I jolted awake—no slow drift from sleep, but sharp clarity, like I’d just been dunked in ice water. My heart raced as my eyes darted around, trying to make sense of the darkness. Where the hell was I?

A faint blue glow appeared on the far wall, soft at first, then growing brighter. It pulsed, like a heartbeat. Dreaming, right? I’d had some weird dreams before, but this… this felt different. The light spread, tendrils of blue energy snaking outward, tracing strange patterns across the wall. Rings formed, rippling out, and more lights joined in—green, purple, gold. Each one revealed more of where I was.

The room curved, like I was inside some kind of dome. The floor beneath me was smooth, almost like glass. And I was naked. Of course.

I struggled to my feet, feeling the chill of the floor. The lights danced across the walls, making it seem like the room was breathing. Just as fast as the colors had appeared, they faded, leaving just that pulsing blue glow.

Government experiment? Nah, I manage a kitchen, not exactly top-secret material. My cinnamon buns aren’t that good. Aliens? Maybe, but they'd be real sorry they picked me. Statistically, I was probably the most average human alive. Aliens would love that, right? Not likely.

So... dream or hallucination.

I squinted at the blue light. It flickered, almost like it was watching me. Following my gaze. "Hello?" My voice echoed in the room. No response.

I took a step forward, wobbling on the slick floor. The light flickered again, like it was laughing at me. Dream logic. Definitely dream logic.

But then something weird happened. The light—it wasn’t just random. There was a pattern to it. My eyes squinted harder, trying to catch it. It flickered again, dancing right when I thought I had it. "What the hell?" I muttered, feeling that weird itch of frustration. Just let me see it already.

Then, a stupid thought hit me: What if it was red? Maybe I’d see it better if it was red.

The blue light pulsed once, twice... then it turned red.

I blinked. Did it just… read my thoughts? The symbol sharpened, clear as day. I had no idea what it meant, but I knew it was important. I could feel it. It was like a Chinese character but infinitely more complex - I could stare at it for hours. Light. That’s what this symbol meant. I was dead sure of it.

My heart thudded. This was wild. I wasn’t dreaming. Or if I was, it was the clearest dream I’d ever had. I grinned, because that’s what you do when you have no idea what’s going on, right? You grin and lean into it.

Let’s test it. Red worked, so… what about green?

I had barely finished the thought when light flickered again and, bam—bright chartreuse. My stomach did a little flip. That was too much control. Way too much.

Then, I had another thought. “What about the invisible spectrum?” I muttered under my breath, my voice bouncing off the walls. It was eerily quiet.

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Nothing happened at first. Then, slowly, it started to shift—deeper, sharper—into this intense, almost painful red. Heat radiated off the wall, pricking my skin. Sweat started beading on my forehead, and the air shimmered like it was about to catch fire.

And then it hit me. This wasn’t safe. My instincts screamed at me to stop.

But I didn’t.

I pushed harder, forcing the light to shift more. And that’s when the pain hit, like I’d grabbed a live wire. Heat shot through my body, and I crashed backward, slamming into the smooth floor. "Shit!" The word barely escaped me as I gasped for breath.

I squirmed on the floor, pressing my hands to my eyes. I could still see the afterimage of that violent red light, seared into my brain.

This is real.

The thought clawed its way into my mind. No more “maybe it’s a dream,” I must be hallucinating. I could feel the ache in my bones. I wasn’t asleep.

Panic clawed at my throat. The pulsing lights on the wall shifted again, but now they seemed angry. The walls rippled with blue energy, the air around me thick with pressure, making it hard to breathe. Patterns emerged—geometric shapes, spiraling in and out of focus—shifting faster than I could track. A low buzzing filled the air, growing louder, deafening.

I forced myself upright, but the floor buckled beneath me. The whole room seemed to pulse, like it was alive, like it was pissed at me for messing with something.

Then came the golden light. Completely different from the blue geometric fractals pulsing around the dome. Tiny motes swirled in the air, forming intricate and chaotic circuits almost like constellations. Symbols—more complicated than the one I had seen in the light—appeared. My brain felt like it was misfiring trying to keep up.

The golden glyphs twisted around me protectively like a Möbius strip, its surface stretching into infinity. It was too much. My mind couldn’t handle it. It was like trying to stare into a black hole. My mind was flooded with impossible thoughts when I looked at the glyphs. The eye of an infinite storm. The precise point that two planets collide in mutual destruction. What the fuck. I had to look away.

The room groaned and collapsed in on itself, the dome bending inward like some kind of cosmic jaws ready to snap shut.

The ground dropped out from beneath me, and I fell.

Or rather I was weightless. Plummeting feet first into nothing - completely surrounded by golden circuits and glyphs. It was like they were shielding me from whatever that twisting room was trying to do.

A rush of sound filled my ears but even louder was a feeling. Like I was being watched. Hunted.

Against all judgment I craned my neck upwards to see if I could see where I had come from and was filled with a deep terror that sunk to my core. Through the golden lights of the circuits all I could see was grey and white energy pulsing rhythmically in geometric fractals. It was everything. It was all I could see above me, no matter how I looked up. It was infinite and it was pissed.

I tried swearing.

“What the fuuuuck!” I tried screaming but there was no sound that could compete with the roar filling my ears. The fractals above were getting harder to make out - I was definitely moving away from it.

Almost as if on cue, hundreds of shapes above converged on a single point above me and my stomach flipped upside down. A loud chime rang out cutting through all the noise and silencing the roar. The impossible circuits around me spun and exploded outwards into a galaxy of golden light, impossibly large.

I barely had time to blink before a blinding beam of white energy erupted from above and slammed into the galaxy of glyphs around me. It cut through the circuits like a knife but the closer it got the more off course the beam seemed to be. Glyphs and paths of energy faltered, flickering in and out as the beam sliced through more of them.

And then it was upon me.

This is it, this is how I die. White-hot heat rippled across my body and I screamed in pain. But as soon as it had started it was gone.

The beam had missed.

And suddenly I was no longer weightless. I was falling. Oh fuck I was falling!

I didn’t even have time to even cry out before everything went dark.