INCARNATE

It was just another ordinary day—another routine at the university. Nothing worth remembering… except the silence.

I walked down the main road leading to the college, clutching my books to my chest as if they were a shield against the endless stares that never truly landed on me.

No one noticed me. No one greeted me. I moved like a nameless shadow slipping between worlds, and I often wondered: Do they even see me? Or have I already become transparent in this roaring, indifferent world?

Perhaps I really was invisible… or perhaps I had simply learned to hide without realizing it.

I slipped into the lecture hall and took my usual place…..the third seat from the right, in the back corner.

No one liked that seat because it tilted slightly, but I cherished it… because it was far away.

Around me, the voices of students rose and fell, laughter colliding with whispered secrets, inside jokes repeated like ritual prayers among friends who had known each other for years.

And I?...I was alone…..There was no friend to share notes with, no one to ask if I’d understood the professor, not even a hand offering me a pen if I’d forgotten mine….No one….No one at all.

The first lecture crawled by, each minute dragging like iron. My heartbeat slowed under the weight of the professor’s monotone voice.

I didn’t absorb a single word—my eyes fixed instead on his shoes, dusted in a pale white powder.

Chalk ash drifted from his fingers, falling in slow, ghostly flakes, gathering at his feet like snow.

During the break in the cafeteria, I sat at the last table near the window, watching the world through a pane of grimy glass.

My coffee had gone cold, bitter as the hours that lay ahead, and I drank it slowly as if swallowing time itself.

A group of girls passed by, their laughter sharp and bright. One glance from them was enough to shrink a soul for years….I said nothing.

I showed no sign of annoyance…..I had learned silence well—learned it when speaking became a luxury I could no longer afford.

By the end of the day, I left the campus under my usual heaviness….The sky was gray—no sun, no rain, only a void drowning the city. My steps were slow, heavy, as if I were leaving something behind, or as if someone were stealing something unseen from me.

Then I heard it: soft, quick footsteps behind me. One. Then another…….My breath quickened.

I froze without meaning to. I didn’t dare look back. Perhaps it was just my imagination.

But no…..I was sure there was someone there.

I spun around….No one.

The street lay empty and unnervingly still. A lone tree stood at the edge of the pavement.

A cat meowed faintly. Not a single car passed.

I tried to smile at myself, to whisper that I was simply exhausted, that the workload had finally weighed me down. I took one more step.

I never completed the second.

Something slammed into my back—sharp, violent—stealing the air from my lungs.

My eyes widened, my lips parted to speak but only a broken gasp escaped.

I looked down.

A blade—dark and cold—pushed through my chest, and my blood fell like autumn leaves onto the frozen pavement.

Then came nothing...Only darkness….Only pain, rising and swallowing me whole.

No light—just an ashen mist choking my vision, the scent of damp earth pressing against my senses.

My eyelids were heavy, as if I had been asleep for days. The sound of my own breath was the first thing I heard….slow, uneven.

A strange sensation pulsed in my chest, but it wasn’t the agony of the blade. It felt… displaced, as though I had been moved, and my heart had not caught up yet.

My lashes fluttered…..I opened my eyes.

The ceiling above me was unfamiliar—black and glossy, laced with creeping vines. Two pillars rose like silent sentinels, as if holding it in place.

“Where… am I?” I whispered. The voice that came out was not my own.

I sat up slowly, but my head spun and I braced a trembling hand against the wall to steady myself. My heart was pounding. This wasn’t my room.

This wasn’t my home.

I hadn’t died… had I?

“Calm down. Just… calm down,” I murmured to myself.

The room was narrow, its walls painted in obsidian shades. In the corner stood a dormant fireplace.

The bed was draped in some strange fur. Everything here smelled raw, elemental—like it had been carved from the earth itself.

I stepped once. Then again. My feet carried me to a small mirror on the wall.

I looked at myself…..Yes—me….And yet not….Was it the voice?

My features were mine, but paler, a weary heaviness in my eyes I didn’t recognize. I looked down and found myself dressed in an old, faded gown cinched at the waist with a belt.

