Shattered Time-Chapter 35 – “Someone Else Is Inside”

The room was quiet.

Too quiet.

Kael lay on the bed, the cold metal of the IV stand reflecting the dim ceiling light. For once, there were no screams. No visions. No broken mirrors. Just the ticking of the wall clock—soft, steady, ordinary.

He hated it.

Aya sat across the room, her hair tied back, eyes scanning a book. A real book. Paper. Pages.

She hadn't spoken since morning.

But Kael didn't mind the silence.

It was safer than words.

Safer than memories.

He turned slightly, the bandages on his side pulling tight. The doctors said he had fallen. No one remembered how. No one saw it.

No footage. No witnesses.

Not even blood.

Just static on the school rooftop cameras.

Kael reached under his pillow, fingers brushing over the notebook.

Still there.

Red as ever.

Still warm.

Still breathing.

He squeezed his eyes shut. He needed to forget. Just for a second.

"Kael?" Aya's voice pierced the silence.

He looked up. Her eyes were wide. Pale.

Not scared.

More like... confused.

"Did you write this?" she asked, holding up a page.

He frowned. "What?"

She handed it over. He took it.

It wasn't the notebook.

It was her book.

And scrawled across the inside page in his handwriting:

"Someone else is inside your skin."

Kael dropped the book.

"No," he whispered. "I didn't—"

Aya didn't blink. "Then who did?"

A cold wind crept through the closed windows.

The lights dimmed.

And from behind the hospital curtain... came a laugh.

But it was his laugh.

Too close.

Too real.

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Too wrong.

Kael stood up. His body was shaking.

Aya didn't move.

She was still staring at him. Except now her eyes were slightly... off-center. Her skin looked stretched. Her hands too still.

Too perfect.

He stepped back.

The laugh behind the curtain stopped.

The clock on the wall ticked once.

Then stopped.

And then—

"I don't know which one of you is the real one anymore," Kael said.

A voice from the curtain replied:

"Neither do I."