Prologue
Time always breaks at the same point. Every night, I die on that bus, and every morning, I wake up alive in my bed. It’s a nightmare that repeats itself endlessly, immutable, leaving me no escape.
In the dream, the impact never comes, but the certainty of death is there, tangible. The lights turn into sharp blades, the brakes scream with a desperation that feels human, and silence drapes over the people like a shroud, turning them into statues. Everything is so vivid, so real: every reflection in the glass, every face between the seats, every imperceptible tremor betraying fear. Then something impossible happens: time shatters, and the entire world freezes in an eternal instant. People remain suspended in the void, mid-gesture, mid-word. The screams halt, trapped in their throats, and shards of glass hang motionless in the air, like sharp blades poised to strike.
I am the only one still breathing, the only one who sees.
And then the impact comes. Or maybe it doesn’t. I never truly experienced it, but I feel myself die all the same. It’s a darkness that envelops me, an abyss that swallows me whole and crushes me until I can’t breathe. At that moment, I open my eyes.
Many consider me a miracle. The sole survivor of the tragic school trip to the Highlands, now three years past. They look at me with eyes full of compassion and admiration, as if I were some kind of chosen one as if fate had spared me for some mysterious higher purpose. The truth, however, is far different. What no one knows—or dares to ask—is that day irreversibly marked my life.
It wasn’t a blessing, but a curse.
I should have died with them, with my classmates, at the bottom of that ravine, under the gray sky and the howling wind, where nature became both executioner and witness. But something—or someone—decided otherwise, and since then, every night, I pay the price for my survival. My punishment is simple, yet cruel: I relive that moment repeatedly, like a cursed film that never stops rewinding. It has been this way since I was fifteen. Every detail returns with chilling clarity—the crash, the blood, the muffled screams, time crumbling before me, and the wide-open eyes of those who would never see another dawn.
My atonement is this recurring nightmare: the vision of a death that didn’t happen, coming back to claim what was stolen from her.
