Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I've always been haunted by the same question: what's the point of my life?

But no matter how hard I tried to find an answer, I couldn't make head or tail of it. And despite all my efforts not to obsess over this question, a seed of doubt had been deeply sown in my heart, growing alongside me at the same pace – side by side, to put it simply.

The very idea of pondering such things was repulsive to me. It interfered with living a full life, and whenever I managed to forget about it, it would inevitably resurface at the worst possible moment.

And it all accumulated into one big routine called life. I was never a damn philosopher, no. I never saw any use for those people in society. They didn't save people, didn't care for the environment... Though I never did anything like that either. I never really got to live a life, only wasted the last years on dreams and grand plans that were never meant to come true... Nev-er!

All of this led to a terrible feeling catching up with me at a fatal moment in my life – a feeling I desperately wanted to rid myself of, but couldn't.

That feeling was called... disappointment. A word with as many letters as the problems it brings.

Each of us has faced this feeling. When parents are disappointed by your school performance. When your best friend is disappointed you weren't there for them at the most crucial moment. When a random passerby, searching for a glimmer of hope to see a spark of light in people's souls, meets you and is disappointed by you and everyone else for the rest of their life.

We've disappointed many people in life, but what about ourselves? Have you ever felt disappointment directed at yourself? When the only person you don't want to see is you? It seems that acceptance is the last hope of getting rid of this vile feeling?

Well, I did. I felt exactly that. Not a day passed when, thinking of myself, I didn't fleetingly feel disappointment in myself, my efforts, my life. And no matter how much I wanted to deny my involvement in this, I eventually accepted a simple truth – I alone was to blame for everything.

I hated talking about my personal life because there was nothing special about it. Nothing damn outstanding, amazing, or even a single achievement. I excelled at nothing, sadly. This only amplified the disappointment in me tenfold.

I hated this feeling because it could easily lead me to another plague – anger. Anger without proper direction always becomes a huge problem for its owner, as it simply destroys the mind, leaving only forgotten glimmers of former humanity.

My wish would have been to start over with my experience and pitiful shred of knowledge. To begin living a new life in the hope that this time, maybe, I wouldn't screw up, but deep down I still knew it was impossible.

However, one fleeting day, something incredible happened to me – my plea was heard and answered by higher powers, granting me exactly what I had asked for all that time.

But apparently, it was a trap, a deal with the devil that fate itself had orchestrated, because the place I ended up was not at all what I had wanted to see.

In this new world, my life became utterly worthless in my own eyes…

———
**Scene Change**

I never can't remember that day and the chain of events that happened to me before that fateful moment... But I will never forget the day after it all.

For me, it was an unusual experience: to find myself in complete darkness, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, and unable to move even my lips or eyes.

All I had was a tangled, giant ball of scattered thoughts and incredible pain throughout my body that made me want to cry and scream, but alas, nothing escaped my throat.

”Where... am I?” – I somehow managed to connect two simple words in my mind. ”What... is this... place?... What's... wrong... with me?”

I was scared, terribly scared; it would be stupid to deny such a natural thing as fear of the unknown. Horrible thoughts about my sudden demise began to creep into my head, but I couldn't even remember my last day.

Ahh, damn, thinking became harder and harder, the pain became stronger and stronger. As if I was being cut apart and reassembled, and I marveled at how I could still think about anything at all.

And time just kept passing; I even started thinking about things like time again. But was it really important right now? Did concepts like time and space even work in this place?

My inner voice firmly told me "no".

My mind was breaking under the weight of pain and fear. At first, it wasn't so noticeable – just thinking slower, but the further this went, the more convinced I became of the opposite. My memory began to disintegrate; the days of my past life vanished from my head, meaning I was losing what made me *me*.

Of course, deep down, I didn't care about any of it. In my life, I had achieved nothing, hadn't become what I wanted to be, though honestly, I'd lived my whole life without a clue about who I would become in the future.

Nothing special, nothing grand, nothing that set me apart from all the other people. The only thing I was somewhat unique in was my tendency to live not for myself, not for others, not for anything.

I just... existed. Only unlike all the other people who lived for *something*, even if their role was as small as imaginable, fate still used them for its purposes – to help or destroy others – while I, in all my time of existence, did none of that... Well, except one thing: my existence hindered others' lives, and even if no one ever told me directly, I still convinced myself of it.

But despite knowing the consequences of my existence, I would never have dared to end my life faster by jumping from a height or simply hanging myself. I perceived such an empty action as the greatest weakness any living being was capable of.

So fate did it for me; it finally got tired of watching me and doing nothing and simply decided to remove the trash from the chessboard.

I don't know what awaits me next, but I know one thing for sure: I am deeply disappointed in myself. I hated that feeling; it poisoned my soul like venom for so many years, and the knowledge that I suffered in vain because of it made me think about my final thoughts before the end.

”I hate... life…’’ – I made a very long pause before finally finishing what was started by an unforeseen end. ”...but I... won't end... myself... no matter... what…’’ – in a surge of unexpected fury, I clenched my teeth, my mouth opened slightly, and before my mind was completely destroyed, I shouted the last word louder than ever before. ’’NE-VER!’’

Suddenly, a resonant sound echoed throughout the space, growing stronger and stronger over time. This place, whatever it was, was shaking and breaking apart like my body... or whatever I had.

Then, high above, a bright white glow appeared. Despite the vast distance between us, the light was so intense that even squeezing my eyes shut, I risked going blind.

Like a falling star at high speed, the light began to rush down straight towards me. Unable to do anything, it crashed into my body and seemed to absorb itself inside.

The last thing I remember before everything before my eyes began to fade was the strongest, deepest sense of calm washing over my mind – a feeling I had never experienced in life.

The human body began to disintegrate into glowing shreds of light, more like paper. As this happened, something resembling a living black-and-red substance burst through a crack from the depths of the place.

The substance, like a devilish beast, pounced on the glowing paper shreds and also absorbed itself into the largest shred, staining it the same black-and-red color. Only then was the person's existence completely transferred to an entirely different place.

———

**Scene Change**

Strange sounds echoed in the hospital room – as if carved from thick paper – not quite screams of pain, not quite attempts to stifle them. The walls lacked paint, but didn't seem empty: white, black, and sometimes bluish lines created the sensation that the air itself was drawn. Every object – from the lamp to the syringe – seemed cut out of cardboard and carefully glued to reality.

Amidst this scenery, like an animated blueprint, stood an elderly doctor. He had calm eyes, as if outlined with a fine black pen, and his coat draped over his shoulders like an A3 sheet. He carefully held a newborn in his hands, his thin fingers gently cradling the tiny, barely breathing body.

"Hello, child, welcome to our world," he said as if the baby could understand him.

But who could have guessed that this time, the newborn ”would” understand?

”Welcome... to the world?” – Thoughts, still scattered, tangled, like a snapped film reel, managed to form the words. I understood what was said, though my English was poor. But the meaning... was clear. Too clear.

And, honestly, I wish I hadn't known anything, because when I assessed my surroundings, I almost had a stroke.

”Stop! What new world?! Where am I?! What about my world?! MY LIFE?!” – such loud thoughts made my head ache.

"You're quite active," the doctor observed as the child in his hands squirmed weakly but didn't cry. "Clearly a boy."

He handed the child to a nurse – a fragile woman with a paper face folded like modular triangles. She took the infant as if receiving a sheet into her palms and carried him to another room, leaving the doctor alone with the mother.

"Ahh," the doctor sighed deeply, his previous smile vanishing as he looked regretfully at the woman who now lay on the couch like lifeless paper, showing no signs of life. "I'm sorry. I failed you."

Meanwhile, in the next room, the child was carefully placed in one of the cribs, surrounded by other newborns, and left alone.

The nurse was already walking into the corridor, muttering under her breath:

"Mother died. Didn't survive childbirth... Who she was – unknown, nothing about the father either. The child's fate is decided – orphanage."

And meanwhile, our unfortunate hero was trying to grasp the futility of his situation.

”Why am I small again? Where have I ended up? What the hell was that light then? Why is this happening to me?!” – I tried to hold myself together, but it was futile when your nervous system was poorly developed.

I was silent, but spasms, barely noticeable, passed over my face. Lips didn't cry, and there were no tears – only breathing and mute horror.

”What about death? What was supposed to come next? Where... are my past days? My existence?.. Could it really be true – I died? And now... just reassembled... somewhere else?”

A very heavy, large thought struck my head, terrifying me. The moment I realized it, my mind emptied completely; anger and indignation vanished, leaving only a bitter "nothing."

”So, everything I experienced before... everything I suffered, everything I learned, everything I lost... was all in vain?”

My tiny body froze. My face became calm – the kind of calm only masks possess. But beneath it seethed a silent, painful ocean.

”My former life vanished... just like the meaning of this new one. Everything that defined me... is gone. If I am no longer me… then why do I still exist?”

This thought barely whispered even inside my head, but its sharpness echoed with a crunch somewhere inside me. It struck not as a question, but as a verdict.

”Life has no meaning. Because it simply became worthless in an instant…”

After that, the boy thought no more. Cruel reality had dealt a treacherous blow when he was at his most vulnerable.

And now he was closer than ever to unraveling the question that had tormented him throughout his past life.

———

**Scene Change**

A year passed.

Three hundred and sixty-five days since I appeared in this world – a world where everything seems built from graph paper and ink lines. In that time, much changed... though, to be honest, almost nothing changed.

My body grew just a little, as it should at this age. But my mind... it remained the same. Older than this paper flesh. Worn out. Burdened with memories of a life now hard to call significant in any way.

I still don't know why I ended up here. I don't know who orchestrated this reboot or what price I'll yet have to pay for it. But one thing I understood clearly:
everything I once found meaningful turned out to be blurred, like ink on wet paper.

The orphanage was damp and empty. High ceilings, lined wallpaper, windows without glass – just empty rectangles through which a gray, faded sky peered. Colors here weren't pigments but shades of charcoal: white, black, a faint bluish tint, sometimes a dull yellow from old lamps.

Children laughed. Children played. Children hugged. But it all felt like... like a stage play in which I had received neither a role nor a ticket.

I sat by the window. Watched the wind rustle the thin paper trees. Occasionally, birds flew between them – also paper, with black dot-eyes and overly precise wings.

”Why strive here, when it can all be destroyed by a single gust – as easily as my past?”

Inside me, there was no anger. Not anymore. Only a thick, viscous disappointment remained. The kind that slowly drips down consciousness like an ink drop on damp paper.

”I am nothing again. Became no one. Needed by no one. Even in this, new world... I became emptiness.”

The orphanage had its own rules. Some children quickly found friends. Others – found families. Sometimes they even laughed sincerely. But not me.

I didn't make friends – didn't want to. Or couldn't. Or, more likely, I simply wasn't given the chance. I was avoided – adults with strained smiles, nannies casting cold glances, children who seemed to sense that someone sat beside them... someone far too alien.

”Someone like me shouldn't have appeared here. A mistake. A glitch. A crumpled sheet, accidentally not thrown in the trash.”

In this world, I am utterly alone. No one needs me, not even this strange world woven as if from paper and devoid of the many colors I remembered from my past life... No, not like that. From now on, I'll call it my "past existence," not "past life," for the latter holds no meaning.

So, those colors I remembered from my past existence aren't here. They exist, they didn't disappear, but there are few of them, and in most cases, they're pale, replaced by either the black or white of the paper. And despite everything in this world, including all living creatures, being made of paper, here this simple material has become the foundation of the entire universe.

And, I'm certainly not one to talk about beauty out loud, but this world seems even more alive to me than my previous... Ahem, my past existence.

"Children! FOOD! Drop your idiot games now and march to the tables while I'm still kind!" – the nanny's piercing voice scraped against the ears like a rusty nail on wood.

The children scrambled up at once, running in a race. Those who couldn't walk were scooped up and carried. No one carried me.

"If you wanna eat, walk yourself! And don't think of dawdling, I've seen you walk. Quite confidently too, you little wretch!" – the same woman threw out, not even bothering with a name.

I stood up slowly, not taking my eyes off the window.

Clouds in the sky. Dark, inky, as if someone had spilled ink on the backdrop. Rain was coming soon, maybe even a thunderstorm.

”How you annoy me,” I thought, distracted from gazing at the beautiful dark clouds outside. ”I do have a name, you know.”

Of course, I had one. It was given to me in my past existence. Here, for some reason, I don't have one. Just called "kid," "that one," "son of a bitch," "freak."

And even if someone decided to give me a new name here, I would protest immediately and firmly declare another.

”My name is Magomed... Just Magomed. My mind is nineteen years old, my body is one.”

This is my story of living in a world where everything is paper. Where everything looks beautiful but tears easily. And where even the life given to you from above might just be a new page in someone else's album.

Chapter Text

My name is Magomed… Just Magomed. My mind is twenty-one years old, but my body is only three.

As I mentioned, three years have passed since that fateful day when higher powers reassembled me in a new place, in a different body, without my consent. Not much has changed I’ve just grown a bit and learned a little more about this angular world.

