Page 176 of Somno Slave

My heartbeat moves to my throat.

“No—don’t—what do you mean enough?” I push forward slightly without meaning to, needing it now in a way that feels almost desperate. “Deogal, what does that mean?”

He tilts his head, studying me like I’ve become more interesting than I was a second ago. Then he smiles properly. Slow. Cruel.

“And you ask better questions than you did before.”

My head starts to pound, a dull pressure building behind my eyes as my thoughts try to organise themselves into something coherent and fail. “Beforewhat?”

The room feels wrong like something has shifted beneath it that I can’t see.

“Before what, Deogal?” I try again.

He steps back slightly, just enough to create space, but not enough to give me relief.

“I liked this version of you,” he says, almost idly.

A sharp pulse of dread cuts through me. “What—”

“Shh.” He lifts his hand slightly, not touching me, justindicating, like he’s about to reset a piece on a board. “You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

My breath catches. “What are you going to do?”

That smirk again. “You’ll see.”

The air thickens. The hum of the lights above us deepens, warping slightly, the pitch bending in a way that makes my teeth ache.

“No—wait!”

The word barely forms before everythingtilts. Not just the room but something deeper than that.

He closes his eyes. And the second he does, the world inhales. When he opens them again, Something hits me. My lungs seize like I’ve been forced to exhale everything at once, air ripping out of me in a sharp, involuntary gasp.

My thoughts scatter instantly, slipping out of reach just as I try to grab them, like trying to hold onto something dissolving in water.

No—no, I just—

He said...

What did he say?

The question forms and vanishes in the same second.

The pressure spikes. The room fractures—and I drop. Not down.

Out.

Like I’ve been pulled sideways through something I don’t understand, my body loses all sense of position as the world tears and rewrites itself around me.

Light slams into my vision. Too bright and too sharp. The sterile sting of disinfectant floods my senses, clean and clinical and wrong in a completely different way.

The hum of electricity stabilises, familiar now, structured, controlled.

My footing disappears.

I stumble, and then...

Silence.