Elias did not wake up screaming. If anything, waking was not the right word for it.
It felt more like drifting—like being pulled slowly upward through thick water, consciousness returning in fragments that refused to connect properly.
Sound came first, distant and warped, as if filtered through layers of cotton. A dull ringing lingered at the edge of his hearing, not painful, just persistent, like something unfinished.
He frowned. That was strange.
The last thing he remembered was… light. Headlights. Noise. The weightlessness of being thrown, followed by pain so sharp it erased thought itself. After that, nothing. Which meant—
"I'm alive," Elias muttered. The words came out hoarse, barely louder than breath. That made sense. Car accidents didn't always kill people. People survived worse. Broken bones, concussions, internal injuries—yes. Death? Not guaranteed.
He focused on that logic, clung to it.
The smell reached him next. Clean, sterile. Disinfectant. Something faintly medicinal. Hospitals smelled like this. Always had. His shoulders relaxed slightly.
Good. Hospital, he thought. That tracks.
He tried to move.
His fingers twitched.
Not much, but enough.
Relief washed over him, slow and heavy. His body felt wrong—too light, too numb—but pain existed somewhere underneath, muted, distant. Pain was good. Pain meant reality. He opened his eyes.
White.
Not ceiling-white with cracks or stains or fluorescent lights. Just… white. Endless, seamless, stretching farther than his vision could focus. There were no walls, no corners, no shadows. No sense of space at all.
Elias blinked.
Once.
Twice.
"…Okay," he whispered. "That's not right."
He waited. Surely this was some kind of post-accident haze. People hallucinated under trauma all the time. His brain was probably misfiring, trying to fill in blanks. White voids were common. Symbolic nonsense the mind created when it didn't know what else to show.
He closed his eyes firmly. Counted to five. Opened them again. Still white. His heart rate picked up.
"No," Elias said quietly. "This is… this is just a dream."
That was the most reasonable explanation. A dream stitched together from fragments of memory, stress, and shock. He had been exhausted. Angry. Emotionally drained. Of course his mind would conjure something strange.
Dreams were weird like that. He took a slow breath, then another, grounding himself the way he'd read online once. Focus on sensation. Temperature. Weight. Texture.
He felt… warm. Comfortable. There was no bed beneath him, yet he didn't feel like he was falling either. His body existed without support, as if the concept of gravity had been politely excused. That unsettled him more than panic would have.
"Lucid dreaming," he murmured. "That's all." That explanation slid neatly into place, and he seized it gratefully.
Lucid dreams could feel real. Extremely real. Some people could control them. Others got stuck in false awakenings, believing they were awake when they weren't.
Yes.
That made sense.
"I'll wake up soon," Elias said to no one. "Any moment now."
Time passed.
Or maybe it didn't. There was no sun, no clock, no sense of progression. Just an unchanging stillness that pressed lightly against his thoughts. Elias frowned again.
His gaze dropped to his hands. They were his hands. Pale, slender fingers, faint calluses from typing too much, a small scar near the knuckle from when he'd cut himself on a broken mug years ago. Details. Too many details.
Dreams blurred those.
He flexed his fingers slowly, watching the movement with growing unease. Every motion responded perfectly, without delay, without distortion.
"This is just my brain being annoying," he muttered.
He laughed softly, but the sound echoed strangely, absorbed into the white nothingness without returning. That wasn't right either. Elias ran a hand through his hair.
Stop overthinking, he told himself. You got hit by a car. Of course your head's messed up.
He tried to recall what happened immediately after the impact. Ambulance sirens? Voices? Pain? There was nothing. Just darkness. Which could mean he'd been unconscious for a while. Which could mean this was a coma.
"…That's it," Elias said, nodding to himself. "Coma dream."
That explanation settled him further. Coma dreams were long. Vivid. Sometimes people experienced entire lifetimes inside them. There were documentaries about it. Interviews. Scientific discussions. He exhaled.
"Alright," he said calmly. "Then I'll just… wait."
