This morning, everything felt wrong.
Nyla sat at the top of her bed, staring at the shattered ceiling light on the floor. Her hands were still shaking. Even her breathing sounded too loud in the quiet room. If she hadn't moved, if she had stayed in that spot for even one more second, she might have convinced herself this was all a dream.
She rubbed her arms, trying to calm the chill crawling across her skin.
Think. Think. Think.
Her brain felt foggy and too fast at the same time, Like a strange messy mixture or a dumped puzzle pieces in front of her telling her to solve it even though half the pieces didn't belong. She remembered being twenty-three, She remembered blood. She remembered dying.
But she didn't remember how she died.
It was like someone took a pair of scissors and cut out every important part, leaving her with broken edges that didn't match anything. She knew she had been twenty-three, but she couldn't remember what her days looked like, who she talked to, where she lived, or anything that made up those years. Everything between her life and her death felt blurred and unreachable.
Her phone buzzed, or at least she thought it was her phone. It wasn't. It was that mechanical voice again, echoing in her head like someone placed a speaker behind her skull.
"one hundred eighty-two days remaining."
The same chilling tone she heard when she was dying. The same metal, emotionless voice counting down as she bled out.
She had whispered, What do you want from me?
And she still didn't know the answer nor dd she get a response or explanation for her current predicament. If this thing was anything like the systems she read about in novels, it wasn't acting like one. Systems usually introduced themselves. Gave instructions. Explained why they existed.
But this one?
No introduction.
No explanation.
No helpful message.
Just a countdown. Just the same warning over and over.
It didn't feel friendly.
It didn't even feel neutral.
It felt like something watching her from a distance, waiting for something.
Everything about this morning felt strange, dreamlike and unreal. She kept talking quietly, asking, "What do you want from me?" but no answer came.
She forced herself to stand, even though her legs trembled like her body still remembered the moment it died. She walked to the mirror, not knowing what she expected to see. A scar? A bruise? Some mark proving she had been murdered?
But instead she saw—
A young pretty adorable face. Age : seventeen, And she was too stunned to speak !
She touched her cheek, stunned by her own reflection. Her skin looked smoother. Her eyes looked brighter. And her hair… the way she wore it back then. Messy. Rushed. Teenager-ish.
"This can't be happening," she whispered.
But the mirror wasn't lying.
A knock hit her bedroom door.
"Nyla! You're going to be late!" her mom's voice yelled.
Nyla's knees almost buckled.
Mom is Alive and healthy. Actively Young. Walking around like and doing her work, calling her name the same way she always used to in the mornings before school. The version of her mom before everything went wrong, before the arguments, before the exhaustion that had slowly appeared in her twenties.
Nyla swallowed hard and said, "Coming!"
Her voice cracked. She hoped her mom didn't hear.
Downstairs
The smell of breakfast reached her halfway down, scrambled eggs, toast, and cheap orange juice. Everything looked normal. Everything smelled normal.
Not fake in a way that made her want to run away.Fake in the way that made her want to stay in it longer, like if she didn't move, the moment wouldn't disappear.
It felt unreal, like she was walking through a memory someone had placed in front of her. A scene she recognized, but not fully. Like stepping into an old photograph that suddenly came alive.
Her mom glanced up. "You look pale. Are you okay?"
Nyla forced a small smile. "Just didn't sleep well."
Yeah. That was definitely one way to put it.
She couldn't exactly say:
I died and woke up six years earlier. Also the universe is trying to kill me again.
Her mom would probably call the hospital.
So she ate quietly, trying to act normal while her thoughts ran in circles. She kept looking at her mom's face, memorizing it, scared she would blink and lose her again. She didn't know how much time she'd get with her this time around.
While chewing her toast slowly, one thought kept repeating:
I need a plan. I need answers. I need a way to survive.
When she finished eating, she grabbed her backpack, said goodbye to her mom, and stepped outside.
Walking to school felt… strange
The neighborhood looked exactly like she remembered. Cracked sidewalks. Peeling paint on fences. Random scribbles from kids who used chalk on the pavement. The tiny playground with old swings that squeaked.
Everything looked the same.
Even her shadow looked the same, smaller, thinner, seventeen-year-old her. Not the twenty-three-year-old version with heavier shoulders and darker eyes.
The world hadn't changed at all.
She was the one who didn't fit in.
Cars rushed past. Kids laughed in the distance. People walked their dogs. It was normal, too normal, like nothing in the world had shifted except her.
But she felt watched. She felt followed. Maybe she was becoming paranoid. Maybe coming back really did break something in her mind.
She heard the mechanical voice again.
"Potential incident detected ahead."
Her heart jumped.
Her eyes darted everywhere, left, right, behind her.
Nothing unusual.
Just a dog barking behind a fence.
An old man sweeping his porch.
Then she heard it.
The sound of wheels.
It happened fast.
A cyclist turned the corner at full speed, distracted by his phone, not looking up at all, heading straight toward her.
It was like he couldn't even slow down.
Nyla jumped back just in time as he flew past, missing her by inches. He didn't stop. Didn't apologize. Didn't even notice.
Her phone flashed with a message she didn't touch:
[ACCIDENT #2: AVOIDED.]
[SEVERITY: LOW.]
Her breath shook.
Two?
How was that two?
This cyclist was the second?
Unless the system was also counting the "accident" that killed her when she was twenty-three.
Which would make this her second attempt at dying.
The thought made her stomach sink.
This timeline wasn't waiting.
It wasn't easing her in.
It wasn't slowing down.
It was actively trying to push her back to death.
Nyla tightened her grip on her bag.
"Fine," she whispered. "If you want me dead… you're going to have to try a lot harder."
The school finally came into view, big, familiar, loud. The place where everything used to feel so simple, before life twisted into something she couldn't even remember fully.
She stared at the building.
Somewhere inside, someone was going to kill her in 182 days.
And she had no idea who.