Here, paper plays a fundamental role. Everything around me is made of it: walls, floors, furniture even the air seems dusted with the finest layer of paper particles. But this isn’t the simple, fragile paper I remember from before. It can be hard as stone, soft as down, and, most incredibly, alive like the creatures that rustle with every movement.

At first, it was strange to think of myself as a "living sheet of paper." It felt like the slightest touch might tear me to shreds. But in reality, I could feel my body just as clearly as in my past… well, my past existence. Damn, it’s hard to avoid that word.

If I had to describe this world in simple terms, I’d say: *A world woven from living paper.* But I won’t dwell on philosophy I’m no guru, and I’ve always considered such musings a waste of time.

My "new" existence follows someone else’s script. I wake up to the sharp melody of a mechanical alarm clock such a fragile little thing, yet it blares mercilessly. I open my eyes, and there it is again: the paper reality. Corridors, one of which houses my orphanage, with narrow transparent windows and heavy blinds blocking out the sky.

Breakfast white porridge, steaming cold vapor, and slices of paper well, bread, with specks of real grain magically hidden inside. I have to eat fast the nanny’s metronome voice calls us to the dining hall.

Then, the whole day is spent sitting with other kids, listening to their nonsense. This is the part I hate most. Kill me and reassemble me all over again, but I refuse to interact with these little idiots!

Heh, at least my sense of humor stayed intact.

I don’t like talking to children. Their endless chatter is like sheets of paper fluttering in still air lots of noise, zero meaning. The caretakers aren’t any better. Some are scared of me, others annoyed. Funny how people made of the same paper can’t stand me.

Where was I? Ah, right—the daily routine! In the evening, they herd us into rooms like cattle, lock the doors, and leave us to fate. I’ve never been in an orphanage before, let alone an American one, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t how you’re supposed to care for orphans.

And so it goes, over and over. While the others cling to some shred of hope for a better life, I never had a chance not from the start, maybe not even before it.

No one wants to play with me, let alone talk. The kids either glance at me with empty eyes or just walk past like I’m invisible. Sometimes, if I approach someone, they either run away or worse start crying. And I hate the sound of children crying.

My socialization issues don’t stop with the kids. The caretakers and nannies are just as bad no, worse. Some can barely tolerate me, others openly despise me. And I have no idea why.

———

**Scene Change**

Today, like always, after breakfast I hid behind the bookshelves, where old albums with faded illustrations gather dust. There, in the silence, I try to remember the old world. But the paper floor creaks underfoot, and I’m dragged back to the common area where the worst part begins.

"Hey, you little freak, when are you gonna learn to talk?!"

A shrill, grating voice yanked me from my thoughts. Like a single sour note ruining a beautiful melody.

I looked up from my hands lately, I’ve been staring at them a lot. White sheets of paper. Sometimes, I remember a different pair, a different color.

Kneeling in front of me was that caretaker, the one who hated me for no reason. At least, no reason I could think of. She held a children’s book with letters and pictures of animals whose names started with each one.

The look she gave me her irritated face made it clear she wanted to strangle me right then and there. Probably only the law (and the risk of prison) stopped her.

"I’ve spent almost a year trying to drag your rotting brain out of that thick skull and make it work," she hissed through clenched teeth.

“Wow,”I thought sarcastically. “A whole year resisting the urge to choke me? Impressive. You must drink enough booze to make a sewer smell sweet.”

"And you still refuse to put in even a drop of effort…"

I looked up. Her eyes two black dots on a paper face burned with impatience.

“You want my respect? Then do me a favor: fuck off and let me exist in peace!”

"Be a good boy and at least say the first letter in this damn book!" She was shouting now.

I rolled my eyes and turned away. My usual move ignore her until she gives up and tries again another day.

But this time, things didn’t go so smoothly.

"You little shit!"

A heavy hand cracked against my left cheek *smack!* the sound sharp and final.

My fragile body toppled sideways. My left hand instinctively flew to my burning cheek, and my eyes widened in disbelief.

This bitch actually hit a defenseless child? How dare she?

Then again, I expected something like this sooner or later, I thought, still clutching my face as the furious caretaker raged on.

"You familyless brat! Thought you could play games with me? Like I wouldn’t notice you mocking me?!" She didn’t care if anyone intervened. No one would dare even the other caretakers feared her. "From the moment you showed up here, I knew you understood everything. And you’ve proved it again and again! You’re too smart for a kid but too stupid if you think you’ll get away with it, you little devil!"

She loomed over me, and for a second, it seemed like she’d walk away. But what happened next? No one expected it.

**THUD!**

A kick to the gut like I was a ragdoll. Spit flew from my mouth along with a pained groan, my eyes blown wide in shock.

She actually did it.

I skidded back a few feet, landing on my stomach, trembling. Was I okay? Did something break?

"Disgusting, stupid, ugly bastard. Fatherless trash. Worthless freak. That’s all you are remember that. You’ve got no name. Your parents abandoned you. They never loved you."

The monster in human form smiled.

I gasped for air, pain making it hard to focus. Her words dug deep. I wanted to scream, cry, beg her to stop but something inside me refused.

"What? Nothing to say?" The taunting didn’t stop. No one expected the mute boy to defend himself.

But today, someone had had enough. Someone who’d left his past behind but kept something important.

"G-Go… t-to hell… y-you b-bitch," I forced out through the pain, glaring at her.

She froze, crouched in front of me.

"What did you… just say?!"

With effort, I pushed myself onto my knees, crossed my small hands, and spoke loud and clear:

"Y-You h-heard me." My voice wavered, but the words came. "I w-won’t… stay quiet… l-let you c-call me… those awful n-names."

It was hard so hard to speak after so long. Logically, I shouldn’t have been able to. But somehow, I did.

"Since when do you get to make demands?" Her glare could’ve drilled through my skull. "Give me one good reason."

"I… c-can… t-talk," I strained, forcing my jaw and tongue to cooperate. "I h-have rights… I h-have a v-voice… I h-have…"

"You have NOTHING! Absolutely NOTHING! You don’t even have a NAME! You’re just…"

"I HAVE A NAME!" I screamed, fury burning through the stutter. "Only I get to name myself and I CHOOSE IT! My name is MAGOMED, and it’ll stay with me until the end of time! And NO ONE can change that!"

Silence. The only sound was my ragged breathing.

“I did it. I took back my name. Now I won’t stay silent. Now…”

"PFFT—HAHAHAHAHA!"

A shrill, mocking laugh cut through the air. The caretaker doubled over, clutching her stomach, wiping tears from her eyes.

"What’s so funny?!" I demanded.

"Magomed? THAT’S your name?! Oh, that’s even worse than anything I called you! You picked that ugly thing yourself, and now you’re stuck with it! HAHAHAHA!"

My name became their new target. And that hurt more than any insult.

I hadn’t expected such a low blow. But the worst came when the other kids and caretakers joined in, laughing at me, at my name at everything.

Magomed’s head spun. Somewhere deep in his skull, a terrible pain pulsed, drowning out all rational thought.

"I hate… all of you."

**CRACK.**

In the deepest, most distant part of his mind the first fracture formed. And no one knew what it would do to the boy.

Chapter Text

My name is Magomed… Just Magomed. My mind is twenty-three years old, and my body is five years old.

Five years… Exactly that much time has passed since that fateful day. And, to be honest, I never could have imagined that I’d live to such an age in this new world.

It exists, doesn’t it? Or am I dreaming all of this?

Be that as it may – I still haven’t gained anything good from this existence. I am an orphan needed by no one, lonely and silent, drifting further away from people with each passing day. I have neither friends nor anyone to lean on. With every sunrise, I grow more disappointed, deeper and deeper, as though I’m drowning in a bottomless void.

It’s deeply… disheartening. Even to the point that I want to shed a couple of tears and start hiccupping.

But none of that ever comes out of me. Not once, not a single time, despite the pain and disappointment that time after time burn every last drop of humanity from me—never a single tear.

At first, it didn’t bother me. But one day I overheard the caregivers quietly discussing this fact:

– The child who’s endured so much… why doesn’t he cry?

– There should be a storm raging inside him…

One would think that a small child whom this world has tormented so mercilessly and continues to torment throughout my entire existence would have already shed a sea of tears, yet nothing of the sort happened.

It got to the point that they even examined me—more precisely, my eyes and tear ducts. An unpleasant procedure, honestly; who enjoys a bright light shoved right into their eyes?

What did those examinations yield? Almost nothing. “Completely healthy,” that was my diagnosis but only if you speak of my physical condition. And if you factor in my psychological state, I’m afraid my mind has completely gone off the rails.

At some point, I caught one thought among the jumble: what if I simply don’t want to cry? What if all my feelings and emotions have actually been dulled so deeply that it shows on the outside?

I’m certainly no philosopher. I hate those daydreamers who chew on meanings they pull from thin air. But, damn it, I’d be a liar if I said I’d never been interested in human psychology.

Psychology in itself is a very complex and unfathomable thing; it’s hard to understand and explain, and sometimes the hardest thing is accepting that the human psyche plays one of the key roles in the mechanism called “the soul.”

And in essence, psychology can become a true weapon in the hands of an experienced wielder. If a surgeon knows where and how to cut with a knife to kill a person faster, a person who understands psychology can not twitch a single muscle and still morally destroy another human being.

And yet today’s discussion isn’t about any of that. Of course, psychology still plays an important role here, but I want to tell you not how fascinating it is, but how unstable it is.

It’s foolish to deny the fact that every event in our li…damn it. In our existence, every event, even the smallest and most unnoticed, influences how we continue to develop as individuals.

For example, in my past existence I experienced quite a few tragic events that completely restructured my heart, my soul my everything. And unfortunately, I remember most of them vividly. In this world, they’ve multiplied a hundredfold in such a short time.

If before I could smile broadly, and the fire in my heart still burned somehow, then a certain series of events began gradually erasing the remnants of my former self and turning me into absolute “nothingness.”

Everything in this world has its limit.
Pain does.
Time does.
The human soul does – especially.

People are inherently weak. Their bodies aren’t eternal; there’s too much out there that can harm or kill them. And the soul is nothing but the last line of defense, yet sometimes it’s precisely the soul that collapses and decays while the body remains intact.

And I… I accepted long ago that my role is nothing.

But sometimes, sometimes I still wanted to be someone.

Anyone.

Someone that someone would notice.

Not a hero.

Not a chosen one.

But just… alive.

Like a secondary character who suddenly became a bit important, interesting… needed.

That was until I found myself, for the first time, caught up in an endless cycle of horror and nightmare, where the main and only act of the entire show was displaying my suffering straight from a genuine frozen hell with its monsters from the netherworld.

A show of pain. One actor. One audience.

**Scene Change **

One overcast day in the very same colorless orphanage, I inadvertently found myself in the storage room. Was it pure coincidence? Perhaps not, since I often wandered into various rooms and spaces throughout the orphanage in search of new cozy corners where I could be alone in silence and peace.

And it seems that this latest adventure yielded an unusual result: before me stood old cabinets. They were partly broken and heavily coated with dust, but they served their purpose well holding on their wooden shelves old broken toys and a pile of crumpled stationery that nobody used and yet for some reason nobody was willing to throw away completely.

– Someone’s been here before me, – I said, touching my chin with my left hand like a detective in an English novel, arriving at an unexpected deduction.

How did I come to that? It was simple: stacks of waste paper and other items had been pushed aside to make an improvised passage. The passage led behind the right-hand cabinet. To be honest, I wasn’t particularly curious about what lay beyond, but curiosity won out, and carefully wedging myself between two stacks of dusty old books, I made my way to the cabinet in question and peered around its corner.

What I saw made me raise an eyebrow in question.

– Seriously? And all for this?

There, on the wall, was a clean sheet of foil. It was pinned to the wall with a tacker and, apparently, served as an improvised mirror for the other children, who would pull faces in front of it not funny ones, at least not to me and laugh at the top of their lungs.

A privilege I no longer possess.

Magomed silently stepped closer to the wall, his hand slowly reaching out to touch the foil. His gaze fixed on his reflection slightly distorted, but still recognizable.

Skin white as paper, even pale. Hair black, short, reminiscent of Bruce Lee’s hairstyle. No taller than an ordinary chair, with a fragile build befitting a five-year-old child.

But what struck me most were my eyes. They had been dark in my past existence, but now they were pitch black, and seeing them in the reflection I felt… emptiness. No vivid or noticeable emotion, no bright intent just two black dots.

Magomed stared at his reflection without a word, neither moving nor averting his gaze from the foil. Questions about himself lodged firmly in his mind.

– Is this… me? – the question was equal parts rhetorical and philosophical. A note of distrust and detachment echoed in it. – Or only what they’ve turned me into?

Black circles in place of eyes, a pale paper face, not a single genuine feature. Just an outline. A silhouette.

I ran my hand across my cheek, then along the paper foil. It rustled softly at the touch, and the reflection barely trembled.

– Do I really exist… or am I only dreaming this?

