Samuel

Level 115

It started on the water.

A quiet morning, speargun in hand, the kind of silence that only a lake at dawn can offer.

I was on a platform boat, focused, calm… until I wasn’t.

 

Something shifted.

I slipped—or was pulled—into the water.

And that’s when it changed.

 

I didn’t drown.

I didn’t struggle.

Instead, schools of fish—dozens, maybe hundreds—spiraled around me, not in chaos but in choreography.

Their movement became mine.

I flowed through the lake like a current with a pulse, spinning gently in their orbit.

And for a moment…

I breathed underwater.

No panic. Just peace.

 

Then the spinning slowed, and so did I.

The current broke.

I woke up—on a beach, the other side of the lake.

But then, without transition, I was back on the boat.

As if the dream was on a loop.

 

But the last time—

The last time was different.

 

This time, the journey ended in a tunnel.

Dark, industrial, yet strangely clean.

I still held the speargun, like some talisman from another life.

I turned around to look back down the tunnel…

And it began to darken.

 

Something—someone—was coming.

 

Before I could see it clearly, two doors slammed shut.

Above them: a sign.

“Level 115.”

 

And then I woke up.

Breathless.

Weightless.

Like something was trying to tell me…

 

I’m not done yet.

There’s more to go.