Anshu went to his home with a quiet, familiar tiredness clinging to his shoulders, the kind that settles on a student after a long day spent pretending everything is normal. His footsteps echoed softly through the corridor as he pushed open the door, the metallic clink of the lock mixing with the homely stillness waiting inside. The house smelled faintly of turmeric and ginger—his mother had cooked earlier—and the scent wrapped around him like a warm blanket, grounding him even as his mind drifted somewhere far from the safe walls of home.
He walked straight to the dining table, pulled out a chair that scraped lightly against the floor, and had his lunch in the unhurried silence that filled the room. Every bite tasted ordinary, comforting, but his thoughts felt oddly distant, like static humming behind his eyes. He finished his meal slowly, placed the dishes in the sink with mechanical precision, and washed his hands under water that ran cool and steady. For a moment, he stood there watching droplets slide down his fingers, as if time itself had slowed to let him breathe.
By the time he stepped outside to the balcony for air, evening had already settled over the streets like a quiet promise of solitude. The orange-gold glow of the sinking sun stretched long shadows across the neighborhood, and the distant hum of scooters created a soft rhythm beneath the drifting breeze. The sky was brushed with streaks of violet, the kind of twilight that seemed to whisper that the world was preparing to close its eyes. The loneliness of the hour was gentle, comforting, as if inviting him to rest.
With the quiet settling deeper into the air, Anshu returned to his room. He switched on the dim study lamp, its warm yellow light blossoming across the desk like the opening of a delicate flower. He opened his books, intending—at least in theory—to study. The pages lay flat before him, filled with lines of text that stubbornly refused to enter his mind. His pen rested between his fingers, but he couldn't bring himself to write even a single word. Something in the room felt different, as if the shadows had shifted ever so slightly while he wasn't looking.
A sudden fluttering broke the stillness. The sound was soft, almost like a bird beating its wings from inside a cage, but it came from across the table. His gaze slid toward the source, and he froze.
The pages of an old diary—brown-edged, leather-bound, and worn smooth by time—trembled as if touched by unseen hands. It had been a gift from his grandfather, passed down with the sort of nostalgic smile only elders have when sharing a piece of their past. The diary usually sat quietly on his shelf, gathering dust and memory, but now it quivered as though alive. Every movement of the pages seemed deliberate, as if someone invisible were riffling through them with gentle impatience. A faint rustle echoed through the room, impossible to ignore.
A prickling sensation crawled along Anshu's spine. Thoughts he had long kept hidden—fragments of dreams, fears he never voiced, strange images he never understood—surged forward all at once. They pressed against his mind with the insistence of tides hitting the shore, demanding to be acknowledged. His chest tightened slightly, not out of fear, but from the uncanny familiarity of it all. It felt as if something inside him had been waiting for this moment.
He exhaled slowly, letting the tension drain from his shoulders, and turned away from the diary. He went to his computer, hoping the glow of the screen would distract him. The monitor lit up with a cold, bluish light that contrasted the warm lamp behind him. He opened his editing software, the cursor blinking like a tiny heartbeat at the corner of the screen. He started editing an image—nothing special, just something he had been working on casually for days. The mechanical rhythm of clicking and adjusting helped calm his mind.
Then he typed the first letter.
When he wrote the letter "E", the world around him seemed to ripple. A sudden image struck his mind with the clarity of a flash, yet blurred at the edges like a half-remembered nightmare. He saw a boy sleeping on the floor, his body curled in a vulnerable, almost childlike position. There was blood around him—dark, smeared, unsettling—and though the scene felt vivid in emotion, it was unclear in form. The boy's face refused to take shape, as if hidden behind mist or intentionally blurred by fate. Anshu's breath hitched slightly, confusion replacing the calm he had tried to build. The image stuck to him like a stubborn shadow, but he blinked it away, telling himself it was meaningless. He ignored it.
He resumed typing.
When he wrote the letter "D", another visual exploded in his mind, this one far grander and far more terrifying. He saw a destroyed Earth—fractured continents, oceans swallowed in fire, the sky torn open as though the very fabric of the planet had been wounded. The image was enormous, cosmic, and far beyond any dream he had ever had. Yet it felt eerily familiar, like a memory from another life. The destruction echoed in his chest, but again he forced himself to dismiss it. He told himself it was only imagination, just another stray vision thrown up by an overstimulated mind. He ignored it.
He took a small breath, shook his head, and kept going.