For reasons unknown to him, he tore the foil from the wall and carelessly stuffed it into his pocket. Such a simple thing was utterly useless in his situation, but within it he saw the only reflection that had neither fled from him nor averted its gaze.

Magomed carefully retraced his steps between the dusty piles of waste paper and nimbly exited the room, leaving no trace of his presence behind.

And he did not care if the children noticed the missing foil. If they had managed to pin it once, they could do so a second time. And they certainly would not be punished for stealing such an item, unlike Magomed. For him, merely being there already invited considerable trouble.

**Scene Change**

Day passed in a flash I didn’t even notice when I found myself lying in my little bed alongside the other orphans, waiting for my body to drift off to sleep.

“I wonder what tomorrow will be like?” that familiar thought ran through my mind. “Will anything change in this existence?”

I had no real hopes for my daydreams. I hardly had any dreams at all. My fierce desire to leave this orphanage felt more like a survival instinct anywhere but here than a fantasy. And a loving family? It was hard to imagine anyone accepting and loving me as I am.

But who am I, really? What kind of person am I? Calling myself “ordinary” would be a lie: my mind is twenty-three years old, yet I’m trapped in a child’s body. I’m far from normal an extraordinary being, albeit a broken one.

If you asked me to choose a label, it would probably be “egoist.” Someone so loathing the very concept of his own existence that he doesn’t want to live on for the sake of nothing. An egoist who has deemed his own feelings and emotions unwanted byproducts of nature’s design, and now crushes them deep within his mind so they won’t interfere with his already grueling journey.

A person desperate to fling off this terrible burden of existence but powerless to do so with his own hands.

“All right, all right, I’m dwelling on this again,” I muttered, taking a deep breath. The thoughts in my head didn’t vanish entirely, but they became less oppressive. “Tomorrow is a new day. Who knows how it’ll start this time?” I forced a crooked, ugly smile the kind people make in the midst of a stroke.

I closed my eyes and, inhaling deeply, stilled every muscle in my body to keep distractions at bay.

I didn’t expect a good night’s rest; dreams rarely visited me. When they did, they were so strange and fleeting that I couldn’t remember a single detail afterward. Otherwise, I dreamed of absolutely nothing again, emptiness. For me, sleep always split into two moments: falling asleep and waking up. What happened in between didn’t matter no dreams to speak of meant no real rest for my mind, even if my body managed to recover.

It was the same problem I’d brought with me from my past existence.

I didn’t notice exactly when Morpheus claimed me. I only recall the tenacious grip of my weary consciousness, dragged somewhere far below.

Lying motionless was hard. The bed felt alien too soft, too yielding. And the air was bitterly cold, the wind relentless.

Convinced someone in the orphanage was playing a prank on me in my sleep, I shot my eyes open, expecting to see those smug childish faces. But there was nothing of the sort.

Instead, my gaze met a snow-whitened sky, veiled by clouds, and the bare branches of tall trees dusted with snow.

“What the hell is this?” I muttered, whipping my head back and forth. Having landed on a mound of snow, my mind snapped fully awake, and a dagger of cold raced down my spine. “It’s freezing!”

With a startled cry, I leapt up, flailing my arms to brush the snow off my back, legs, and the rest of my body. I grabbed my shoulders, my body shaking from the cold, while the wind howled mercilessly around me.

But where was I exactly?

“All right, all right,” I whispered, scanning my surroundings. I saw countless trees and endless snow. “So I’m in some frozen forest where it’s freezing cold. Is this a lucid dream? Never before in my memory has this happened to me.”

I strained my mind, picturing warm clothes exactly what my poor body needed hoping that because this was a dream, especially a lucid one, I could will them into existence.

“Damn it, why isn’t it working?” I shivered as the cold gnawed at me, my small body powerless to fend it off. I’d been walking barefoot in the snow for three minutes straight, and I’d long since lost feeling in my feet. “Better keep moving.”

So I did. I picked the least remarkable path and pressed on. My body trembled violently; rubbing my arms against my chest brought no comfort. And my feet were numb, as if I no longer bore them.

“I don’t get it. This is supposed to be my ultra-realistic dream of a snowy forest so why does it feel so real?”

I trudged alongside the trees, with no landmark to guide me. The sky was blanketed by white clouds so thick it felt like a giant sheet of paper overhead, completely hiding the sun. And the ground under the snow was invisible: I feared slipping into a hidden pit—or something far worse.

“I hope I don’t run into any wild animals,” I muttered, climbing onto a small rock. “In this body I’d be like a lamb to the wolves real tender meat…”

CRACK!

A sickening crack echoed as I landed on something hard. My body froze; my eyes narrowed. I slowly looked down and drew my left foot back from the object I’d stepped on.

It was a bone. A simple ordinary bone nothing terrifying, I’d tell myself. But there was one small problem…

It was… a damned human skull. And I’d kicked off its lower jaw with my foot.

I stumbled backward, my back colliding with the trunk of a huge tree. My hands scrabbled at its bark as I tried to push away and escape.

“What the hell is a corpse doing in my dream?!” I shouted under my breath, more in bewilderment than in fear.

In that moment, my hand brushed something soft and wet against the tree behind me. Too afraid to turn around, I began to feel along the surface, trying to figure out what it was.

“It feels like… flesh?” I raised an eyebrow questioningly.

Drip!

A drop fell onto my head.

Drip, drip, drip!

Droplet after droplet splashed down, one after another, and then more and more.

The mysterious liquid quietly trickled from my head down my forehead, then, tickling my nose slightly, fell onto the snow.

I cautiously ran my hand across my face, smearing the liquid over it, and stared in shock at the long-unseen crimson color.

“This… this…,” I began, then stopped myself and looked up only to see something I would have been better off never seeing.

Above me, pinned on the sharp branches of a tree, hung the corpse of a person, presumably a teenager. The sight was gruesome: body parts crudely severed from one another and literally impaled on the limbs. Intestines dangled calmly from a torn-open abdomen, fluttering in the wind. Nearby lay detached arms and legs, skeletal and partially gnawed. The pièce de résistance was the head: its left eye had fallen from the socket and hung by a thread, the right was gone, leaving a gaping hollow. The mouth and entire facial expression were frozen in pure terror, pain, and regret at ever having ended up there.

“Heh-heh… heh…,” I laughed nervously as I looked at the mutilated corpse. “So that’s where the blood’s coming from. But now I have another question: I’m not actually going to meet the one who did this in my own dream, am I?”

I was very curious why my dream had taken the form of a snowy forest with someone’s corpse sprawled in a tree. Shouldn’t blood in this world be black like ink? And why did the sensations here feel so real? What would happen to me next?

The answer to that very question did not take long to arrive.

Suddenly, an overwhelming fear seized me so intense that, without knowing where or in what form the danger lay, I could not move even a finger. My body trembled involuntarily like a trembling aspen leaf caught in a damn powerful hurricane. The cold felt so penetrating that I could literally feel my heart freezing in my chest.

Footsteps sounded behind me and only made matters worse. Cold sweat began to stream down my forehead faster, mingling with the already-dried blood. With every new step of this stranger behind me, my panic grew.

“Don’t move, don’t move, don’t move!” I screamed mentally who knew, maybe it would help.

After a long minute of waiting in primal paralysis, the footsteps behind me ceased but that meant only one thing: the stranger was now right behind me. I could hear and even feel that loud, warm breath on the back of my neck.

Magomed could not see the stranger out of the corner of his eye, though to be honest, he wasn’t all that interested in how this unknown being looked.

Was it even human?

Meanwhile, the creature human or animal, it did not matter watched the trembling boy with mild curiosity. Its head tilted to one side, questions in its eyes: Who was this boy? What was he doing here, in this forest, at such a time and in such attire? And why did he smell of something other than the blood of its recent victim?

The unknown lured it on, but hunger and excitement were stronger.

In anticipation, the creature began to open its mouth wide, rows of the sharpest teeth gleaming.

For a moment, Magomed simply stood there, trembling with fear of the unknown. The idea of running hadn’t even crossed his mind.

But when the warm breath on the back of his neck grew stronger, and a muffled growl joined it, something deep within his consciousness snapped awake and gave him one single thought.

“You… gotta… RUN!”

Magomed threw himself into motion, his legs springing from the snow and carrying his fragile body at top speed into the depths of the forest.

Toward a place where there would be no risk of harm or death.

The creature watched silently as its little prey ran full tilt deeper into the woods, unaware. For a few seconds, its face was impassive, then a terrifying, toothy grin spread across it.

It decided to toy with its victim.

“I need to wake up! Yes, that’s it! It’s only a dream! None of this is real!” I kept telling myself as I passed yet another tree in a desperate attempt to escape the monster.

I had no idea where I was running. The first priority was clear: put distance between me and my pursuer.

Running through the snow was extremely difficult. My legs felt like they were sinking, my lungs burned under the strain placed on such a small body, and the cold not only froze me but drained me of almost all strength. Black spots danced before my eyes; I could hear my own ragged breathing in my ears. The pain in my side was unbearable. My throat burned from inhaling so much frigid air.

But I kept running as fast as I could. My fear of the unknown creature was too great, yet I was too weak.

And as proof of my thought, the creature darted past me. It was so fast I barely noticed until one of its clawed hands slammed into my back with such force that I flew aside like a rag doll.

“Ow, that pain so real!” I cried, blood spilling from the corner of my mouth. A long groan escaped me.

I landed on sharp stones that tumbled down the slope beneath my weight, carrying my body with them. I struck countless jagged rocks; they ripped at my thin flesh, leaving abrasions and small wounds.

At the end of that brief “adventure” downhill, I found myself on thick ice either a lake or a river, I couldn’t tell.

“Oh, fuck,” I swore, my bones aching, especially in my back, my entire body sore. “What is happening here?!”

Slowly, I got up on my knees, my hands pressed into the cold ice. I was so cold I could feel the warmth of the cold a very bad sign.

I spat the blood that had pooled in my mouth; it flowed onto the ice like ink and dripped from my lips. The unpleasant taste made me mentally roll my eyes.

For me, blood in my mouth was as commonplace as drinking water.

“It seems I actually managed to escape … well, I have no idea whom I was running from.”

I whip my head back and forth, and seeing no one nearby, I exhale in relief. I slip my hand into my pocket and pull out the folded foil.

“I’m surprised it’s here too,” I murmur, genuinely thinking I might be inside the most realistic dream of all my existences.

I unfold the foil and peer at my distorted reflection, silently taking stock: my face is scratched and my lips are stained with blood, there’s a small wound on my chest, and my tank top is torn.

“Well, I certainly don’t look handsome,” I mutter with bitter irony. “At least my legs are intact… or are they busted too?”

And there it is again the same paralyzing fear. My hands tremble uncontrollably, my breath comes in ragged gasps, and my thoughts tangle into one great knot of dread.

It’s come for me, and right now it’s standing behind my back.

As before, I don’t dare turn my head. But this time I get one idea: I grip the edges of the foil firmly, tilt it just so, and shift it a bit to the left.

In the warped reflection I see thin black legs far too long for a human. Beside them hang long black arms with huge, razor-sharp fingers, easily capable of seizing my small head and crushing it like a melon.

I can’t see any more through the foil. I drop the useless scrap and slowly turn my head back, keeping my gaze fixed on the ground so I won’t meet that unknown stare too soon.

I swallow loudly the lump in my throat, and lifting my head feels like forcing gears that have seized. My breath steams in the frigid air, blurring the figure at first but the moment I fully raise my eyes, I stop breathing altogether.

Before me stands a humanoid creature. Its towering height at least ten feet hits me first. Beside it, I feel as insignificant as an ant, and not even metaphorically.

Next, I notice its hair: long, straight… and orange. Its skin is neither white nor black, but shockingly light like people from my past existence. This completely baffles me. Do colored beings exist here after all? Or is my dream mocking me?

Then I take in its clothing: a black T-shirt and blue jeans cut off at mid-thigh, its joints bound with three thick bandages.

Finally, I study its face. Its bangs hide half of it, and the right eye is similarly obscured. But the left eye jet black, as black as the eyes of the people I once knew stares at me without blinking.

I don’t know what compelled me to do such a foolish thing, but I force myself forward.

“Um… hi?” I greet it with a forced smile and even manage a half-hearted wave of my right hand though the cold has numbed it almost completely. “What’s… your name, miste…”

I intend to say “mister,” but at the last moment, as I glance away, I notice something I’d missed: the creature’s chest is distinctly feminine quite pronounced, actually. I can’t help but wonder what size it might be.

“What the hell, Magomed?!” I scold myself silently, aching to slap myself across the face. “Your body’s only five years old puberty’s years away! Or is it because of my adult mind that I think this in the middle of a conversation?!”

“Ahem… Miss or Mrs. What’s… your name?” I force out, trying to recover. “My name is… Magomed,” I add uncertainly.

The woman tilts her head and continues drilling into me with that inscrutable gaze still not uttering a word.

Inside her mind, countless questions swirl: Who is this boy? Where did he come from? What is he doing here? Why does he want my name? And why is his own name so strange? Most of all: why is there something about him that draws me in, something deeply unusual for a human?

