Chapter One: The Ceiling
The ceiling didn’t have answers. But Aria still stared.
Her body ached. Her feet pulsed with that hot, tight soreness she’d grown used to. Her hands were dry and cracked. A burn mark curled on her wrist from the fryer at the diner.
She lay on her mattress---no frame, no box spring just a mattress on the floor of a cramped bedroom she shared with bills, textbooks, and the soft hum of anxiety. Her long black hair fanned out around her. Her hoodie smelled like oil and cheap perfume from her shift.
Rent.
Electricity.
Tuition.
Owen’s math fees.
Luna’s school shoes..... she needed new ones.
A sigh slipped past her lips like smoke. The kind that comes with tiredness too deep for sleep. She closed her eyes. Maybe if she just floated long enough.....
“Ariaaaa!” Luna’s voice chimed from downstairs like a windchime caught in a breeze. “Come eaaaat!”
Aria winced. She’d forgotten about dinner. Again.
She pushed herself up. Each bone groaned. The wooden stairs creaked under her weight as she descended, rubbing her eyes.
The smell hit her first.
Burned. Absolutely incinerated.
She paused at the kitchen doorway. Luna stood proudly, beaming beside a blackened tray of what looked like.... was it lasagna? Pizza? A melted science experiment?
“Tada!” Luna chirped. “Your royal dinner is served!”
Aria blinked. Then laughed.... a small, cracked sound that surprised even her.
Owen sat at the table, already pushing the charred crust with a fork like he was dissecting it.
“It’s… food,” he mumbled.
“It’s love,” Luna corrected, flipping her ponytail.
Aria sat, letting herself smile, genuinely for the first time in days.
They ate. They joked. They washed the dishes together.
And that night, as moonlight spilled like silver dust through her window, Aria dreamed.
She was nine again. Her parents stood at the door of the old farmhouse, waving. Luna laughed beside her. Owen clung to her hand. Everything was whole again.
And then… the wind changed.
The sky darkened. Her father’s face twisted into something wrong. Her mother’s smile cracked like porcelain. And from the house, something was watching.
Aria gasped awake.
Her ceiling had changed.
