

  And on it sat a cat with blue-black fur, perfectly still, tail swinging slowly in the air. It watched me with the calm of something that had already decided whether I would live or die—

  and, for now, had chosen live.

  I looked around, dazed.

  The place was a labyrinth frozen in a single moment of eternity.

  The ceiling arched high and disappeared into shadows that weren’t entirely shadows. Shelves and glass cases lined the walls, packed with impossible objects: jars holding tiny people, massive horns from fairy-tale creatures, books that looked like they were breathing—

  and a thousand other things my mind couldn’t name.

  A shop.

  A bazaar.

  A place outside the world.

  “You don’t need to say anything, Maki.”

  My pulse jumped.

  “What? How do you know my name—?”

  “I’m Toshihiro.”

  He paused. The pug mask tilted, almost like a smile.

  Then he spread his arms in a theatrical flourish.

  “And I welcome you to my bazaar…”

  His voice deepened, amused and grand.

  “…the great and magnificent Nebenbei.”

  The word echoed inside me.

  The same sound I’d heard under the water.

  The same pulse in the symbols on the door.

  My heart lurched. I didn’t know whether to cry, scream, or laugh. My eyes flicked from object to object, trying to understand.

  Bottles of strange liquids.

  Fruits that didn’t belong to Earth.

  Crates stacked with labels in languages I’d never seen.

  And that cat, unblinking, as if it carried ancient knowledge behind its eyes.

  It was all so unreal that for a moment I almost forgot the lake.

  Then Toshihiro spoke again, and a chill slid down my spine.

  His posture.

  His dark suit.

  That almost inhuman calm.

  A ridiculous thought hit me—

  but I couldn’t shake it.

  He resembled the one who had chased me.

  The same distant elegance. The same control over space. The same calm that didn’t belong to mortals.

  Only here, his mask was different.

  Absurd.

  Almost funny.

  And somehow that made it worse.

  I tried to speak. To demand answers.

  I didn’t get the chance.

  The words of my pursuer seeped back into my mind like poison, freezing my soul.

  Alek sa… this time you won’t escape me.

  The air in the bazaar changed.

  The cat’s ears snapped up. Maybe it caught a sound too small for human hearing.

  Toshihiro turned his head, just slightly, toward the entrance of this impossible place.

  I stared at the pug mask.

  “He shouldn’t be able to reach here,” Toshihiro murmured.

  My heart began to slam again.

  “Who?” I asked, even though I already knew.

  “Akuma.” His voice sharpened. “And don’t say his name carelessly. Shadows listen.”

  A current of icy air swept through the room. The lights flickered. The cat sprang off the counter, fur bristling, back arching.

  Toshihiro stepped closer and set a gloved hand on my shoulder.

  The touch grounded me—as if his hand had the weight of reality.

  “Rest,” he said calmly. “Here, you’ll be safe from him.”

  The words were firm, almost paternal—

  but there was something underneath them I couldn’t name.

  A doubt.

  A hairline crack in his certainty.

  I wanted to believe him. I wanted to smile.

  But exhaustion finally caught up to me.

  My eyelids felt heavy, as if someone had poured sand inside them.

  Then another sound echoed inside my skull—guttural, vibrating, impossible to place.

  It wasn’t coming from the bazaar.

  It was coming from inside.

  A memory of water. Of forest. Of something that still wanted me.

  Do you really think you’re safe, Aleksa?

  The air fractured.

  The temperature dropped several degrees.

  The pug mask didn’t move—only watched me… or at least, that’s what it felt like—as it leaned closer.

  “Sleep,” Toshihiro said softly. “Everything else… can wait.”

  I had no strength left to argue.

  I gave in.

  Sleep wrapped around me again—this time not as an enemy, but as an accomplice.

  The bazaar, the cat, the masked man, the echo of that voice—

  all of it dissolved into a single image.

  A garden of violet flowers.

  And the low hum of an older woman singing between the petals.