Orla:

  I was floating. No, not floating—drifting in and out, barely aware of what was happening around me. It felt like I was underwater, every sound muffled, every movement slow, heavy. My body was there, but it didn’t feel like it belonged to me anymore.

  Through the haze, I caught glimpses of her. Anna Lee—no, the queen. She was pacing back and forth in the room, her shoes tapping against the hard floor, her face twisted in frustration. Her mouth moved, but the words didn’t make sense at first. It was all just noise, as if I was hearing it from a distant room.

  “… why is this taking so long?” Her voice broke through the fog for a moment, sharp and angry. I tried to focus, to grab onto the sound, but it slipped away as quickly as it had come.

  Everything felt jumbled, like pieces of a dream stitched together in the wrong order. One minute, I was back in the palace, watching the queen rage against something unseen, her anger palpable. The next, I was… home?

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  I could feel the softness of the bed beneath me, the familiar warmth of the duvet wrapped around my body. My old room. The light from the window cast a gentle glow over the furniture, and for a moment, I let myself sink into the comfort of it. I was home. Safe.

  But the peace didn’t last. The scene shifted again, the soft light giving way to something harsher. The bed beneath me wasn’t my bed anymore—it was harder, colder. The lights above were too bright, blinding almost. Voices echoed around me, urgent but distant.

  “Orla… Orla, can you hear me?”

  I wanted to respond, but my mouth wouldn’t move. The voices sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place them. I turned my head—or at least I thought I did—and saw the blurred outlines of people. A doctor? A nurse? They were speaking to me, calling my name, but it was faint, like they were on the other side of a wall.

  “Orla, stay with us…”

  And there was that beeping again. Rhythmic, sharp.

  The brightness of the lights made everything unbearable. I tried to close my eyes, to shield myself from it, but I couldn’t. I wanted to scream, to tell them to stop, that it was too much—but I couldn’t. My body was betraying me, the nausea rising again, twisting my stomach into knots.

  Then, just as quickly as it had come, it all slipped away. The lights faded, the voices drifted into nothing, and everything went dark again.

  I was falling. Spiraling down, down, into the void. And I had no idea where—or when—I would land.

  ?Sky Mincharo