Dr. Terror arrives precisely at 3:17 PM on day six hundred and thirteen.

  "How are we feeling today?" he asks, not looking up from his clipboard. His fingers move across the page like dark water over parchment.

  I say nothing, distracted by the fine cracks running along his jawline.

  "Patient remains dissociative," he murmurs, the words sliding between teeth too white against dark lips.

  From his leather satchel—material that seems to pulse with each breath—he extracts crumpled papers covered in cramped, desperate handwriting.

  "You've been writing," he says. "Part of your therapy. Do you remember?"

  I don't. But I recognize the frantic scrawl that crawls across the pages like dying insects.

  "The premise is interesting. A prisoner. A queen. Nine realms collapsing." He taps the paper with a fingernail like polished obsidian. "But the characters don't feel lived in. Like empty vessels."

  The phrase catches in my mind like a hook in flesh.

  "What do they look like? What do they love, what makes them strong, weak... relatable?" He studies me with rust-colored eyes whose pupils briefly resemble hourglasses.

  "The Queen of Terror and Grace," he continues, "most interesting. A powerful being brought down by her own hubris." He pauses. "What about your protagonist? What drives them? The lowest hanging fruit for people seems to be love."

  He leans closer. His antiseptic smell doesn't quite mask what lies beneath—smoke, wet earth, metal. "So, the question is, what do you love?"

  The room dims around the edges. My mind feels suddenly hollow, an empty cathedral with wind howling through broken windows.

  “I… I…” I try to collect my thoughts. They hurt.

  "My hellcat," I whisper, words emerging unbidden from locked memory.

  "Your... hellcat?" He makes a note. "Did you mean to say cat?"

  "Yes." A shadow passes behind my eyes—something massive stretched on ancient stone. Larger than a large man, limbs too long, tail forked at the end, eyes reflecting iridescent colors.

  "Keep thinking," he encourages. "Do you remember its name?"

  I start to speak, then stop. Warning bells sound deep in memory.

  "I don't," I whisper, leaning forward conspiratorially. "And even if I did, I couldn't tell you. Names are powerful."

  Dr. Terror laughs, a sound like glass breaking in slow motion. As he leans back, the wall behind him ripples, briefly revealing dark stone veined with pulsing red light.

  "What else do you love? What drives you?"

  "My brother," I say suddenly, surprising myself.

  Dr. Terror’s pen freezes mid-stroke. The casual demeanor drops away, revealing something sharp-edged beneath.

  "Your brother," he repeats, new hunger in his voice. "Tell me about—"

  A scream splits the air.

  The doctor rises. "Excuse me," he says formally, moving to the door.

  He opens it just wide enough to slip through, but in that moment, I see what lies beyond.

  The hallway is gone. In its place stretches a vast chamber with obsidian walls lit by green flame. The floor glistens wet with something that steams in cold air.

  Being dragged between robed figures is a young man, body a patchwork of scars like he'd been torn apart and sewn back together. As he passes, his eyes—one blue, one clouded white—lock with mine.

  "The walls," he gasps, voice gurgling through damaged vocal cords. "Stay away from the walls. Please—"

  The door clicks shut.

  I sit frozen. The stranger's terror-filled eyes linger in my mind, familiar in a way I can't place. Something inside me shifts, tectonic plates grinding against each other.

  A crack appears in the ceiling, thin as a hair but widening. Through it writhes darkness studded with points of light like eyes.

  The heart monitor wails, its electronic beeping transforming into something organic. The IV burns like fire, liquid turning green as it flows into my veins.

  My skin splits along my knuckles, revealing not blood but light, patterns moving like insects beneath translucent flesh.

  "No," I whisper, closing my eyes. "Not real."

  When I open them, the room appears normal. I reach for the doctors abandoned papers with trembling hands.

  The first page contains cramped writing:

  I was nine when I first learned to swallow pain like water. Mother held my small hands over the cooking flame—not as punishment, but as preparation...

  The words swim, rearranging themselves. Memory or delusion?

  I turn to the next page, but only phrases stand out:

  ...the Quiet One... ...Queen of Terror and Grace... ...ate my name... ...just a vessel now...

  The door opens. A nurse enters—not Dr. Terror.

  "Time for medication," she says brightly. "How are we feeling today?"

  "Where's Dr. Terror?" I ask.