When he wrote the letter "T", a third image surged into his consciousness—stronger, clearer, and sharper than the rest. He saw a boy whose face was still frustratingly unclear walking down a lonely street, the kind lit by flickering streetlamps and painted in shades of evening grey. The boy's steps were slow, almost resigned, as though he sensed something looming behind him. Then, in a jarring instant, a car struck him from the side with violent force. The impact echoed through Anshu's mind like a thunderclap, even though he knew—deep down—that he was only imagining it. Still, the weight of the scene lingered heavily, refusing to fade as quickly as the others.
He sat frozen, staring at the glow of the computer screen, the word fragment blinking back at him like an unfinished prophecy. Each vision felt connected, like pieces of a story waiting to reveal themselves. And yet he didn't know why his mind was showing him these scenes or what they meant. His heartbeat felt louder than before, drumming faintly in his ears.
Then, as if guided by some unseen force—one that had been waiting patiently behind his consciousness—his fingers moved almost on their own. He began to type, not with intention but with a strange openness, as though something beyond logic was nudging him forward. Words flowed from him in a quiet stream, forming sentences he didn't plan, shaping meanings he didn't fully understand. Every keystroke felt like a step into a dimly lit corridor, one that invited him deeper into mystery.
He began to write a story in his own mind, a story that pulled threads from the visions he had seen. He didn't know where the ideas came from, only that they demanded to exist through him, as if his mind were merely a passageway for something larger.
He called it:
"Existence Destined."
The title settled on the screen with a weight that made the air feel denser. It resonated with something inside him—something old, something silent. And beneath the title, he typed a tag, a whisper that felt both cautionary and inevitable:
"The story which shouldn't be written or come to existence."
As soon as the sentence appeared on the screen, a faint shiver passed through the room. The diary behind him lay motionless now, the pages no longer trembling, as if satisfied—or perhaps as if waiting for the next step.
The desk lamp cast soft shadows across his hands as he paused, fingers hovering above the keyboard. The story was only beginning, yet it felt as though it had already existed long before he ever touched the keys. The evening had deepened outside, sinking into full night, but Anshu barely noticed. All he felt was a quiet pull, a connection forming between his thoughts and the mysterious visions that had forced themselves into his mind.
The room around him hummed faintly, almost imperceptibly, as if something in the air had awakened. The shadows on the walls seemed slightly darker, slightly more alive, reacting subtly to the tension threading through him. The silence was thick, like the hush that precedes a storm.
The story waited.
And so did the unseen force that had nudged him to write it.
The story Begins.
A black screen appeared first—vast, silent, and empty, stretching out like an abyss that swallowed every trace of light. It felt less like an image and more like a void, a space without time or direction, where even sound seemed afraid to exist. The darkness lingered for a moment too long, creating a tension that pressed against the senses as though the world were holding its breath.
Then, without warning, glimpses blinked into existence—brief flashes of a young boy trapped in a dark room. The space around him was suffocating, filled with shadows that clung to the walls like creatures waiting to pounce. The boy looked fragile, his small frame trembling as dim, cold light flickered from a single bulb swaying above his head. The air felt damp and heavy, carrying the metallic scent of fear.
A group of people surrounded him, their shapes looming large and undefined, as if someone had smeared their outlines with a shaking hand. Their hands moved toward him—rough, impatient, merciless—grabbing, striking, restraining. The boy's muffled cries echoed, bouncing off the walls as though trapped within the room just like him. Each movement, each sound, each breath of the torturers came in disjointed fragments, the whole scene flickering like a broken video file glitching under the strain of too much suffering.
Faces never appeared—only shadows. Only silhouettes twisted by cruelty.
The images flickered again, rapidly, chaotically, like pages torn from a nightmare and thrown one after another into a storm. The boy curled up, flinched, gasped—every gesture blurred, as though the universe itself refused to let the memory fully form. The scene fought to show itself while simultaneously resisting its own existence.
Then everything froze for an instant.
A girl appeared.
She stood at a distance, her presence silent yet powerful, but her face remained hidden in darkness, obscured as if some invisible veil protected her identity from sight. Her golden hair flowed behind her, moving in slow, graceful waves. The strands shimmered faintly, catching nonexistent light, dancing through the air as if the very atmosphere leaned forward just to touch them. Her appearance felt unreal, almost ethereal, as though she had stepped out of a dream into a nightmare—yet the blur around her made it impossible to see her clearly. Every outline wavered, trembling as if reality struggled to handle her existence.
And then her image dissolved into static.
The world snapped back—
A boy woke up.
His eyes shot open as if he had been dragged violently out of drowning waters. His breath came out in sharp, broken bursts, each inhale scraping his throat as though the air itself was too thin. Exhaustion pressed heavily on his chest, an invisible weight reminding him of the terror he had just escaped. Sweat covered him entirely, clinging to his skin in trembling droplets as if he had run miles while being chased by something unseen. His heart hammered against his ribs, wild and desperate, like someone—or something—had tried to kill him inside that dream.