She had no intention of speaking to him and certainly wouldn’t answer his question. To her, he was just another victim, albeit one with a curious allure.

Seeing her tilt her head and maintain that silent stare, I cursed myself.

“Idiot. It’s just an imaginary being conjured by your twisted dream! What name could there be? Why am I even talking to her?!”

But for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to be rude or hostile I wasn’t sure how my dream would have her react.

Heh, and I thought this was just a normal dream.

“Listen, I don’t mean to cut our so-called ‘lengthy’ conversation short,” I gagged out, finding courage. “But do you know when this dream ends?”

In response, she straightened and glanced upward. I followed her gaze, but there was nothing there.

She was simply weighing my words and finding them amusing. Did this little boy really believe all of this was a dream? Was he even sane?

No, he hadn’t been sane for years.

Perhaps something had happened to him before we met, inspiring that strange hope behind his question. I had no idea what to think.

Then a devious idea crossed my mind: If he truly thought this was just a dream, why not turn it into his worst nightmare?

“I must have misread her,” I thought after a moment, staring at the sky. “What about simply… leaving?”

“I hate to disappoint you… um, milady, but I’m… afraid I must go… for now.”

I tried to stand, but she placed her right hand on my left shoulder. I stared at it in terror its enormous size, the sharp nails my gaze traveled up the limb to her face.

A wide smile spread across her lips, teeth razor-sharp, dripping that same red blood, not black.

Panic surged through me and I tried to pull away but claws sank into my shoulder, and what happened next I will never forget.

CRACK!

With a single swift motion, she tore an entire arm from my body. Blood spurted from the wound like a fountain, forming an inky puddle beneath me. A searing pain, electric and total, ripped through every millimeter of my being.

“A-A-A-A-A!” I screamed louder than ever before. I collapsed onto my right side, my remaining arm darting to the gaping wound to stem the bleeding.

“IT HURTS! IT HURTS! WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH?!” I screamed inside, though my shriek echoed the agony outside.

As for my left arm, she was devouring it with those blade-sharp teeth gnawing the flesh, snapping the tiny bones, and spitting them onto the snow.

All the while, she kept that monstrous grin, never taking her eyes off me. Each bite, each torn piece, every broken bone felt like a spectacle made just for me then she’d fill her belly.

“You… you…” I managed to choke out. The bleeding slowed only slightly, and my consciousness began to slip. ''Monster.''

For her, it was a feast, not just a meal. Even though a five-year-old’s flesh is scant and sinewy, its taste outmatched all her other victims’.

That flavor whatever it was made her taste buds sing with ecstasy. It was intoxicating, arousing.

I breathed heavily, lost between dream and reality. Everything felt too real, too true, yet common sense and logic insisted it couldn’t be.

But what is happening here? Why have I suddenly found myself in this frozen nightmare with a monster devouring my body?

Speaking of the monster it had by now already eaten every scrap of flesh from my arm and carelessly tossed the remaining bones aside. Its gaze had changed, too: the woman’s pupils narrowed like a cat’s, and she lunged at me like a wild beast.

– No—no—no—no! – I screamed, but it did no good. Those same teeth clamped down on my right leg, crushing muscle fibers and vessels until another river of black ink gushed out.

I screamed again with renewed force no words, no warning just a howl ripping through my throat, shredding my vocal cords. Halfway through, I croaked, coughing my own blood onto the ice.

Meanwhile, the predator clenched its jaws tighter around my leg, snapping my femur in an instant and tearing the artery to shreds.

With one savage jerk of its head, my leg tore free from my body. Blood sprayed even more fiercely, but I could no longer scream my vocal cords had been destroyed. All that remained was a raspy cough and rivers of blood from my mouth.

– Why is this happening to me?! – I thought, but my reflection of thought was cut short by another wave of pain. I was on the verge of losing consciousness.

The woman tossed the severed limb aside. A broad smile split her bloodstained face. Her teeth, blackened by ink, didn’t deter her what mattered was the exquisite taste of her victim’s flesh. She hadn’t tasted anything so sumptuous in ages. Now she hungered for more what lay hidden deep inside this fragile body.

With grim resolve, she seized the mutilated boy with both hands one on his remaining leg, the other around his neck.

– Let go! Let me go! – I thrashed in her grip, a futile bid to delay my death.

She paused briefly, confusion flickering in her eye. How could someone so gravely wounded, with so much blood lost, remain conscious, let alone struggle?

– Crunch! – her thoughts vanished as quickly as they came. She sank her teeth into my chest and ripped free ribs and part of my torso. She spat out the useless fragments, her gaze fixed on her prize.

– Could it… be the end? – my last thought slipped out as that monster tore my heart from my body.

Life finally deserted me this time for good. In her hand, she held my still-beating heart. Its muffled thump charmed and calmed her in a way she couldn’t explain.

What she certainly did not expect to see was a single red spot in the very center of the organ amid the black-and-white gore. Astonished, she blinked, shook her head, and looked again.

The red spot was gone, as if it had never existed.

Fen that was the creature’s name decided not to puzzle herself with the flood of questions racing through her mind. With a graceful toss, she sent the heart soaring upward, then caught it in her mouth, savoring that wonderful flesh with delight.

Finally, she turned to regard the corpse she had left behind, studying its posthumous expression. There was nothing there no horror, no fear as if life had carried away every emotion that could once have been etched on that face.

Fen turned away slowly. No matter how much she might have yearned for another taste of such exquisite meat, there was none left and it would be a long time before she found anything that fine again.

She would miss this strangely named human but such thoughts were a luxury. She needed to move to another part of the forest if she wanted to avoid stumbling into the flea-ridden bitch or the other bitch in the ushanka with a rifle.

These three could not stand the mere presence of one another.

**Scene Change **

Awakening was like a gunshot to the head just as sudden and painful.

Magomed jolted upright in bed, breathing heavily as cold sweat dripped from his face. He clutched at his cheeks, felt his arms and legs, and finally pressed a hand to his chest and froze.

The familiar heartbeat in his breast proved that he was still here, still alive.

“What a terrible dream I just had…” I say with a stutter, turning my head to the clock and calendar.

It’s now five a.m., and today’s date is April 22. Yesterday was April 21 – my birthday.

“And once again the very worst happens on this day,” I thought bitterly as I wrapped my arms around my shoulders.

It was a dream, just a dream, but everything that had happened there looked and felt so real that my heart pounded wildly from fear and the terror I’d experienced.

I’m not going back there, am I?

''Crack!” – another fracture in the boy’s consciousness, one that went unnoticed.

Magomed sits up; his legs feel like cotton soaked in lead, his throat burns with dryness, and his back aches for some reason.

“I hope I don’t go back to that place.”

He didn't even realize that that time was the first, but not the last...

Chapter Text

My name is Magomed… just Magomed. My mind is twenty-four years old, but my body is six.

Imagine that: I’ve existed in this strange world for a full six years now. My attempts to convince myself it’s nothing but an elaborate dream fell apart long ago. It’s my personal record and who knows how many more years it will last. But for now… no change is in sight. And that’s killing me.

What’s changed in another year? The answer’s simple nothing. Again, damn it, nothing at all! I’m still a pathetic orphan nobody needs not even myself. I have no respect for the past, no pleasure in the present, and no hope for the future. Everything, quite literally everything, is slipping toward me unleashing my frustration on the innocent pages of this diary once more.

By the way, I’ve been keeping it since I was three. Though I only started writing down the events of my “existence” from the beginning by memory. My recall has been adult-like since birth. It’s probably one of the few “gifts” from my reconstruction. I remember every little detail as if it happened yesterday. Surprising? Yes. Exhausting? Absolutely.

Why did I even start this diary? I haven’t figured that out yet. In my last life, I never even considered keeping something like this. It seemed pointless I wasn’t trying to capture myself in words, I didn’t create emotional anchors, I didn’t write anything meaningful.

Life is too short to appreciate it after it ends.

In three years, I’ve filled countless pages I write tiny, concise entries, but there’s still way too much. It’s no longer a diary; it’s almost an autobiography. Though, in truth, it reads more like the story of some… half-broken character whose author couldn’t even be bothered to make him interesting.

And honestly, I don’t like the plot of this story one bit so far.

Sometimes, especially when my inner weather is darker than the sky outside, I lodge complaints with fate. I want to ask, “What the hell?” That usually ends up on the very page you saw above: a rant, pain, disappointment and powerless irritation poured into ink.

Why do I write as if I’m dedicating this to someone else? I’m just used to referring to myself in the third person. My whole life… fuck, I’ll cross that word out. My entire EXISTENCE feels like the tale of a third-rate character nobody wants to read about!

Deep down, I desperately hope no one besides me will ever pick up this diary and read it. It would shock any reader to learn that the author of this book came from another reality and was rebuilt here as an infant.

Although who knows maybe this world is still unreal, and I’m actually trapped in my own personal nightmare?

A memory of another nightmare one from a year ago suddenly jolted into my mind. My hands instinctively clutched at my shoulders as if shielding against cold. The pain of memory lives in the body I know that now for certain.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no I really have no way to tell dream from reality.

But I can definitely recognize a waking nightmare, and one of those happened to me today…

———
**Scene Change **

I was standing at the edge of the courtyard, where paper maples swayed in a light breeze like foreign feathers, and I heard the same chorus of children’s voices. I sensed joy in the air, but fatigue and irritation pressed on my heart.

Ahead of me loomed the elementary school building: leaf-shaped windows outlined with black ink, doors folded into neat paper creases. Across the façade someone had painted “School No. 7” in big letters, a harbinger of the inevitable nightmare.

All around me, kids my age clustered happily, hyperactive, each eager to rush inside this unknown place and discover every tiny detail of what awaited them there.

“Elementary school,” the thought slithered through my mind.

I lifted my gaze from the asphalt to the school, and instantly a wave of nausea welled up so hard that tears threatened.

“Why?” I asked myself. “Why?”

I craved an answer, demanded an answer, but nobody was going to give me one. That only made things worse.

“In my last existence… I already suffered through all this school bullshit… went through all eleven grades and graduated high school,” my little fists clenched, I ground my teeth harder, my gaze pure rage. “SO WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO STAND THROUGH THIS AGAIN?!”

No one around me reacted they couldn’t hear these words spoken in my mind. I panted, my eyes darted across the asphalt, the cars, the poles anything but that damn building.

“What did I do to deserve this?! What?! You think I didn’t suffer enough the first time?!” I addressed the unseen culprit behind this game that only aims to torture me. “Again these lessons… again these homework assignments!” I brought my hands in front of me and, with each hated task I counted, flung them forward sharply, over and over. “Those fucking exams… Oh, fuck me,” I yanked at my hair, remembering something. “And those goddamn projects and presentations I can’t dodge! Somebody please send me to prison I’d feel safer there!”

I’m sure nearly anyone in my place would have reacted the same way. After all, nobody really wants to relive that school crap.

And screw all those stories where heroes face that experience with optimism. Their authors are idiots who don’t think clearly. They blindly believe that if their characters were real, they’d act exactly as they scripted.

But I’m not some character in someone else’s story. I have no blockade against free thoughts or actions I’m free to do as I please, though consequences will follow.

“Eh, nothing to be done, I’ll have to accept it,” my rage shifted into resignation. After all, education is crucial for human development and can’t be skipped. “I wonder what it’ll be like studying here, in America?”

My interest was fueled by a firm resolve to find out firsthand. The first time I went to school was in Russia it was already familiar and mundane to me there. But America… I could only vaguely imagine it from all the American movies and other things I’d seen in my past life.

Weighing the pros and cons, the pros won. I still didn’t accept fate’s cruelty, but for the first time in a long while, I met it not with indifference but with genuine intrigue.

“Well then, school of the country that sings so much about freedom,” I said with sarcasm. “Show me what makes you different from that other country with its old ideology.” The last part was said without sarcasm, though I felt no special affection for it.

———
**Scene Change**

I stepped into the lobby of School No. 7 and even the air smelled different here: a mix of old cardboard and cheap plastic. The huge hall’s walls were plastered with first-graders’ drawings: “I love Mommy,” “My Family.” I allowed myself a faint, nearly imperceptible smile. Seeing how lovingly and sincerely these children created their pictures sparked a rare warmth in my chest.

This was so unlike me: I never thought of other people, yet somehow I found myself wanting those kids to be happy.

“Maybe my adult mind reacts properly,” I muttered, recognizing the thought.

I didn’t consider this “discovery” very important, but I was glad to know that mentally I wasn’t a child.

And that mismatch between body and mind weighed heavily on me.

Under the colorful “WELCOME” banners, a crowd of children had gathered. They jostled, shouted, swapped stickers on their pencil cases. I trembled beneath dozens of lively paper eyes: there was no room here for detachment.

In the cloakroom, I removed my coat black, looking like flat paper (because it literally was) with a small stain on the right sleeve from yesterday’s lunch.