  She frowns. "Dr. who? Dr. Grace will be doing rounds later."

  "But he was just here," I insist, gesturing to the empty chair. "He brought my writing."

  Her expression softens with practiced sympathy. "There's no Dr. Terror here. And you haven't been approved for writing materials. Sharp objects, remember?"

  As she approaches with a syringe, I notice her pupils—slightly elongated, not quite round.

  "The medication will help with the delusions," she says, voice gentle but firm.

  "They're not delusions," I whisper, doubt creeping in.

  The medication burns cold in my bloodstream.

  "Rest now," she says, patting my hand, leaving momentary impressions like fingerprints in wet clay. "Dr. Grace will want to discuss your progress."

  As she turns, I notice something on the back of her neck, just visible above her collar—a marking that seems to move like writing in a language I almost remember.

  The room grows soft around the edges. The crack in the ceiling widens by millimeters.

  I close my eyes, sorting reality from delusion. Dr. Terror brought my writing. The nurse says there is no Dr. Terror. Both cannot be true.

  Unless I'm not in a hospital at all. Unless Mercy Hills is just another kind of prison.

  My thoughts grow heavier. Just before consciousness slips away, I feel more than I hear a small, soft vibration on my chest. My eyes softly open, narrowing to slits on a feline face.

  A wicked grin spreads across my face, “Hey, you.”

  I wake to the cat stretching, pressing warm paws against my sternum. In the haze of medication, its fur appears to shimmer with the colors of an oil slick—black as void in one moment, then shot through with carbon streaks that catch the light like metallic threads. Far too beautiful for this sterile room.

  I run my tongue over my teeth, surprised to find them whole and smooth. No jagged remnants, no gaps where the guards had worked their pliers. I raise my hands, examining pale skin where scars should be—thin white lines remain, but nothing like the mangled flesh I remember.

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  "Am I real?" I whisper to the cat, who blinks slowly in response, pupils contracting to slits then widening to perfect circles.

  The walls. The stranger had warned about the walls.

  I slide from the bed, legs unsteady beneath me but functional. The cat leaps silently to the floor, moving in lazy figure eights between my ankles as I approach the nearest wall.

  Up close, the institutional beige paint reveals minute imperfections—hairline fractures that seem to shift when viewed from the corner of my eye. I press my palm against the surface. Cold, but not unnaturally so. Yet beneath my fingertips, a subtle vibration, like something breathing on the other side.

  I lean closer, ear nearly touching the plaster. A sound emerges—not quite a voice, not quite a heartbeat. Rhythmic. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach clench.

  The cat hisses, back arching, magnificent tail puffed to twice its size.

  A sharp knock at the door.

  I stumble back to bed, movements clumsy with sedatives and fear. The cat settles on my lap as the door swings open without waiting for permission.

  Dr. Terror stands in the threshold, rust-colored eyes taking in the scene with calculated interest. Behind him waits a wheelchair, its metal frame gleaming dully under fluorescent lights.

  "Ah, good. You're awake." His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "I thought perhaps we might continue our conversation somewhere more... inspirational."

  "I thought you weren't real," I say, watching his reaction carefully.

  He laughs. "How philosophical. What constitutes reality, after all? Perception? Consensus?" He gestures to the wheelchair. "You must be tired from the sedatives. Allow me."

  Something in his phrasing—not an offer but a command dressed as courtesy—makes me slide from the bed without argument. The cat jumps to the floor, then immediately onto my lap once I'm seated.

  "Your companion seems devoted," Dr. Terror remarks, his fingers briefly hovering over the cat's head before withdrawing without touching. "Unusual for a feline."

  He wheels me into the corridor, which appears perfectly normal now—no obsidian walls, no green flames, no screaming man being dragged away. Just cream-colored walls, the occasional watercolor landscape, and closed doors with small windows.

  Through those windows, I glimpse other patients. A woman rocking back and forth, lips moving in silent recitation. A young man staring at his hands as if they belong to someone else. An elderly figure whose gender I can't determine, face pressed against glass, eyes following our movement with desperate recognition.

  "You've made remarkable progress," Dr. Terror says as we pass a nurse's station where staff tap at computers with glazed expressions. "Six hundred and thirteen days. Most patients with your... condition... never achieve the lucidity you've demonstrated."

  "My condition," I repeat. "And what is that, exactly?"

