Aila Coraline
Darkness.
That’s the first thing I remember. Not the kind of darkness that comes when you close your eyes at night, but the heavy, suffocating kind... the one that presses on your chest and whispers that maybe you’ll never wake up again.
But I did.
I woke up.
My eyes fluttered open to a ceiling I didn’t recognize. Cracks lined the plaster like veins, branching out into shapes that almost seemed alive. For a long time, I just lay there, trying to piece together how I’d gotten here, but nothing came.
Where am I?
I pushed myself up, the motion slow, my arms trembling like they were made of paper. My head throbbed, sharp and insistent, like someone was pounding a drum inside my skull.
I glanced around. The room was small, dim, lit only by a thin stream of light seeping th
