CHAPTER 16: CHAPTER 16 - THE LINGERING INFLUENCE

Night came like an inevitable outcome, and Morena had spent the evening reading over the book multiple times, trying to learn as much as she could.

Now she had grown tired; this young body needed much more rest than she was used to, but she couldn’t ignore its needs.

Morena washed her face at the basin and breathed in the chill of the water. The woman in the mirror looked like her—calm mouth, steady eyes—but a thin restlessness pricked along her cheeks. Her face was hers, but wasn’t at the same time.

She dried off, crossed the room, and checked the curtains twice. The pendant was wrapped, the cracked stone sat beneath an overturned bowl beaded with frost, and the journal waited in a drawer where she had left it safely.

"AI."

[Listening.]

"If anything changes—sound, temperature, heart rhythm—wake me immediately. No delays. And... if I get up in my sleep, stop me."

[Acknowledged. Full-sensitivity monitoring engaged. Sleep-movement protocol primed.]

Her eyes hovered in the direction of the journal. She wanted to read through it again. She also wanted to throw it in the fireplace and salt the ashes.

Both impulses felt honest; the book was clearly messing with her mind, which was why she needed to be proactive in case anything happened.

She lay down on top of the covers, boots off, knife within reach, one arm folded under her head. It was an old habit.

In her last life, she’d once slept in a lab chair between data runs because going home wasted the hour. The hum of servers had been a lullaby then. This world had a different lullaby: wood settling, rafters breathing, the estate’s natural sounds.

"Good night."

She said it to no one in particular.

[Logging: user entering sleep cycle.]

Sleep did not come for her immediately; she struggled to enter it. She drifted at the edge where thought thins, and the next blink found her standing in her doorway, though she had not felt her legs move.

The hallway was the same and wrong at once. It stretched out seemingly infinitely, the lights on the wall burned out a pale flame that shivered without casting heat.

Wax dripped backward up the candles, gathering into neat beads at the top. The air smelled of tallow, cold stone, and the metallic tang of a coin pressed too long against the tongue.

"Stop."

Her words were directed to the corridor—or rather, her own mind. She knew this wasn’t real, this wasn’t happening. It was a dream.

And yet the corridor did not stop.

Letters—those curved, cut strokes from the journal—floated up through the wallpapered bricks of the wall as if they were alive. They moved to consume the entire hallway; a few even rested against her sleeve.

She swallowed as her hand tried to brush them off, yet failed.

"AI."

She called out, only to be met by silence. Nothing. No response. She couldn’t even hear her own voice ringing out.

"Assist."

She tried to call out again, and heard only the shape of her mouth opening.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her nerves. Something was off. The AI was of no help here. She was alone. Or was she? She could feel it—something watching her, observing her.

Something there without eyes measured her: height, weight, heat, fear. She knew an audit when she felt one. If reality had an inspector, it was on the night shift, and it was here.

Letters shuffled. They formed almost-words that prodded at understanding, a rhythm set beneath her ribs—turn of a hidden crank, click, turn, click—dragging the corridor longer, then short again, like a lung deciding how much to breathe.

"I don’t know what you are, I don’t know what this is, but I’m not going to cower before you."

Hearing her own voice steadied some small, mulish part of her. Morena had never liked being told where to stand; she never liked the feeling of cowering because of something else.

The letters inched closer. One detached itself from the rest and settled against her palm. It fit like it belonged there, as if the hand had been manufactured for the symbol, not the reverse. The urge to curl her fingers around it arrived like an intention forced upon her, tempting her to do it.

Not malicious—just a call.

She flexed her hand open until her palm trembled.

"No."

This time, the sound carried.

From the far bend of the hall came not a voice, not even a whisper, but a feeling—the feeling of wind gushing out and bashing against her. The other language brushed past her body like swarming insects.

She stepped backward into her room without looking away, her instincts telling her to run. The letters stopped; they didn’t move beyond the door, gathering only at the frame. She closed the door, and the latch clicked.

The ordinary shape of the room returned all at once—moon seam at the curtains, table shadow on the rug, the faint frost halo around the overturned bowl.

And she shifted into a sitting position on the bed.

"A dream? But..."

It felt much too real to be just a dream. She could remember it clearly; every single second of it was etched into her brain as if it had happened to her for real.

[Heart rate elevated. Respiration shallow.]

"AI? I was in the hallway, you didn’t respond when I called out."

[Bed pressure did not change. No record of leaving the bed. There was no prompt to reply.]

She stared at the door. It was locked, unmoved from how she had left it before lying down to sleep. Her palm tingled. When she held her hand to the lamplight, she found an indent on her skin.

It wasn’t a marking, but rather a print, like she had pressed something down and it left a mark. It was fading quickly, but lingered for a second.

"Record this and save it. Mark it as ’Dream Letter’."

[Recording. New pattern matched to journal glyph set. Similarity index: 0.81.]