  "Reality rejection syndrome." He pronounces the words lazily. "The mind creates elaborate worlds to escape unbearable truths. Quite fascinating, really. What you've constructed isn't merely escapism—it's a high-fidelity simulation, with its own internal logic and consistent rules. The brain's capacity to engineer alternative realities is nearly infinite."

  We turn down a corridor I've never seen before—or perhaps never remembered. The walls here are adorned with photographs of landscapes: mountains, forests, lakes. Eerily empty of people.

  "The trick," he continues, "is learning to love what is, rather than what could be. Your fantasy world—this Queen, these realms—they're elegant constructs, but ultimately hollow." He pauses at an unmarked door. "Like vessels waiting to be filled with something real."

  Again, that phrase.

  "The fantasies give us clues, of course. You've created a world where pain is currency, where suffering has value." He pushes the wheelchair through the door and into blinding sunlight. "Rather than acknowledging that pain is simply pain. Meaningless. Random. Best forgotten."

  The hallway opens onto a veranda overlooking a view so breathtaking it momentarily silences the whispers in my mind. To the left and right, mountain ranges rise like ancient guardians, their peaks kissed golden by the setting sun. Between them, a river flows silver toward a vast ocean that stretches to the horizon, its surface afire with crimson and amber reflections.

  The air smells of pine and salt. Clean. Real.

  "Beautiful, isn't it?" Dr. Terror positions my wheelchair at the railing. "Another thing for you to love. To savor. To anchor you here with us."

  The cat kneads my thighs, purring so deeply I feel the vibration in my bones.

  "Thank you," I whisper, meaning it. For the first time in... I can't remember how long... something inside me eases. A knot unraveling. Peace, or something close to it.

  "Close your eyes," Dr. Terror suggests. "Feel the breeze. This moment is real. Hold onto it."

  I obey, closing my eyes, drawing deep breaths of mountain air.

  The wheelchair vanishes. The veranda disappears. The cat's weight on my lap transforms—heavier, denser, its purr deeper, almost subsonic.

  When I open my eyes, I'm standing. Dr. Terror is gone. At my feet prowls a creature the size of a jaguar but wrong in subtle, terrible ways—limbs too long, joints too fluid, tail split at the end like a serpent's tongue. Its coat absorbs light, creating a moving void where an animal should be. When it looks up at me, its eyes reflect colors that have no names.

  The hellcat. My hellcat.

  I look down at my arms and hands. Gone are the hospital gown and pale, scarred skin. Instead, I wear armor that seems to shift between solid matter and liquid shadow, beautiful in its terrible intricacy. In my left hand rests a tome bound in material I refuse to identify, its cover adorned with a face frozen in a silent scream. The face's eyes follow mine, lips straining to form words.

  In my right hand, a sword twice my height, forged from material darker than the void of space. It hums with such power that the air around the blade shimmers with deep purple-red energy, like a bruise spreading across reality itself. It, too, seeks to communicate—not with words but with hunger, with purpose.

  The landscape before me is not mountains and ocean but a battlefield stretching to infinity. The sky above bleeds, literal rivulets of crimson falling like rain.

  I sense her before I see her—the Princess of Flesh and Hate. The feeling is like insects crawling beneath my skin, like teeth scraping against bone. When she materializes, her form still defies comprehension—a writhing shadow with too many eyes, too many mouths, too many needs.

  I feel like a passenger in my own body, watching from behind my eyes as my mouth forms a single word: "Speak."

  The Princess bows, the movement obscene in its wrongness, her form folding in ways that violate the laws of matter.

  "We are winning, my Queen," she reports, her voice a chorus of screams and whispers. "The Third and Fifth Realms have fallen. The Sixth burns. Only the First and Eighth continue their resistance."

  I feel my face form a grimace. "Why not surrender? Why continue the slaughter?"

  The Princess gestures, and the battlefield before us comes into sharper focus. I see armies clashing—creatures both recognizable and terrible tearing each other apart. Winged beings dive from blood-clouds to snatch soldiers from the ground. Giants wade through armies, crushing dozens with each step. Sorcerers rip reality apart with gestures, turning flesh to glass, to smoke, to screaming darkness.

  "Pain is currency, my Grace," the Princess says, as if this explains everything.

  And perhaps it does.

