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.