“I must be dreaming.”

I pinched my arm hard enough for my nails to dig into my skin. Pain bloomed….“But… the pain is real.”

I turned to the window and pulled back the curtain. Outside stretched a forest—dense, towering, almost black. Trees unlike any I had ever known reached upward like spires. An unnatural stillness crept into me.

I returned to the bed and sat on its edge, burying my face in my hands. I wanted to disappear beneath the floorboards, to rewind time for even a heartbeat, just to understand what had happened.

“Where am I? Why?”

My eyes brimmed. And then—A knock at the door…..Soft, but it made me jump.

I stared at the door. The handle turned slowly. The door opened with a drawn-out creak, and a dark-skinned woman entered, her features sharp. She carried a strange tray from which rose a foul scent, as though the food upon it had been left to rot on purpose.

Her gaze was cold, her movement brisk. She slammed the tray onto the table with a practiced heaviness, as if she had done this a thousand times before.

I stared at her, wide-eyed—a tangle of fear, caution, and confusion. She noticed. My look betrayed me.

But what she said froze me in place.

“What’s wrong with you, Larissia?”

My mouth opened but no sound emerged. Every cell in my body felt jolted with electricity. She didn’t see me as a stranger. She looked at me as though she knew me—as though I belonged here….Wait—did she say Larissia?

Slowly, I raised my head. My voice trembled: “Who…?”

She laughed, sharp and mocking: “Another one of your games, is it? Arrogant as ever: Eat.”

She turned and left, closing the door behind her.

I stared at the tray, at the nauseating smell. And at the

name she had called me—Larissia.

A bitter smile touched my lips, as if mocking my own sanity. I pushed the tray away. My stomach was knotted too tight for food. How could I eat when I didn’t even know where I was?

The room was strange, silent, elegant in its way but devoid of life. I took a few hesitant steps, whispering the name under my breath….“Larissia…”

Who was she? Why did that woman look at me as though I were her?

I tried to breathe, to make sense of it, but nothing was logical. I was Ayla. An ordinary girl at a prestigious language university. I studied. I went home. I harmed no one. I kept to myself.

How had my day become this nightmare?

How could I be killed in the street and wake up in a place that bore no resemblance to Earth—and be called by a name I’d never known?

Was I truly “Larissia” to them? Or merely her reflection? Was this the afterlife? Hell? A dream without end?

Had I been reborn?

But reality clung to me like lead, heavier with each breath.

And then a voice shattered the silence—deep, furious, rising like thunder:“Larissia!!”

I gasped...My head whipped toward the door.

The voice was not hers—the one who had brought me the food—but another.

It tore through the silence like a whip:

“Where are you, you lazy girl? Will you not come out?!”

I turned in circles, scanning the room for a hiding place, for anything at all. The name rolled off her tongue with absolute certainty, as if there could be no mistake.

Larissia.

That name again.

The name I did not know, yet was being pinned to me as though it had always been mine. My body stiffened. None of it made sense—not the place, not the voices, not my own reaction. Everyone here treated me as if I were someone else.

Fear and instinct drove me to move. If I stayed and she entered, what then?

I opened the door with slow, trembling hands and stepped into the corridor. My eyes searched for the source of the voice…….There she stood: a small-boned woman with a wiry strength coiled beneath her skin, her face creased with anger….

arms folded tight across her chest, a filthy rag clutched in one hand. Her gaze slid down me, from head to toe, dripping with contempt.

“At last you remember there’s work waiting!” she barked. “Do you think you’re a princess?”

The insult struck me like a slap, but I was too weak to answer.

“To the stables. Clean the floors as I told you yesterday. Not a single stain left, understood?”

The rag flew at my face.

“Go!”

I caught it in trembling fingers. It was wet, rancid; the cold seeped into my skin like poison.

Me… cleaning? I wanted to scream at her, to tell her she was wrong, but the words stuck in my throat.

I stood frozen, with no idea which way to turn. Was this the stable she spoke of? No markings, no doors, nothing familiar.

Her voice sliced the air again, louder, sharper:

“Move, Larissia!”