Jacob ran until his lungs burned, the dark corridor twisting behind him like a snake. He could still hear Amanda’s voice, echoing inside his skull—“You dreamed of this pce, Jacob…” He didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. The lights overhead flickered once more, then shattered—gss raining down like ice. In the instant of darkness that followed, he slipped. The floor cracked beneath his feet, and before he could scream, he was falling. Down. Down. Down. He woke up gasping. A blinding white light overhead hummed. Jacob y strapped to a gurney in a sterile, white operating room. No cracks. No blood. No rust. It looked…new. Had it all been a dream? But his arms were bound. Tight. Too tight. The leather straps bit into his wrists. A figure entered the room. Same surgical mask. Same cracked goggles. Same bde. Jacob thrashed violently. “No! Let me go!” The figure moved silently, the scalpel glinting under the harsh light. It leaned close—and then suddenly, its face… shifted. Under the goggles was a face he knew. His own. It was Jacob looking back at him. His double grinned beneath the mask. “You should’ve stayed dead.” The bde plunged downward. Jacob awoke screaming. Again. This time he was in a waiting room. Different from before—this one untouched by rot, but filled with dozens of mannequins dressed like patients. Each one stared bnkly ahead, seated in chairs, their heads turned ever so slightly toward him. The TV mounted in the corner turned on without warning. A hospital security feed. Every camera showed the same hallway from a different angle—long, tiled, and dark. But on each screen, there was him, walking, running, stumbling through every corridor at once. He covered his eyes. “I’m losing my mind.” A hand touched his shoulder. Jacob flinched, turned— No one was there. The mannequins had all shifted. Every single one was now facing him. “You died again,” a voice whispered into his ear. “But death doesn’t work here.” He turned wildly, searching, desperate. Nothing. Then, the fire arm began to bre. Red lights fshed. The walls melted. Literally melted, oozing like wax. The mannequins stood and began walking toward him, their limbs jerking awkwardly, gss eyes glinting with artificial life. Jacob ran, again, through the only exit—the hallway of red fshing lights. The siren’s scream echoed behind him. He burst through another door. Silence. He was back in the morgue. Only now… the bodies were back. Dozens of drawers open, pale forms crumpled and twitching on the floor. They looked like dolls—stitched together flesh, each with a face like his. One of them stood up. And smiled. Jacob’s knees buckled. He looked down at his hands. They were decaying. Rotting. His reflection in a metal tray confirmed it—eyes hollow, flesh sagging, like he had been dead for weeks. “This is what you are now,” the corpse said. “A broken thought. A dying echo.” Jacob screamed and stabbed the tray into his arm—just to feel something—and the world shattered again. He woke up again. Strapped to a hospital bed. A nurse stood beside him, humming softly. Her face was turned away as she checked a clipboard. Jacob tried to speak. His throat was raw. The nurse turned slowly. Amanda. But her face was sewn shut where her mouth should be. And her eyes were gone. In her hands—his eyes. “You brought me here,” she whispered into his mind. “Now you’ll never leave.” The walls trembled. The ceiling peeled back. And a void opened above him—howling like a storm. He fell again. Again. Again. Every time he thought he died, he awoke in another part of the hospital—older, stranger, more wrong. Like each death tore away a yer of reality, dragging him deeper into the belly of Bck Hollow. And something was following him. Something he hadn’t seen yet. But he could feel it getting closer. Every death brought it nearer. Every time he woke, its voice got louder. Calling him by name. “Jacob… come back to bed.”