  Snap

  Snap

  Snap

  Dr. Terror's fingers click inches from my face. I blink, disoriented, finding myself back in the wheelchair, the gorgeous sunset still blazing before me. My hand strokes the soft fur of the cat—just a cat now—in my lap.

  "Still dissociating," he murmurs, making a note on his clipboard. "Increased dosage recommended."

  He grips the handles of my wheelchair, beginning to turn us away from the view.

  "No," I say, attempting to rise. "I want to stay."

  My legs don't respond. I look down in horror, trying to force them to move, to function. Nothing happens. Not even a twitch. Dead weight below my hips. Panic claws up my throat, transforming into something primal that tears from my lungs.

  I scream, hands clutching at my thighs, fingernails breaking skin through the thin fabric of the hospital gown. The blood is real. Terror truly begins to grip me as my brain processes the nothingness. I slam my fists against my thighs, again and again, desperate for any response, any connection to the limbs that had carried me just moments before.

  "My legs—what did you do to my legs?" My voice fractures, splitting into high, jagged tones.

  Dr. Terror watches, expression clinical and hungry at once. "Interesting reaction. Most patients have accepted their paralysis by now." He reaches down to catch my wrists, his grip cold and tight as manacles. "These episodes of violence are why we keep you sedated."

  I thrash against him, the upper half of my body writhing while the lower remains obscenely still. "I was walking. I was fucking walking! Just this morning, I walked to the wall, I felt it, I heard—"

  "In your delusion, perhaps," he interrupts, smile thin and sharp. "But here, in what's real, you haven't walked in six hundred and thirteen days. Not since we found you at the bottom of a stairwell with your spine shattered in three places." He leans close, his breath smelling of antiseptic and something metallic. "You climbed that railing yourself, you know. Said you needed to 'become hollow.' That's when we diagnosed your condition."

  Something fractures inside me, deeper than bone, more essential than marrow. A fault line through the very core of self. If I can't trust my body, can't trust my memories, what remains? What am I?

  "You stole my legs," I whisper, tears hot on my cheeks. "You stole my reality."

  "I gave you a better one," he replies, opening his arms to the sunset. "This is why these moments are so important. Such a lovely memory now, don't you think? Something beautiful to carry back into your delusions." His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper. "You should be thanking me."

  The cat digs its claws deep into my unfeeling thigh, drawing blood I can see but not feel. Its eyes meet mine, full of longing. A message there, if I could only decode it.

  "I know what you are," I hiss at the doctor, though I don't. Not really. Not yet.

  As he wheels me away from the fading sunset, Dr. Terror's reflection catches in the door's small window. For an instant, his face ripples like water disturbed by a stone. Beneath his human features, something ancient grins with too many teeth, rust-colored eyes replaced by hourglasses filled with dark sand.

  "No," he corrects softly. "You have no idea what I am. But you will."

  The Princess of Flesh and Hate had said it herself: Pain is currency.

  And I have been counterfeit all along.

  The realization crashes through me like broken glass. Six hundred and thirteen days of believing I was collecting power, hoarding suffering, becoming something terrible and magnificent—and now this. Paralyzed. Helpless. A madwoman in a wheelchair with delusions of grandeur and a disappearing cat.

  What if the Nine Realms are just fever dreams? What if the Queen, the cathedral, the throne of bone—what if they're nothing but the desperate fabrications of a broken mind trying to make meaning from meaningless suffering?

  As Dr. Terror wheels me away from the sunset, from the one beautiful thing I've seen in six hundred and thirteen days, something inside me that I thought was unbreakable finally shatters.

  I weep. Not the dignified tears of a prisoner maintaining their last shred of humanity, but the ugly, gasping sobs of someone losing everything they thought they knew. My shoulders heave. Mucus runs from my nose. The cat leaps from my lap, disturbed by my convulsions.

  Dr. Terror stops the wheelchair, crouching before me with clinical curiosity. He offers no comfort, only observation. "Fascinating," he murmurs, noting something on his clipboard. "Complete ego dissolution."

  Through tears, I see his reflection in the glass. For just an instant, beneath his human features, something ancient grins with too many teeth. Not a hallucination this time— I’m certain—a slip, a momentary failure to maintain his disguise.

  The cat returns, leaping onto my useless legs. Its weight registers where nothing else does—a sensation that shouldn't be possible. It stares up at me with eyes that shift from feline to something else and back again.

  Doubt flickers. A spark in darkness.

  What if the hospital is the lie?