“Those little bastards tried to dump the whole soup on my head,” I muttered, recalling yesterday’s orphanage drama as I hung my coat on the hook and strode down the corridor toward my classroom.

The room inside was overwhelmingly noisy. Kids screamed nonstop, ran, jumped; someone fell and started crying.

My right eye began to twitch my adult mind couldn’t tolerate this.

Scanning the chaos, I spotted one empty seat next to a boy sitting quietly. Without hesitation, I crossed the battlefield and sat beside him. My new seatmate held out his hand to shake, but I shifted away by an inch.

“Not today,” I decided firmly.

The boy withdrew his hand and returned to his sheet, his smile dimming slightly. Did I feel sorry for him? Not at all. I wasn’t here to make friends did I even need them?

“Would I be useful to friends?” I asked myself, shaking my head. “Definitely not. I’m too worthless for anyone.”

The bell rang I was still seated at my gray, paper-thin desk, polished smooth and etched with scratches. The teacher entered: a stern lady in glasses carrying a strict-looking workbook. She greeted us, perched on her rolling stool, and opened the book:

“Good morning, class. Today we start with the alphabet. ‘A’ is for Apple, ‘B’ is for Butterfly…”

Immediately the classroom buzzed: colored pencils scratched across notebook pages. Kids drew fruits, letters, and primitive pictures. I sighed so deeply that even the paper leaves on the classroom window fluttered more vigorously.

“I could close my eyes and copy the letter ‘A’ a million times. Even that’s not interesting.”

I glanced at the board. In bold black letters, today’s schedule was laid out:

1) Morning Circle
2) Phonics (A–Z)
3) Snack Time
4) Math Stations
5) Recess
6) Art & Coloring
7) Lunch
8) Story Time
9) Dismissal

Looking at that list, only one thought crossed my mind:

“Fuck, what the hell is this?”

The teacher moved down the rows, peeking into notebooks, quietly correcting mistakes. She reached me, peered over her glasses at my blank page:

“Magomed,” she said, her eyebrows knitting strangely, then quickly returning to normal, “would you like to help your neighbor with the letter ‘A’?”

I shook my head without a word and placed my pencil down carefully. She sighed and moved on.

“If he wants to achieve anything in the future, he’ll have to build it with his own hands,” she whispered under her breath as she passed.

Next, she handed everyone a small card with their name and a picture. I took mine under “Magomed” was a bright orange. Clever: instantly identifying who was “A is for Apple.”

“Please, stand and say your name,” she prompted, smiling at me.

I stood, balled my hands into fists in my pockets, and quietly spoke:

“Magomed.”

Some kids giggled; someone muttered “cool name.” I fought the urge to think, I don’t give a damn about your apples.

The recess bell rang, brightening a minute of despair. I rose, stretched, and stepped toward the classroom door.

On the other side, laughter and chatter erupted. But for me another long road of lessons and meaningless pages I’d already read.

And deep inside, I knew that this road was only beginning.

“Get out of the way!” a rude shoulder shoved me. I lost my footing and fell onto the creaking corridor floor.

The sharp sting reminded me of a bruise forming on my arm as I thought, “Who’s this little fuck?”

In front of me was a boy my age, slightly taller and broader, striding like a medieval lord through student traffic, pushing aside anyone who dared defy him.

I rose slowly, brushed dirt and dust from my jeans, and stared at the back of his retreating figure.

“I hope a car hits him somewhere,” I thought with dead seriousness.

The thought didn’t scare me, but it did disturb me—how could I wish that on someone I’d just met?

I rubbed my face wearily, trying to quell the deep irritation threatening to burst out in a less-than-ideal way.

“He’d better lose that nasty habit soon, or it’ll catch up to him,” I muttered.

The bell rang again recess was over, time for the next lesson. I exhaled deeply, staring at the gleaming floor, feeling my fists clench and my teeth grit.

“Damn you for a long time,” I whispered.

———
**Scene Change**

The door to the room swung open with a soft creak, and I stepped inside like a traveler broken by the wind physically spent and morally drained.

“Fucking school,” I muttered, closing the door behind me and hurling my backpack into the far corner. “I’m so sick of it.”

My hands struggled up to my shirt collar, snagging on the buttons now and then. For a moment I stood there, pressing my chest against the fabric until I finally freed my outer layer and hung it over the back of the chair with the rest of my things.

“I don’t ever want to go back there,” I said aloud, feeling exhaustion seep into every muscle.

Magomed collapsed onto the bed, clutching a pillow. His eyelids drooped, and he surrendered to the long-awaited oblivion, slipping into Morpheus’s realm.

———
**Scene Change**

He fell into sleep as into a bottomless chasm silent, dark, devoid of anything to hold onto. In an instant, he found himself in a deathly cold forest where even the air seemed to rebel against life. Frost pressed in from all sides like an invisible beast, and every breath turned into a painful stab his lungs filling with shards of ice.

The snow around him gleamed with a mute threat. There was no sun, no moon only a ghostly glow, as if the forest itself emitted light from its roots, pale as death. The trees bare, twisted, gnarled stood as grim witnesses to his return. Their branches, like bleached-out joints, creaked and groaned when the icy, wheezing wind tore through them.

Magomed felt the flesh beneath his clothes almost immediately go numb. Suddenly, as if possessed, he shot to his feet, shook off the snow, and anxiously looked around.

“No, no, no! Not again!”

In that moment he realized one thing: he was back in the very snow-covered forest where, a year ago, he had met his end at the hands of a cruel demon.

“Wake up, damn you, wake up!” he tried to jolt himself awake by slapping his cheeks. But it did nothing but make the cold sting even more. “Why am I here again?”

He tried to scream, was about to open his mouth, but slammed his hands over it, eyes wide with terror.

“No I can’t, or it will come for me again,” a primal fear froze his fragile body more surely than the frost.

Magomed wasn’t even sure the creature would come back. He wasn’t certain it would ever appear again at all.

Only the memory of that first nightmare when they ripped off his arm and leg, then tore his heart from his chest made his knees buckle and sent him crashing to his face, saved from a full fall only by the hand he’d thrust out in frantic defense.

“I can’t stay here,” he decided firmly. “Or I’ll just freeze to death.”

He rose, brushed the snow off his legs, and trudged forward with effort. A dreadful premonition gnawed at him: he might indeed encounter that creature again, or worse someone else.

The unknown is always more terrifying.

He kept walking not because he knew the way, but because standing still meant dying faster. His legs obeyed him only grudgingly, his joints squeaked under the strain, his fingers were numb, and the pain of frostbite gradually gave way to pure numbness. It was frightening not to feel pain proof the cold had already won.

Along the way, he wondered what it all meant. It couldn’t be mere coincidence Magomed had never fully believed in the random-chance model of the universe concocted by shortsighted people.

Nothing in this world was accidental so what did his nightmare signify? Why did his one unforgettable dream always take the form of that snowy forest? What was its purpose?

“Ugh!” Magomed spat in irritation. “Here I go cosplaying some damn philosopher again!”

He walked and walked; the forest hardly changed only the individual trees differed slightly, sometimes with a bit more snow or a bit less, but otherwise identical.

“Maybe I should turn back?” he thought, glancing behind. The footprints he’d left were already filling with snow, and those farther back were gone entirely so there was no way back. “Great, I don’t know where I’m going anymore, and now I have no clue where I started. Could anything be better?”

He took a few more steps, and then a dull pain stabbed his chest, as though ethereal hands had gripped his heart and forcibly stopped its beating.

The boy toppled face-first into the snow; his vision darkened, his breath grew weaker by the second, and the sense of his body began to fade.

“How… cold,” he thought, pain lacing the words.

And once again he ceased to exist in that place only this time the suffering dragged on, killing him in its own slow way.

The last echoes of his life vanished from his eyes they went glassy, expressing nothing.

The wind rose, the snow buried his body, and so he remained hidden forever in that forest.

———
**Scene Change **

Waking felt like surfacing for air from the icy depths an unbearably unpleasant experience.

He shot upright as though breaking through the surface of a frozen lake. The room around him was the same dim light, a cotton blanket, his journal on the table. But cold sweat beaded on his brow, and his breath came in heavy gasps, as if he’d not yet escaped the frozen realm.

“It was just a nightmare… again.”

Magomed sat on the edge of the bed, arms wrapped around his trembling, chilled body. He shivered as if he were still caught in that scene.

“But how? It’s only a dream. Why does it feel so real? Or am I confusing dream and reality? Maybe right now is the real nightmare, and that place was real? Will this repeat again and again?”

“Crack!” Another fissure in his subconscious, count unknown.

Magomed didn’t want to return there for many reasons, but if he had to, he hoped the nightmare wouldn’t recur more than once a year as it had until now.

– Yet from that very day, its frequency rose to a frightening level.

Chapter Text

My name is Magomed… just Magomed. My mind is twenty-six years old, but my body is eight.

I’m a system glitch, a meld of mature intellect and child’s flesh. It feels as if I wasn’t born by nature’s hand but carved from someone else’s design, hastily shaped, tossed into this world, and left to rot.

Where should I begin today’s entry? Pouring out my soul over life’s injustice again? How many times can I do that? This isn’t a confession anymore but a broken record stuck on the word “pain.”

Yes, the children’s home still won’t have me they recoil from me as if I were leprosy. At school, I’m the target, the butt of jokes, their nimble shadow they delight in tripping. I’m not human; I’m a caricature of one.

Often I ask myself: “When will something change in my existence?” I mean will I ever have a good moment? Something beautiful, something healthy that poses no danger to my body or mind? Will these happy times ever come?

Definitely not! Happy times?! Ha! For me?! Is this a joke? Does the world want to mock me even more?!

I’m tired of enduring this! My chances for a better fate shrink with every damned day I spend in this strange world born from the madness of a perverse mind. There is NOTHING here that could make me love it with all my heart!

And my soul has already suffered enough over all these years! The first mortal blow came the moment I arrived. On my “birthday,” they rebuilt me replacing my old body with this one. And the price of that reconstruction was her life. The woman who carried me died because of ME. I didn’t even realize the danger before I stole an innocent life! I shattered another family, destroyed the happiness of a father who never imagined he’d become a victim of my rebirth in this world. Every time I recall that day, I want to rip out my own heart and tear it to pieces! My heart and soul must be rotten through and through, since I committed that atrocity at the very start of my journey. And for what?! SO THAT I WOULD SUFFER UNTIL THE END OF MY DAYS…

– Enough! – two fists slammed down on the table, making the diary, the pen, and other items leap into the air.

Magomed sat at the table, his hands clenched into fists on its surface. He breathed heavily, nostrils flaring with each gasp. His body trembled with fury, pain, despair, and disappointment four feelings that have haunted him through every moment of this new existence.

If you look closely at his eyes, locked onto the hateful words in his diary, you’ll see the capillaries more pronounced than normal. They spiderweb across the white of his eyes like dark cracks, breaking it into countless fragments. Even if that change is subtle and requires effort to spot, the bags under his eyes will draw any observer’s attention.

Magomed clasped his hands behind his head and lowered his gaze. His stare, dead and vacant, fixed on the tiled floor of his room, as if the walls themselves pressed in on his mind more tightly than his skull. Deep inside, he wanted to scream with all his might, regardless of his throat, but his voice always failed to surface.

– Inhale… exhale… inhale… exhale…– he began a breathing exercise to calm his nerves. He’d never had much faith in this method, considering it silly and overrated, but it almost always helped him catch his breath.

With a sharp inhale, Magomed straightened. Looking at his diary and the last words he’d poured his rage into, he felt a stab of guilt in his chest.

– I snapped at an innocent page again, he thought, and to atone he picked up the pen once more, paused for five seconds, then set his idea to paper.

I… am so sorry for that outburst, I write, barely containing the tremor in my hand. I didn’t mean to pour anger onto an innocent page. It’s just… I slide closer to the abyss every day.

Magomed rubbed his tired eyes with his left hand and blinked slowly but forcefully a couple of times, as if trying to clear the haze before him.

And then there’s my sleep problem. At first it was simple: black emptiness. No dreams. I’d fall asleep–wake up–and between those points was darkness, without time or meaning. In that regard, nothing has changed since my previous existence in the past world.

Suddenly Magomed swallowed hard. His right hand trembled slightly, leaving a few stray ink lines on the paper. Cold sweat formed on his brow, which he wiped away with his free hand before continuing to write.

But then nightmares of a snow-covered forest began to visit me. A terrifying, mysterious place that first greeted me two years ago, when I turned five. That time, a huge monster ended my nightmare in the cruelest way imaginable.

Memories from two years past flashed before my eyes so vividly, as if it had happened just now.

Immediately a crushing pressure gripped my throat, as if a giant clawed paw had seized me by the neck.

After that, the “empty dreams” returned. I was ready to leave that nightmare buried in the catacombs of my consciousness, hoping I’d never find myself there again… But a year later, the nightmare returned.

That time it wasn’t as bad as before. I didn’t meet the monster. Only the cold and the forest’s dead silence. I wandered for who knows how long in an undefined direction, trying not to die too soon, but in the end I froze to death and woke up as if pulled from icy water at the last moment.

