Chapter 1: The First Inconsistency
Something was wrong.
Not in a dramatic way.
Not in a way anyone else seemed to notice.
But it was there.
At first, it was just a moment.
The sky flickered.
Not visually—nothing you could point at.
Just a sensation, like reality had skipped…
and then continued as if nothing happened.
No one reacted.
People kept walking.
Talking.
Scrolling.
Like nothing had happened.
Like nothing ever happens.
I told myself it was stress.
Lack of sleep.
Too much thinking.
But then it happened again.
And again.
Small inconsistencies.
Repeating patterns.
Movements that felt… recycled.
Not wrong enough to prove anything.
But not right enough to ignore.
And then came the thought:
This place is not made for you.
It didn’t feel like fear.
It felt like recognition.
Like remembering something I was never supposed to know.
I started noticing more.
The way sunlight burned deeper than it should.
The way gravity pressed down, constant, exhausting.
The way my thoughts spiraled far beyond anything useful for survival.
It didn’t make sense.
None of it did.
And the worst part wasn’t that something was wrong.
It was that…
no one else seemed to feel it.
Or maybe—
they did.
And chose not to look.