He forced himself to sit up slightly, the bedsheets tangled around him like restraints he had barely managed to break. His eyes darted around the dimly lit room, shifting rapidly from corner to corner, searching for threats that weren't there. Shadows cast by the early morning light wavered across the walls, but to him, they felt like remnants of the nightmare stretching their claws into reality.
His gaze dropped to his own hands.
They were trembling—small tremors at first, then stronger waves that traveled up his arms. His palms felt cold, despite the heat of sweat. He turned them over slowly, staring at them as if they belonged to someone else. The memory of pain—someone else's pain, or perhaps his own—echoed faintly in his fingers. His breath hitched as he clenched them into fists, almost checking whether they would feel real or remain ghostlike as the images he had seen.
Then he looked at his legs, still tangled under the blanket. His knees were slightly bent, muscles tense as if he had been running or struggling in his sleep. His legs twitched involuntarily, reacting to memories that weren't fully formed, as though he had lived someone else's terror for just a brief moment. For a long second, he remained completely still, letting his thoughts catch up with his racing heartbeat.
His gaze drifted toward the edge of the bed, where faint sunlight spilled through the half-closed curtains. The light touched his skin gently, revealing the faint tremble that still lingered in his limbs. The room was quiet—almost too quiet—as though sound had chosen not to disturb the fragile state he was in. The air carried a slight morning chill, but he hardly felt it; his body was too busy remembering the fear from the dream he couldn't fully grasp.
The boy himself looked young—somewhere around eighteen to twenty years old. His face held the traces of youthful sharpness, but the exhaustion shadowed his features, making him appear older for a fleeting moment. His black hair fell over his ears in soft, unbrushed strands, sticking slightly to his forehead because of the sweat. Each strand shifted gently whenever he breathed, a small reminder that he was still in the real world despite how alien everything felt.
His eyes were striking—a rare combination of blue and black that blended in the iris like two worlds overlapping. The blue shimmered faintly, revealing a depth that suggested quiet storms hidden within him, while the black rings around the edges of his irises gave a sharpness that made his gaze seem constantly searching, constantly unsure. The way he blinked—slow, hesitant, disoriented—made it clear that the dream had shaken him far more deeply than he wished to admit.
He wore a formal white shirt, the collar slightly crumpled from sleep. The fabric clung to him where the sweat hadn't yet dried, turning the crisp cotton slightly translucent in patches. The sleeves had been rolled to his elbows at some point—he didn't remember when—and the faint creases running across them suggested he had worn the shirt for a while before falling asleep. The clean white contrasted sharply with the disarray of his current state, as though he had gone to bed trying to maintain order in a life that refused to stay steady.
His black trousers were still on as well, snug and formal, completely out of place for someone who had collapsed into sleep during such a chaotic mental state. The fabric was wrinkled from the way he had tossed and turned on the bed, and a faint line near his knee showed where the cloth had pressed against itself for too long. He looked like someone who had drifted off without meaning to—perhaps while trying to work, or think, or escape from something intangible that had been clinging to him before the nightmare even began.
He swallowed slowly, feeling the dryness in his throat like sandpaper. His chest rose and fell as he tried to steady his breathing. Gradually, the room came into sharper focus. The familiar shape of the desk near the window, the books stacked unevenly on the floor, the faint hum of the ceiling fan—it all reassured him that he was back, truly back, no longer trapped in whatever strange vision had seized his sleep.
But the lingering unease didn't fade.
The dream—or whatever it was—continued to echo faintly in his mind. The dark room. The boy being tortured. The blurred figures. The golden-haired girl whose face refused to be seen. The glitches of those broken images. Each fragment pulsed beneath his thoughts like a heartbeat tied to something he didn't understand.
He lifted a hand and ran it through his hair, pushing the damp strands back from his forehead. His fingers trembled again, though more faintly now. He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the silence settle inside him, trying to separate what was real from what had tried to invade his consciousness.
But even with his eyes closed, the golden hair of the girl drifted through his mind again—soft, shimmering, untouchable—like a memory he had no right to possess.
And the boy in the dark room—
He forced his eyes open before the image could return fully.
The room felt stable again, anchored in reality, yet something inside him whispered that the dream was not just a dream. It had come like a warning, like a fragmented truth struggling to surface. His pulse steadied slowly, but the unease remained lodged deep within him, settling into his thoughts like a seed waiting to grow.
No matter how much he tried to breathe calmly, the memory of that black screen lingered behind his eyes, along with the certainty that this awakening was only the beginning of something far larger—something that had already begun moving toward him from the shadows.