Magomed set down his pen and pressed his right palm over his heart. Feeling it still beat gave him a genuine sense of calm.

Until the killing cold gripped him again.

Releasing his heart, Magomed picked up the pen and resumed filling his diary.

I thought it was a coincidence. After all, how likely is it for the same nightmare to repeat itself twice? Especially since I met my end more gently than last time, by cold rather than by the monster’s teeth. Even if this nightmare came back again, it wouldn’t be for at least another year and I could survive that.

Instantly, the boy’s face grew serious, as if a thin shadow had fallen across it. His lips and nose blurred into obscurity, and even his eyes seemed to recede into darkness.

With an effort comparable to moving an entire house, he slowly glided the pen across the paper, recording his final confessions of the day.

But the forest didn’t go away. It kept returning. At first infrequently. Then more often. Sometimes every other day. Sometimes twice in one day. And it often included HER the same woman who killed me the first time. The monster. It didn’t just come. It played. It knew me like no one else. It knew when I would be afraid, when I would give up. It waited for exactly that.

And it goes on to this day. Last week I woke drenched in sweat from that nightmare and couldn’t fall back asleep. I felt that if I tried, I’d immediately be back in that place, doomed either to die of cold in the forest or to face that same monster.

In two years, I’ve had this nightmare at least a hundred times, and in a certain percentage of them that same woman who killed me the first time appears. She either shows up almost at my point of arrival or hunts me down after a while, though not always immediately.

Sometimes the monster plays an elaborate game with me, offering a fleeting hope of survival.

I didn’t try to fight it what’s the point? A human can’t defeat a monster, especially someone like me. I’m weak from lack of proper training and constant hunger and sleep deprivation; I can’t devise brilliant plans on the fly or even in peace. What’s worse, I’ve lost the resolve I once had in my previous life it’s all evaporated, leaving only bitter disappointment that destroys my mind day by day.

And I think again… maybe I should end it all quietly, without fuss. Just disappear not for a short time like before, but for good. Vanish like a dream except in this one, I’d never wake up.

Magomed looked at the final lines of his entry, his face darkening with gloom. He clenched the pen and muttered under his breath, anger lacing his words:

– I will not bring myself to cross that threshold with my own hands. Never no way, no how. That’s what only the weakest, most worthless pawns on fate’s chessboard do and I have not been part of its army for a long time.

It was a reminder of the vow he made to himself no one else in that mysterious place where his new, second existence began. And he had not broken it, not even in those strange dreams where they kill him.

But those words rang with uncertainty, as if their author didn’t fully believe them himself. He thought he might falter someday.

Magomed closed his diary and glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand next to his bed. It read 7:30. Time to go to school.

– Damn nightmare with that damned forest, he muttered, rubbing his sleepy eyes.

Today, once again, I woke from the nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep.

–––
**Scene Change**

I opened the school door and stepped into the familiar corridor, where the cold glow of the lights played across the gray floor tiles. The air carried a faint scent of chalk and chipped paint, and muffled shouts and the loud clack of shoes drifted up from the floors below.

– School, school, fucking school, I muttered under my breath, without much rhyme. – Here we meet again, and once more I tell you to fuck off with all my soul.

I’d only taken a step forward, scanning the endless rows of lockers lining both walls, when I slammed into someone with my shoulder. I didn’t even get to say “sorry” before my gaze met the harsh face of a boy my age but a head taller than me.

– Oh shit, I thought, staring at that all-too-familiar face. – Him again.

Dark cropped hair, an oval face, perpetual scowl in his eyes that was Karl, Karl Gallagher, the local school bully who’s fancied himself superior since day one. The same guy who shoved me on the very first day and whom I once wished would get hit by a truck.

– Every time I regret not taking that seriously. What if he actually did get hit? That would’ve saved me a world of trouble.

I looked up at Karl’s face. His eyes flared with malice. He didn’t wait for an apology he grabbed me by the collar with fingers digging into the thin fabric and hauled me against a row of metal lockers.

– Watch where you’re going! he snarled right in my ear.

His grip squeezed my throat, a classic bully move. I saw pure rage in his eyes, the kind reserved for those who believe they have an absolute right to dominate.

– If I were his father, I’d beat him with a belt in a heartbeat. Though, given my inner age, I’d be an okay father figure myself.

Karl yanked me closer until the cold metal of the locker pressed against my back. Then he slapped me under the ribs so hard the air exploded from my lungs and the world jolted, shrinking to the size of a shoebox.

– You little bastard! For my frail, skinny frame, that blow packed a punch.

– Freeze! he spat between his grunts. – Want another?

Blow after blow followed: knee to my side, fist to my chest, then elbow in my gut. With each strike I felt my insides turn inside out, my inner voice screaming in agony. I gasped, my breathing a staccato rhythm, each hit accompanied by a muffled groan I fought desperately to hold back.

For a moment the corridor emptied: classmates pressed against the walls, holding their breath, while the distant thud of a dropped backpack echoed from down the hall. Strangely, in that slowed-down terror every sound squeak of shoes, scrape of metal, the dull crack of bone felt amplified a hundredfold.

Karl shoved me into a locker one last time, and I slid down, my back slamming into the cold metal before I landed on my butt. The locker door clicked shut, shattering the corridor’s order, and my eyes fixed on the narrow vents as if on the last sparks of hope.

He stood over me, reading every frozen bead of sweat and fleck of blood on my lips. His brows knitted, lips curling into a smirk. Then, unsoftened, he stepped back, released me, and strode off down the hall, bulldozing anyone who dared cross his path.

– Lesson’s learned! his voice called from behind the metal ranks.

I stayed lying there, pulse thundering a migraine into my temples while my lungs gulped air in spasms. My hands trembled, my body burned with pain as though a fire raged inside me that no water could quench.

No tears came, no whining followed. I haven’t seen my own tears in eight years, and the pain I felt now paled in comparison to what I endure in my nightmares.

Yet the aftertaste of such a beating lingered. My battered pride wobbled. Being beaten in front of the whole school, powerless to stop it, made me feel humiliated, pathetic, disappointed in myself.

It hurts just as much as the nightmares.

– A pathetic creature barely fit to be called human, I thought, disgusted with myself.

The bell for class rang through the school, students hurried off to lessons but I didn’t move. I just lay there, my hand pressed to my shattered side, listening as the corridor’s sounds returned: someone’s laughter, the tap of shoes, lockers opening and closing.

After a few seconds I gathered what little strength remained and hefted myself to my feet. Every muscle protested, my knees stiff, my arms unresponsive. I glanced at my torn sleeves and the dark patches on my shirt.

Through the roar in my mind one thought broke free:

– Again… again I mean nothing… What do I even have? No, that’s not right: what am I?

I yanked the shredded sleeve back over my shoulder, took a deep breath, clenched my fists, and limped along the lockers, determined to endure every pang of pain. Every cell in my body burned with shame and agony, but ahead lay classes, teachers, and hundreds of indifferent faces.

No one will stop them. No one will protect me, nor do I deserve it. I took a life once, and now I’ll pay for it until the end of my current existence.

–––
**Scene Change**

I sat at my desk in biology class, feeling the wooden chair creak under every shift of weight. The air held a faint scent of formalin and damp leaves the same smell that always dragged me back to my nightmares of the frozen forest. On the walls hung colorful charts: cell structure, an insect’s life cycle, chlorophyll’s light reactions. It all felt impossibly distant from me.

Suddenly the tip of a paper airplane skimmed past my ear and landed softly on my desk. I tightened my grip on my pencil, forcing myself not to look at the pranksters. A quiet tap rang out again–another plane, followed by loud giggles. The kids laughed, pointing at each other, waiting for me to turn around.

I stared into my textbook. The page on plant organs looked like a maze of words with no meaning. The labels “Root,” “Stem,” “Leaf” floated before me, drowned out by laughter growing ever louder. Focusing on these lines was impossible.

Our teacher, a tall woman with deep lines etched into her forehead, strode to her desk and slapped her hand down so sharply the sound cut through the air like a knife. Fear rippled through the class as the slap echoed. But a second later came another soft rustle yet another paper airplane, this one crashing into my shoulder.

“Stupid kids,” I muttered under my breath, rubbing my temples with both thumbs in a vain attempt to ease the pounding headache.

“Magomed!” the teacher’s voice cracked like a whip. I nearly jumped in my seat. “Were you the one throwing paper airplanes?”

Abashed, I pressed my back into the chair and gave her a bewildered look. My mind froze on the question: What is she talking about?

“Me? Throw paper airplanes? Of course not why would I do that?” I answered, expecting logic and understanding.

She stepped closer, her footsteps silent on the floor. Her gaze swept down to my hands an almost-broken pencil on my desk, paper scraps littering the floor beneath.

“Then why is your desk covered in paper bits?” she demanded, poking at the scraps with her pointer. “Are you not busy enough being a child? Or do you think you can turn my lesson into a circus?”

Her tone rang with accusation, as though I were the sworn enemy of order. The kids giggled again, leaning toward each other. I felt blood rush to my face the same fury that, each morning, kindled my hatred for myself.

“Listen to me...” I began, my voice quivering with held-back rage, but she cut me off sharply.

“Sit up straight and be silent. You’ll stay after class; I intend to find out who the real troublemaker is.”

She circled the desks and resumed the lesson without looking my way. Inside me burned a fierce urge to sneak up behind her and strike her in the back of the head, precisely where it would hurt most.

“How could she miss them? Is she blind? Why hire some cataract-riddled old woman to teach? And these fucking assholes...”

«Thwack!» – Another paper airplane embedded itself in my hair, wobbling on the crown of my head. My right hand, trembling, reached up, plucked the ugly paper dart, crushed it into a wad, and dropped it silently onto the desk.

“...bastards,” I exhaled, barely moving my lips, every syllable loaded with anger and a fierce desire to punch someone.

“Magomed!” The teacher’s voice was right beside my ear. I snapped my head toward her.

“How the hell do you do that?!” I blurted, desperate to know her teleportation secret.

She glanced at the crumpled paper ball on my desk, her expression a mix of irritation and calculation.

“Tell me, Magomed: what do you think is the average human lifespan?” she asked, a question so odd for the situation I blinked in surprise.

“How long people live? What’s the point?” I arched a brow, puzzled.

“Just answer. If you actually know anything beyond pranks, that is.”

Her tone dripped ridicule, as if she was about to slap me herself.

“Well… around seventy, maybe seventy-five years on average,” I answered cautiously. “But it depends on the country, healthcare, lifestyle, heredity, and...”

“Wrong,” she snapped. “Not even close. In our world, the average lifespan is one hundred years. Where did you pull your paltry seventy from?”

I blinked twice. One hundred years? In my old world, seventy was normal. Some rare few made it to ninety... but a hundred? And that counted as average?

“It’s hard to imagine how long someone might live in this world,” I thought, but only one question remained on my tongue.

“What’s the point of the question anyway?”

“To remind you that even with a hundred years, people still waste their lives on meaningless rubbish: paper airplanes, gossip, complaints, blame... Remember this: everyone’s life ends. And when it does, it will be too late to regret. So stop turning your life into a garbage heap. Start using it with purpose.”

She turned toward the board and began writing, leaving me sitting as though a nail had just been driven into my skull.

Suddenly I felt unusually quiet too quiet. My head sank, eyes fixed on the desk. Only one thought circled in my mind.

“One hundred years... That’s how long my torment will last.”

I gripped my face with both hands, peering through my fingers at a world as torn and broken as my own spirit. My eyes trembled, the sclera shifting in anxious motion. My breathing grew slightly louder, but not loud enough for anyone else to notice.

Then, in that hushed, crushed state, something happened in my eyes: the capillaries swelled, growing until they nearly filled the white of my eyes.

And just as suddenly, the process halted and receded, everything snapping back into place. But I felt nothing–noticed nothing at all.

–––
**Scene Change**

Late evening. The sky was drawn into a gray shroud, without stars or moon only the dim glow of a lamp by the gate cast yellow pools on the frozen asphalt. Magomed walked slowly toward the orphanage building, his backpack weighing heavily on his shoulders, exhaustion ringing in his chest, mingled with emptiness.

“Damn,” he exhaled, twisting his lips into a half-smile. “They keep the only decent student after class to clean up for everyone… This isn’t punishment anymore; it’s just mockery in full swing.”

He sniffed. A nasty smell lingered in his nostrils a mix of dirty water, dust, harsh cleaning agents, and a faint bitter taste of injustice. His hand moved on its own to his neck: the uniform pinched him, even with the top buttons undone. The fabric clung to his skin like a reminder of the day’s ordeal.

“Home, huh… not so sweet,” he muttered, glancing at the building where he’d spent years, then stepped inside without slowing down.

He crossed the foyer, where a wall clock ticked softly, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The hallway light flickered dimly, as if unsure it would last until morning. Magomed reached his door, opened it quietly, and entered. The room greeted him with darkness and silence. Everything was in its place: the nightstand, the books, the diary on the desk. Yet the air felt heavier, almost viscous.

