My head hurt. It was throbbing with pain as I woke up.
I had a dream… probably. But instead of trying to remember it, my mind turned blank at the unfamiliar sight that greeted me.
Where... where was I?
This wasn't my apartment. Not that tiny, stinking apartment with cracked windows, a broken heater, and ceilings that flaked like scabs.
Not the place that reeked of mildew, stale bread, and slow-burned failure.
This room was... different. Wrong.
Too still. Too clean. Too perfect.
It was white—completely sterile white.
The walls, the floor, even the ceiling—every surface gleamed with a kind of soulless polish. Not a scratch, not a stain, not even a single misplaced thread of dust.
The corners were rounded, unnervingly so.
No harsh edges. No seams. It was as if the entire room had been molded from a single piece of material. It didn't feel human.
It felt... designed. Coldly and deliberately designed.
No sounds.
No hum of electricity, no wind through a vent, not even the buzzing in my ears.
The silence was absolute.
Like I'd been dropped into a vacuum.
What happened to me?
The last thing I remembered was falling asleep... somewhere.
But now, that memory was fog. The kind of fog that turns around and stares back.
No explanations. No clues.
Just this place.
There was a mattress where I had been lying. Thin and unnaturally neat. The sheets were bright white and tucked in with militaristic precision—far too clean for comfort.
It looked like the kind of bed you'd find in a padded cell.
Yeah, that kind of clean.
There was a small bookshelf.
Next to that—
A mirror.
Tall. Too tall. Framed in chrome. Its surface glared at me like an open eye.
I didn't look at myself. Not yet.
I didn't want to see what kind of face I had right now.
Not when the air felt like it was watching me back.
Everything in this room screamed one thing:
You are not supposed to be here.
And maybe… maybe I wasn't.
The mirror was the only thing in the room that felt alive—and even that was a stretch.
I stood slowly, legs aching like I'd been asleep for far too long. Or maybe like I hadn't been asleep at all. The kind of pain that doesn't come from rest or injury, but from... wrongness. A fundamental misalignment. My joints popped as I moved—sharper than they should've been in a room this quiet.
The floor was cold. Not icy, just… absent of warmth. Like it had never known heat in the first place. Every step echoed slightly, but not loud enough. Almost as if the sound was being swallowed before it could bounce back.
I approached the mirror, uncertain whether I even wanted to see what was on the other side.
But of course I looked.
And—yep. That was me.
Same messy black hair. Same pale skin. Same expression that hovered somewhere between tired student and corpse that forgot to lie down.
And my eyes—still violet. A strange color, unnatural even on good days. They looked sharper now, almost glowing under the stark lighting, like bruises turned into gemstones.
But something was off. I couldn't explain it. The reflection matched me, moved with me. But the way it did felt too… synchronized. Like it wasn't mirroring me, but predicting me.
I blinked. It blinked.
I lifted my hand slowly. It followed.
Still, there was that feeling—something between paranoia and déjà vu. Like I'd been seen before I'd arrived.
Was this some kind of experiment? A test chamber?
Am I dead? No, too grounded for that. No tunnel of light. No divine presence. Just clinical white and the hum of my own suspicion.
My heart wasn't racing. It should have been. Instead, it felt like it was waiting. Like something inside me already knew this wasn't a dream.
And then I saw it.
A small piece of paper, neatly tucked into the edge of the mirror's frame.
I didn't notice it before. But it was there now.
I pulled it free with fingers that trembled just a bit.
There were only two words written on it:
"Climb up."
Well that's weird.
The bookshelf only had one book on it. It was a lonely, oddly out-of-place thing—like it didn't quite belong. Dust coated the wooden frame, thick enough to suggest it hadn't been touched in years, and yet there that book sat: pristine, untouched by time.
It was a black leather-bound book. Small, but unmistakably heavy in presence. There was a strange symbol on the front—a green serpent biting its own tail, coiled perfectly into a circle. The serpent had eyes that almost seemed to gleam faintly in the dim light, like it was watching me. The image made something twitch uncomfortably in my chest. A loop. A cycle. An inescapable repetition.
I picked it up, expecting the weight of old paper, maybe dried ink. The title was embossed in worn silver letters: "The Legend of the Grimm Isle."
"Grimm Isle?" I muttered under my breath. "What is this, some kind of ghost story? Are they trying to scare me with creepypasta?"
The absurdity of it almost made me laugh. It felt like something out of an internet rabbit hole. Maybe that's what this was—some elaborate prank. A theme room, horror escape room style.
Still… I opened it.
I didn't flip to the first page, though. Instead, I let the book fall open at random. The pages were mostly blank. Faint markings here and there, but nothing legible.
Curious, I flipped back to the first page. There, a single paragraph sat, dead center, like it had been waiting.
"The Grimm Isle is a mythical island that is not bound by the limitations of time. It is said to be located somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle. Due to distortion and desynchronization in the basement and the first floor, results in a time change. Maintain caution."
I blinked. Was this some kind of ARG? A prank? A script? The vibe had shifted from horror to surreal.
Below that paragraph was a lone sentence, smaller, fainter:
"Insanity is the beginning as well as the end."
This shit is crazy, I thought, gripping the book tighter than I meant to. It was kind of strange—actually, more than strange—that someone had gone through the trouble of setting up such an elaborate prank just for me.
I hadn't even clicked any shady links recently, hadn't answered weird calls, and definitely hadn't accepted any free "mystery boxes" from dodgy websites. How the hell did I even end up here?
It didn't make any sense.
"I'm gonna sue these weirdos after I get out of this prank shit," I muttered, the sound of my own voice grounding me slightly. "This just… this just went too far."
The words didn't help. My throat was dry. My tongue felt like sandpaper.
Muttering curses under my breath, I glanced around the room again—searching for something, anything—a camera, a microphone, even a speaker that would give away the trick. But there was nothing. No blinking red light. No hiss of static. The silence pressed against my skull like a weight.
"This better not be one of those goddamn YouTube prank channels," I mumbled, teeth gritted. "Like 'Trapped for 24 Hours in a Fake Haunted Room' or some bullshit…"
The door. I decided I'd had enough.
I walked over, every step making the floor creak beneath me. My hand reached out, hesitating for a second before gripping the knob.
It turned. Smoothly.
The click echoed like a gunshot in the stillness.
I flung the door open and shouted, "What the hell!"
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