He woke up with no mouth.
Not in the literal sense — his mouth was there, but it wouldn't open. Not a single sound could pass through his throat. His tongue moved. His lips parted. But silence clung to him like chains.
The ceiling above him twisted in slow, serpentine spirals. One moment, it looked like marble. Then clouds. Then teeth.
He sat up slowly, drenched in cold sweat. A hallway stretched out before him. Long. Endless. But… wrong.
The torches on the walls didn't burn with fire. They whispered.
"We know you."
"You said it once already."
"He's coming again."
He stumbled to his feet. The floor was a checkered chessboard that re-formed with each step he took. Behind him, the hallway he'd just come from folded into itself like paper.
There was no going back.
At the far end, a door waited. Massive. Iron. Breathing.
He reached for it. The second his fingers brushed the handle, pain shot through his skull — visions bursting like glass shards behind his eyes:
A city burning.
A woman screaming his name.
A voice — his own — shouting words that cracked the sky.
A sentence.
But he couldn't remember what it was.
He fell to his knees, gasping without sound.
The door opened.
Not inward. Not outward. Backward. Like it peeled back reality itself.
A man stood on the other side, cloaked in black, eyes glowing blue.
"You came back," the man said. "You always do."
The nameless one tried to speak — to ask who he was, what this place was — but the silence held.
The man stepped aside.
"Come in. Let's see how much you've forgotten this time."