“Thank tomorrow’s a day off I can sleep in,” he thought, tossing his backpack into the corner and preparing to undress. His fingers paused on the buttons, and he hesitated.

“Screw it. I’ll sleep in my clothes. It’s colder here at night than in a cellar anyway,” he decided, lying down on the bed and slowly closing his eyes.

In the half-dream that followed, the teacher’s words surfaced in his mind about how people in this world live a hundred years. A whole century. And that’s considered the average. He remembered her stern face and the cold phrase that you can’t discard your life like crumpled paper.

“A hundred years,” he whispered. “A hundred years of this clown show?”

A vision formed in his head: himself as a pathetic, frail old man, unwanted and forgotten by everyone. A man too afraid to take another breath for fear of falling to pieces. His life a hollow shell without meaning from the very start. And the end he once craved had only postponed his torment.

That fear burned him from the inside. He didn’t just not want such a fate he hated it. Panically, fiercely, completely.

He, whose existence had been meaningless from the beginning and whose death was supposed to end his suffering only to delay the inevitable and force him to await it in the gruesome agony of a soul screaming in pain and disappointment.

But beneath that avalanche of pain rose another feeling – anger. Anger at being put in these conditions. That someone decided Magomed must endure decades of suffering, disappearing without a trace, without meaning.

“No way. This fucking world can mock me all it wants, but I will never willingly join death!” he thought furiously, flipping onto his back to stare at the ceiling.

His eyes so heavy, the cracked whites bleeding red lines–fixed on the ugly white ceiling. They drifted shut, paused at times, then continued their slow descent until they closed completely.

–––
**Scene Change**

Cold.

Sharp, predatory, almost beastly it pierced him through like a needle in the heart. It carried a sense of intimacy with death itself.

Magomed became aware of his situation. He was lying on the snow in the very forest where he had died so many times before. He wore only his shabby school uniform in which he had fallen asleep. No coat, no scarf, no gloves. Just fabric incapable of protecting him even from a light breeze, let alone the fierce, tearing wind.

“How sick of this I am…” I ground out through clenched teeth. I snapped my eyes open, expecting, as always, to see gray clouds overhead and another flake landing on my face.

But I was met with an entirely different scene one I had never seen before, now revealed in its unfamiliar beauty.

“Huh?” In that simple sound I poured all my confusion and curiosity about what had happened. “What is this supposed to mean?”

I pushed myself into a sitting position and studied the unusual atmosphere: for the first time in my memory, night had fallen on the forest.

There was no sky. Not a trace. Above me was a vast dark patch, as if someone had draped black cloth over the entire cosmos. Not a single star, not the faintest glimmer of light. Only darkness–huge, heavy, almost alive.

I bowed my head and turned it in every direction. Only tall trees greeted me, but in the dark they looked bigger, thicker, scarier–as though they truly lived.

After a moment’s hesitation, I rose to my feet. Picking one direction at random there were no landmarks here anyway I began walking forward. No goal, no confidence, but a desperate resolve not to stay in one place.

“Damn, this is the first time I’ve encountered changes like this, and already it’s freaking me out.”

Wandering through a snowy forest where you always die by frost or by monster was disgusting enough. And now… now I was walking through that same snowy forest at night, where even darkness had become an enemy, and the cold felt sharper, hungrier, deeper. And meeting the monster was terrifying not only because it would kill me, but because I might not even see it. It could be right beside me, and I wouldn’t know until it was too late. It’s ridiculously nerve-wracking.

But there was nothing to do: I had to keep moving through this dangerous place. Of course, I knew exactly how it would end, but even knowing the possible outcome, I refused to surrender and do nothing.

Someone would definitely spout: “You have no choice but to keep going!” I disagree. I believe there is always a choice, even in the most difficult situation.

Whenever it seems there is no good choice or no choice at all you can always change it in a way I always adhere to. And anyone can do the same.

But that’s not the point now. We could talk endlessly about the right to choose, but for now, Magomed is still wandering through the snowy forest at night, trying not to go insane from paranoia born of fear.

“How on earth am I supposed to see or distinguish anything in this darkness?” Magomed asked himself aloud.

The boy’s hands gripped his shoulders tightly. His body trembled, the soul-chilling wind easily penetrating the thin fabric of his uniform, gradually turning living flesh into a lifeless stone.

But not only the cold made him shake. Fear accompanied him, too. He already suffered from paranoia at the prospect of finding himself in this nightmare again, and now he was roaming the forest in the dead of night, barely able to see, the snow drifting across his face. The trees seemed alive, as if they could drop their branches at any moment and grab him, doing the worst things imaginable.

Every step through this pounding snow, every howl of wind between the trees, every thought that somewhere in the depths of the wood someone silently watched, waited, ready to strike at the most unexpected moment–everything made Magomed wish to wake up as quickly as possible without resorting to any extreme measures.

“I hope I don’t meet that monster here,” Magomed tried to console himself through the pain and cold. “But the prospect of freezing to death again isn’t exactly appealing. Besides, I…”

Magomed suddenly stumbled, and for a reason: not far off, between the tree crowns, something gleamed in his eyes.

Blinking, he looked that way again. He could have sworn he saw fire.

“Fire… fire…” Magomed thought for a few seconds. Then it was as if a switch flipped in his head. “FIRE!”

His legs carried him into a run on their own. The cold retreated. I couldn’t feel it anymore. Hope ignited inside me. Numbness, pain, fatigue–all vanished. Only the drive to reach the source of light remained.

With each step, the glow of the flames drew closer, sharper, brighter, and I was certain I could hear the crackle of wood.

After what in this dreadful place felt like an eternity, Magomed reached his destination: a small clearing in the center of which stood a bonfire burning thick logs with strong, roaring flames.

“Finally…” I exhaled, nearly collapsing beside it, holding out my hands to the warmth. “For once… just a little warmth…”

It was hard to put into words that sense of relief. Feeling warmth again after so long was indescribably wonderful.

We’ll overlook the warmth from my own blood being shed.

“I wonder who lit this fire?” I asked myself, then snorted. “What a stupid question. This is my dream! And if this place were real, what kind of idiot would come here?”

While I warmed myself by the fire, I glanced around the clearing. Pristine snow, the bonfire, piles of snow, tall trees–and a snowman shaped like a cat. Wait–what?

“Hold on! A snowman too?”

Yes. There, by the fire, stood… a snowman. Small, crudely formed. Its head shaped like a cat’s, two thin sticks on top like ears. It simply stood beside the flames… and was slowly melting.

“And where the hell did you come from?” I said, squinting.

Of course, it didn’t answer. Only its head slowly slid down from its body–and with a comical «plop» fell back into the snow.

At such a funny, endearing sight, I couldn’t help but laugh a little. Something amusing at last, after so much gloom and rage.

Stepping back from the fire, I scanned the clearing again. In the light of the glowing embers, the snow looked so pure, so bright, I wanted to scoop it in my hands and blow it like stardust.

But when I turned my head once more, my gaze froze on snow far off from me. On it were bloody streaks and long, thin grooves leading into the dark forest.

As though someone wounded had been dragged there by force.

I fell to one knee and ran my fingers over the pattern: the crystals melted under my skin’s warmth, mixing with the crimson trail. My heart pounded wildly, and a thought raced through my mind:

“Who was the one wounded here?”

Silence answered. And what answer could there be in this nightmare where he always came upon bodies hanged, mutilated either on the ground or strung from the trees?

While I spun countless theories in my head, the wind suddenly howled. At first only the sound sharpened, but then I felt snowflakes slam into the back of my neck, and the cold dug deeper into my bones.

The campfire’s flames trembled violently, then flickered and died. My eyes widened in terror and surprise. I leapt to my feet and sprinted toward the embers.

“No, no, no-o-o!” I screamed, arms outstretched in desperation to save the only source of warmth.

Every hope vanished the moment the fire went dark. A second later, I collapsed to my knees in front of the hearth, hands shaking.

I was too late. There was no fire to give me the heat I so desperately needed, and I didn’t know what to do next.

“What now? What do I do? Where do I go? When will this nightmare finally end?” I asked myself, though the questions never made it past my lips.

The trees loomed over me, their branches reaching toward me like grasping fingers. The wind roared, the darkness thickened, and I saw no escape, no plan.

“CRACK!”–a branch snapped horribly loud behind me, coming from the innermost shadows of the clearing where that crimson trail had vanished into the forest.

My pulse slammed at my temples. I forced myself upright and turned toward the noise. A lump rose in my throat, choking off my breath until each inhale rasped through my lungs.

“Who’s there?” I called into the blackness.

Only the wind howled back, shaking the boughs until they swayed like living things.

For a moment I thought I’d imagined it that perhaps the branch had broken on its own. I clung to that hope, unwilling to face whatever had caused the racket.

“CRACK!”–another branch gave way. Then the dull scrape of claws on bark, as though something was scaling a tree.

“Damn it! There really is someone here!” I thought, backing up step by slow step.

Whoever it was couldn’t possibly be a friend. In this cursed nightmare, no friendly creature ever appeared–and the few that might have been always lay dead by the time I arrived.

“It’s her! It has to be her!” Panic lodged in my chest, though I hid it behind a calm facade.

I knew there was no escaping her. She was faster, stronger, more agile everything I’d learned the first time we met. Once again I was the prey, and she the hunter in her deadly game. Every hunt ended the same: I never got away.

In this game, I was doomed to lose and she was destined to win.

The crunch of heavy footsteps grew louder. A massive shape pushed through the trees, snapping low branches in its path. It had to walk in deliberate steps, breaking the wood as it passed.

“And once more I’m doomed to fail,” I murmured, lowering my head and letting my arms fall in surrender to my impending fate.

Anger flared inside me so fierce that I clenched my fists until my nails cut into my skinny palms, drawing thin lines of blood.

“To hell with this!” I ground my teeth and, in a sudden resolve, hurled myself forward at full speed. “If there’s a chance to save myself, I’ll take it!”

The beast did not welcome my flight. Pairs of cold eyes glowed from the darkness, and then it charged, claws raking the bark behind it as it pursued.

My legs carried my fragile form through the snow and wind. Muscles screamed, breath shortened, but stopping never occurred to me.

“I need to hide… but where?!” I shouted to myself, scanning desperately for a refuge. Only spindly trees stood around me in sparse clusters–no hiding place at all.

Behind me, the monster’s pursuit grew louder: a guttural growl and labored snorts, as though it were breathing through its nose a strange sound for the creature I knew.

Suddenly, a crack and a grinding of splintering wood snapped behind me. I tried to dodge, but it was too late: sharp branches jabbed into my right leg, threatening to topple me.

“Fuck, that hurts!” I thought as a wave of burning pain shot through me.

I pressed on, hobbling in a painful limp, clenching my teeth against each fiery jab, the right side of my body aflame. A thin stream of blood seeped from the wound, marking the snow with a dark trail for my hunter to follow without fail.

The snow underfoot turned looser, the trees grew thinner, and the wind continued its chase, whispering icy threats in my ear. I felt my chest tighten, strength drain away.

Then suddenly the ground vanished beneath my feet.

I skidded to a halt, nearly losing my balance. Before me yawned a gaping chasm–dark and bottomless as the maw of a beast. Below were only shadows and a few distant treetops, jutting up like jagged needles.

I took two steps back and spun around. What I saw painted pure terror across my face.

Between the trunks, a figure emerged from the darkness. I couldn’t make out any features–only a tall, unnaturally elongated silhouette, as if the night itself had taken form. It advanced slowly, confidently, unhurried, fully aware its prey was trapped.

“No…” I whispered, backing toward the edge. “No, no, no…”

The creature closed in, and I stumbled backward, forgetting one crucial fact.

I took another step my foot slipped.

My body lurched backward. Balance lost, I teetered on the brink, then tipped over into the abyss. At the last instant, my fingers clawed at a jagged rock and held me fast.

“Hold on… hold on…” I whispered, but the snow under my hand crumbled. My fingers slipped, flesh tearing.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, fate found a new way to hammer me.

Footsteps. The heavy pads of the beast pursuing me. I could hear them so close–any second I’d face the predator eye to eye.

Yet that moment never came. My grip faltered, and I didn’t even have time to scream before my body plunged downward.

Magomed’s body slipped from the edge of the precipice and tumbled downward like a marionette whose string had been cut. The fall was brutal: he crashed into dry branches that first sprang beneath his weight, then snapped with a crack like a fragile spine, driving their jagged splinters into his flesh. Each branch was a whip, each splinter a searing needle, each scratch a burning brand. He fell through an eternity of pain until his face smashed into the bark of a low sapling. The tree knocked him off his feet, ripping the skin from his left eye and leaving an exposed nerve and a spreading dark pool of blood.

When he finally rolled off the snowbank, he slid heavily over the loose drifts, his body flung against a charred rock. A sinister silence reigned, broken only by his ragged wheeze and the bitter rustle of his torn shirt in the damp wind. His wounds burned so fiercely he wanted to scream and weep at once:

“It burns, it burns, IT’S BURN-UR-UR-URNING!” he howled, clutching his left eye. Almost no skin remained around it; black flesh and veins lay bare, and blood flowed from the wound like spilled ink.