He sat.
Or thought he did.
The white space did not change. Minutes—or what felt like minutes—passed.
Elias' calm began to crack.
"Okay," he said again, louder this time. "This is taking too long."
His chest tightened, not with fear yet, but with irritation. He had always hated things that didn't follow rules. Systems that behaved inconsistently. Problems without parameters.
"This isn't funny," he said. Silence.
A faint pressure brushed against his awareness, like someone observing him from far away. Not threatening. Not kind. Just… exist. Elias' spine prickled.
"Look," he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. "If this is some kind of near-death hallucination, fine. If it's a dream, fine. But I don't believe in afterlives, and I definitely don't believe in—"
He stopped himself.
Don't say it.
Don't give the thought shape.
Transmigration.
Reincarnation.
World hopping.
Those were fictional tropes. Narrative devices. Not real experiences normal people had on random weekday nights after buying convenience store food. He scoffed softly.
"That only happens to protagonists," he muttered. "And I'm not one."
The white space remained indifferent. His irritation faded, replaced slowly by something colder.
Doubt.
"What if…" Elias began, then shook his head sharply. "No."
He pressed his palms together, feeling the warmth, the texture of skin on skin.
"I have a job," he said firmly. "I have rent due. I have an unfinished project and a terrible boss and a stupid argument in a comment section that I regret."
His voice wavered slightly at the last part. "I don't just… disappear."
The idea offended him. People didn't vanish like that. Lives didn't end with neat narrative transitions. There was paperwork. Hospitals. Families to notify. Consequences. This—whatever this was—ignored all of that.
"I refuse to believe this," Elias said quietly. The words felt important.
Whatever was happening, he would not accept it until reality itself forced his hand. Until there was proof so undeniable it crushed denial completely. Until then, this was a dream.
A coma.
A hallucination.
Anything but the impossible. Elias crossed his arms and stared into the white.
"Wake me up," he said.
Nothing happened. For the first time since opening his eyes, unease crept into his expression.
"…This is stupid," he muttered.
And somewhere, far beyond the white, someone write—patiently.
*****
Elias coughed.
The sound was dry and harsh, tearing itself out of his chest as though it did not belong there. Pain flared—sharp enough to wrench him back to his senses, back into weight, into a body that suddenly felt too real.
His throat burned. His lungs ached, as if he had breathed water instead of air.
He groaned and shifted as the world tilted.
White resolved into a ceiling. A real ceiling—splintered in one corner, faintly yellowed with age. Above him, a fluorescent light buzzed, irritatingly ordinary. The smell reached him next: sterile, medicinal, threaded with something faintly metallic.
Hospital.
"…Ah," Elias muttered hoarsely.
His head throbbed—not sharply, but with a dull, constant pressure, as though someone were pressing a thumb between his skull and his brain. He lifted a hand to rub at it—and stopped.
The hand froze halfway.
It looked wrong.
The fingers were longer. The skin smoother. The veins beneath the surface followed unfamiliar paths, enough to make his stomach tighten. His nails were neatly trimmed, not chewed down as his always had been whenever stress crept up on him.
Elias stared.
"…That's not right."
Slowly—very slowly—he pushed himself upright. It was easier than it should have been. Far easier than it ought to have been for someone who had just been struck by a car, or thrown himself off a bridge.
Which, judging by the fragmented memories drifting at the edge of his mind, was exactly what had happened.
The blanket slid down. Beneath the hospital gown was a narrow frame he didn't recognize, shoulders slighter than he remembered, collarbones sharp and pronounced.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed.
The floor was cold. The sensation grounded him, though it offered no comfort.
His gaze drifted to the cabinet opposite the bed. Its surface wasn't a mirror, not quite—but it reflected well enough.
A face stared back at him.
It was a handsome one. Objectively so. Clean lines, light skin, a straight nose, a jaw still softened by youth. Dark curls fell messily over his brow.
And the eyes were wrong.
Too light. Too calm.
