Chapter 7

“If you see a light at the end of the tunnel, it might just be a train.”

I swam further, and the first thing I saw was light. Not hospital light, not a searchlight, but a soft, golden, almost warm glow. Like a sunset on a day when you are still a child and believe that it is possible to be safe.

The water around me was transparent and clean, cleaner than it had ever been before. No darkness, no distortions. Only a glass ceiling through which this warm light streamed, and a weightlessness in which I swam — effortlessly, as if in a childhood dream.

I stepped onto the bottom. It felt firm, smooth, almost dry. The door behind my back slammed shut soundlessly. Ahead of it was an archway, and beyond it — a green meadow. Birds. Trees. The sun. Voices.

“This can’t be real,” I gasped.

But the air was real. Light. Sweetish. I walked forward. Beneath my bare feet was neither tile nor concrete, but soft grass. Somewhere in the distance, children were laughing. And… my parents.

“Miranda!” a voice drifted over. Recognizable, beloved, but… impossible.

I froze.

“This can’t be…” I whispered.

And yet my feet carried me there on their own — toward the rustle of familiar flowers, toward a house that looked almost exactly as it had in my childhood, and toward my mother in a dress that no longer existed.

“You’re back. I missed you so much,” Mom said, pulling me into an embrace. The hug was warm and solid; it smelled of vanilla and apples. Not like a hallucination.

I was trembling. My heart was hammering in my temples. But a part of me — weak, exhausted — wanted to stay. Wanted to lie down in this summer, in this house, in this lie.

I stepped inside. Everything was familiar: the photograph with Dad, the crack on the stairs, the dog’s bowl. I looked, inhaled, felt it with my fingers — everything was real. But that was exactly why it was a trap.

In the corner stood a mirror. In it was my reflection. But it didn’t move. The face stared at me with a faint smirk. And then it spoke:

“Here you can be yourself. Here you are loved. Why go back to the cold? To the fear? To the emptiness?”

“This isn’t real,” I said. “This isn’t my path.”

“Then you will die,” the reflection replied. “There is nothing beyond that door but pain.”

“And yet, I am going there.”

With those words, I glanced back at Mom — and saw that her eyes had gone dark, her lips stretched into an unnatural smile. The house shuddered like a cardboard stage set.

I ran. The sun eclipsed. The walls began to crack. The voices started to sound like a warped, broken tape. The grass turned to slime, the sky into a ceiling from which black liquid oozed.

And then, water again. Cold, viscous. Beneath it — a passage. Complex, narrow. But now I knew: illusions do not save you.

I surfaced into a new section. Dark. Empty. Only me and my breathing.

I had passed. Not because I wasn’t afraid — but because I chose fear over a lie.