In that state, it would have been wiser to lie still and avoid any drastic moves. With injuries like these, walking too much could only make things worse.

“C’mon… c’mo-o-on!” With a grunt and Herculean effort, Magomed levered himself upright, bracing one hand against a tree. His left eye was matted in blood, its capillaries burst, reduced to a crude black dot with a barely visible pupil.

It hurt–terribly, unbearably. He wanted to shout and cry, yet something deep within urged him onward, and he obeyed.

He descended the slope slowly, leaning on every uneven patch of ground as though it might betray him at any moment. The snow underfoot was loose, patches iced over, and each step threatened a fresh tumble. The wind died down, but the air remained thick and cold, as if the forest itself exhaled a frozen hush.

Before him stood a grim tableau: at the center, a colossal tree, coal-black and scarred by time, towering over the rest like an ancient sentinel watching all who dared pass. Around it grew slender, smaller pines, their branches weighted with fresh snow, their trunks bent by the burden of centuries.

Soon he reached another clearing another grove. He didn’t even know how to name these places in his nightmare. He only knew that here the snow was thinner, large boulders lay strewn about, and the ground itself was carpeted with smaller stones. There was no way out, none at all. He was trapped in this circle of frozen hell, awaiting his doom.

“I can’t… go on,” Magomed whispered as he sank to his knees. He had neither strength nor will to move further. His world had split in two: one half as it always was, the other far darker, stained by the blood flowing from the eye wound.

I expected this nightmare to end at the hands of the forest’s deadly cold. But behind me a branch snapped again, followed by the rasp of claws against bark.

The monster was here, trailing my inky blood like a hound, eager to finish me off as brutally as possible.

“Who’s there? Show yourself!” Magomed sprang to his feet. Rage born of the day’s horrors spilled from his words and expression. “I know you’re there! Come out and look me in the eye! I’m not running anymore!”

As if summoned, the sky suddenly cleared. Clouds parted to reveal the moon, whose silver light lit the clearing and sharpened his vision.

In that moment, a black silhouette flickered among the trunks–a predatory shadow, twisted and dark as night itself. It emerged from beneath the boughs and froze half a meter away. Under the branches glowed two icy embers: cold, pitiless eyes.

Magomed held the gaze, returning their stare. He was still afraid but determined not to yield.

Slowly, from the heart of darkness and tangle of branches, a massive figure stepped forward. Its appearance made Magomed blink in astonishment and question everything.

“What the…” he squinted in confusion. “Who are you?”

Before him stood a creature quite unlike the tall redheaded woman he’d grown used to. This being was tall, too, though ten to fifteen centimeters shorter than the first.

It resembled a wolf with a humanoid body covered in fur, walking upright on two legs.

The stranger had long, tousled black hair and a pair of black ears atop its head. Its face was hidden, its mouth bound by bandages. It wore a black coat lined with down, and its chest was wrapped in a bloodstained bandage.

A belt held up its black trousers, rolled to the knees. Its legs were bound in bandages; knees and arms smeared with blood. The pants and sleeves were worn thin. A long black tail trailed behind, and where feet might have been were instead clawed, animalistic paws.

“A werewolf of some kind?” I thought, staring at the stranger. “And it’s armed, too.”

In its right hand the beast held a peculiar spear with two short blades and one long, curved blade on opposite ends.

But what worried me most was the fresh red blood dripping from the weapon. If one looked closely, its clothes and fur were also spattered with gore.

And now this werewolf watched him with an unreadable expression.

“Uh–hi?” Magomed greeted uncertainly, just as he had with the first forest denizen he met. “Wh-what’s your name? Mis–Mister–”

He meant to say “mister,” but at the last moment, his gaze dropped to what he’d missed before: the creature’s chest was distinctly feminine, its curves visible even through the bandages, as if they were stretched too tight and might burst at any moment…

“What the hell, Magomed?!” I scolded myself. I wanted to tear my hair out. “Why do you always fixate on chest size with every being you meet here?! Puberty’s nowhere near this messed-up, has it?”

“Ahem… Miss, or milady,” I quickly corrected. “What’s… your name? Mine’s… Magomed.”

The werewolf straightened its neck slightly; its gaze remained inscrutable. No answer came–only silence and a stoic visage.

A thousand questions swirled in her mind: Who is this human child? Where did he come from? What is he doing on her territory? Why does he ask her name? Why does he even have a name like that? And most of all: why does he emit an unusual scent for a human–one that draws her in and makes her want to sniff him completely?

But she had no intention of answering. To her, he was just another prey trespassing on her hunting grounds, already condemned like the other human who thought this forest was a nice place for a hike.

Seeing her unreadable stare, Magomed wanted to smack himself for his stupidity.

“This time you’ve really overdone it,” I muttered. “Not only is this your imaginary werewolf from a nightmare, but its mouth is bound–how could it even speak?”

“Listen, I know you have to feed to survive, but could you do me one small favor and not kill me?”

I asked with such seriousness that the werewolf cast me a strange sideways glance.

Of course who in their right mind begs to be spared by a predator? What did he think he was?

The werewolf gripped her spear with both hands and looked at her favored weapon as though pondering my request in earnest.

“Could it be… this time I’ll get off easy?” a spark of hope flickered in my mind.

A minute passed before she lowered the spear and, giving Magomed one cold look, slowly turned her back on him.

I exhaled loudly with relief. My legs trembled, my whole body shook, but for a moment I felt almost glad to be alive.

I truly believed she would spare me.

“Thank you for…” I began to say, but she spun on her heel and kicked me hard in the side with her massive leg.

“Crack.” I’ll remember the sound of my ribs breaking for the rest of my days. My body slammed into the nearest tree with such force I felt my organs compress inside me.

The werewolf was on me again in an instant. Her clawed paw seized my already wounded right leg and sank her talons into it, drawing fresh blood.

“A-A-A-A-A!” I screamed from the pain. I’d reached my limit of silent endurance, and now it shattered once more.

The monster lifted the boy by the leg, its sharp claws digging into his flesh without letting go. In an instant, the werewolf swung her arm with such force that he was flung against a large boulder, landing on his back.

–Why is all this happening to me?– I asked myself again. My shredded body slowly slid down the rock, leaving that inky trail behind.

Accidentally lowering my hand, I suddenly felt something hard and smooth, rounded in shape. Slowly looking down, I screamed anew at the horror before me.

A large chunk of flesh was missing from my right leg, and now I could feel my femur.

The werewolf held the torn piece of flesh in her hand. Bringing it slowly toward her snout, she inhaled deeply and at length.

In an instant, the woman savored the scent fully. It was… exquisite. No other smell of flesh had ever so captivated her. This one seemed to contain every spice in the world in just the right measure–and the finest qualities one could bestow upon a child’s flesh.

The lycanthrope took up her spear and approached the wounded boy. He had already torn his vocal cords and was hacking up blood, which only made his scent more potent.

Magomed lifted his head and saw her standing over him at full height, her spear in hand, and it was painfully clear what would come next.

–No… please… don’t…– he begged silently, unable even to form the words aloud.

The werewolf stared at him in astonishment, wondering how he was still breathing. Could ordinary humans endure so much?

She knew of only one human who was so hard to kill–and that was the one she hated most among all mortals.

Could these two be kin? Definitely not. At least this one still smelled of humanity; the other’s scent was too alien to be of her kind.

And that always unnerved her down to the tips of her fur.

But now was not the time to ponder his origins. All her attention fixed on the boy lying before her–alive yet broken, his eyes filled with pleading and terror. He was still breathing. Still watching. Still hoping.

The werewolf leaned forward and touched the tip of her spear to his wounded side. The cold steel slid over the scar, making him shiver. She studied him with a predatory, doubtful gaze: How was he still alive? How had he withstood her game? Why had he not yet become an unfeeling chunk of meat?

The she-wolf decided to test his limits. She would resume this cruel game from where it had paused, to see exactly how much this little human could endure.

She raised her spear above him, and he, seeing the threat, thrust his arms forward to shield himself.

–No, no, DON’T– he screamed inside, but even that thought died when the first strike landed squarely on his femur.

One. Two. Three. Three precise, merciless blows and the bone shattered into splinters. Foam bubbled from the boy’s mouth, his breathing stuttered, and his body convulsed as if every cell rebelled against the agony.

Yet he remained conscious. Still feeling. Still thinking. This perplexed her. None of her previous victims had lasted this long. None remained aware after such torture.

–WHY CAN’T I JUST BLACK OUT?!– Magomed howled in his mind, fighting to keep hold of his sanity. –WHY MUST I FEEL THIS?!

He slammed his head against the rock, leaving a dark stain. Blood spurted from his mouth, and the sound that tore from his throat resembled metal scraping.

The werewolf decided it was enough. She had toyed with him too long; it was time to end it with a single bite.

Suddenly the bandages slipped from Magomed’s face. He shot his uninjured eye upward and saw the werewolf’s face. From the unnatural shadow hiding her features gleamed terrible teeth, a horrific grin spread across her maw, and her eyes blazed with savage thrill.

Before he could react, she seized him by both shoulders her claws sinking in–and lifted him to eye level. She opened her jaws wide; the boy saw that terror with his left eye through a haze of blood and darkness and screamed silently.

–I… I…– he clenched his fists, teeth grinding so hard his canines bit into his gums. –I HATE YOU ALL!!!

With a swift movement of her head, the werewolf clamped her jaws around Magomed’s neck and tore off a chunk of flesh. Blood erupted like a fountain from the wound. His eyes went glassy, his fingers uncurled, and his heart abruptly stopped.

The Nameless Werewolf – so she called herself – was satisfied. She swallowed the meat and marveled at its taste. This boy was special. He was nearly the best of her victims.

If not the best, then certainly closest to fighting back like the strongest among them. She had enjoyed everything about him: the brief chase, his futile attempts to flee, that intoxicating scent, his astonishing resilience that prolonged the hunt far beyond its usual span, adding more amusement.

She studied the corpse in her arms with unprecedented interest, noting the furious expression frozen on his face even in death. She had seen many death masks, but this one was new to her.

Then she glanced at the ruined left eye–its surrounding skin torn away. Blood oozed from the wound, trickling down the cheek in an eerie obsidian sheen, and in the sclera drifted a red iris without a pupil.

The Nameless Werewolf tilted her head in puzzlement and squinted at the eye again.

It was exactly as it had been in life.

Deciding it must have been her imagination, she took his body by one hand, rewound the bandages around his face with the other, and trudged toward her lair, dragging the corpse across the snow and leaving that inky trail behind.

She needed to be more cautious when roaming her hunting grounds. After all, that towering, insane woman who lived for bloodshed–not survival–roamed nearby. Equally dangerous was the human female in the earflap hat, whose psyche even she could not fathom.

She had to be careful. Near these lands prowled a tall madwoman living for carnage, and the human female in an ushanka with her unfathomable mind. They were like bitches–not in gender, but in fury.

–––
**Scene Change**

Awakening from sleep was simply horrifying–she felt as if every inch of her had been gnawed away to the bone, then those bones shattered to pieces.

Magomed jerked upright in bed too abruptly. His pulse raced to its limit; cold sweat dripping from his face and body; his breathing ragged; his throat burning as if lined with dozens of shards piercing its walls.

Not yet fully aware he was back in his room, he sprang up and tried to flee in panic. But a sharp pain in his leg buckled him, and he collapsed to the floor, rolling into a table and sending its contents crashing down.

– Is… it over? he whispered, barely audible. – Am… I safe?

He slowly crawled to the wall and pressed his back against it, staring at a single point in space before him as his mind fixated on one question.

– Why… why does this happen to me? – he murmured, drawing his knees to his chest and clutching his head. –Why this new kind of torture? Why did she appear? What is the point of it all?

He covered his face with his hands; his shoulders shook with convulsions. From his throat came half-sobs, half-groans of pain yet no tears.

– I hate this day, he thought. It all began then. These torments have haunted me since that cursed moment. The worst always happens on the day of my “birth.”

Yesterday was April twenty-first–his birthday matching the date from his past life. He turned eight, and as fate’s gift, he received a new monster to await him in that snowy forest late at night, when he was utterly defenseless and hopeless.

– When will I meet my monster here, outside my nightmares?– he asked himself, remembering that people in this world live on average a hundred years, and he felt utterly hollowed out. –It will end almost never…

“Crack!” – another great fracture straight from his subconscious, who knows which in the sequence, but it was clear that sooner or later any crack could be the final one.

Magomed lay on the floor, back against the wall, face buried in his hands, eyes staring through his fingers into the void–the place he did not want to return.

His left eye briefly transformed: its capillaries swelled bright red, the sclera grew darker than the night. The pupil began to vanish bit by bit, but then everything quickly returned to normal–and Magomed neither noticed nor felt a thing.

Soon what lay hidden in his fractured soul would burst forth and reveal something truly terrible to the world.