Too empty.
Elias raised a hand. The reflection obeyed. He frowned. The reflection frowned in return.
"…What a waste," he murmured.
The words came out flat. Not horrified. Not panicked. Just tired.
He waited—for fear to crash into him, for nausea, for disbelief or hysterical laughter. For tears to blur his vision or his breath to hitch painfully in his chest.
Nothing came.
His face remained unchanged. He studied himself with detached focus, like a stranger evaluating a specimen.
I can't even smile, he thought. Or cry.
He tried.
Nothing.
"…What is this?" he whispered.
The door opened.
A nurse stepped inside, tablet in hand, followed closely by a middle-aged doctor with heavy eyes and a clipboard tucked beneath his arm. Both halted when they saw Elias sitting up.
"Oh," the nurse said, startled. "You're awake."
The doctor's brows knitted immediately. "You shouldn't be sitting up yet."
"I'm okay," Elias replied reflexively.
The voice—his voice—was smooth and steady, a little hoarse, but calm. Too calm.
The doctor approached and shone a small light into Elias's eyes. "Any dizziness? Headache? Nausea?"
"A headache," Elias answered. "Nothing severe."
The examination took longer than Elias expected.
"Do you know where you are?" the doctor asked at last.
"…A hospital."
"And your name?"
Elias hesitated.
The answer surfaced anyway.
"Elias Graves."
The doctor nodded and made a note. "Do you remember what happened?"
Elias's gaze drifted away.
"It seems," he said mildly, "that I did something stupid."
The nurse sighed. "That's one way to put it."
The doctor cleared his throat. "You were found on the bridge. Witnesses reported that you were standing on the railing. Fire rescue arrived just in time."
"…I see."
"You were very lucky," the nurse added, her tone sharp despite herself. "Very lucky. If they'd been a minute later—"
"Life is precious," the doctor said, cutting in gently. "You're still young. Twenty years old. You have a future."
Twenty.
Elias absorbed the number. Younger than he had been.
The doctor glanced at the nurse, then back at Elias. "Is there a guardian we should contact? Family?"
Elias shook his head.
"No," he said. "There's no one."
The doctor paused. "No parents?"
"Disowned," Elias replied evenly.
The word felt familiar.
The nurse looked uncomfortable. "Then… a friend? Anyone at all?"
Elias considered it, then shook his head again.
"No."
Silence settled over the ward.
The doctor scribbled something onto the clipboard. "We'll need to monitor you. Given the circumstances, I'd prefer you remain under observation."
Elias nodded obediently.
The nurse fussed with the IV, speaking about second chances and the value of life, about how despair could twist perspective. Elias listened when appropriate, nodded when expected—but his attention drifted.
His phone buzzed.
He glanced down.
It wasn't his old device—sleeker, unfamiliar—but his thumb unlocked it without hesitation. Muscle memory he didn't recognize guided him.
The screen lit up.
Messages poured in.
Not concern. Not relief.
Mockery.
Did he fail even at dying?Attention-seeking bastard.Evan family disgrace.Just disappear already.
Elias scrolled.
His expression didn't change.
Images followed—photos, doctored and frozen in cruel permanence. Headlines warped into sneers. A boy in formal attire, head bowed, reduced to whispers and scandal.
The memories slid into place with sickening ease.
An illegitimate child.A failed heir.A public disgrace.
He lowered the phone slowly.
The nurse was still speaking. "…and you should consider"
"Sure," Elias said calmly, cutting her off. "I will."
She stopped, startled by the certainty in his tone.
When they left, Elias picked up the ID card resting on the bedside table.
He stared at it.
Name: Elias GravesAge: 20
His fingers tightened around the card.
"…Damn it."
The final piece fell into place.
The novel.The cursed comment.The half-brother of the protagonist.The disposable character who attempted suicide early in the story.
Elias leaned back against the bed and stared at the ceiling.
No panic came.
Only a deep, bone-weary resignation. "…What a ridiculous joke."