Yes University
Lakefront Metropolis,
United Continent of America
Terra, Gaea Solar system
Neutral Free zone
January 14th 2019
For the rest of her courses in the early afternoon, Sam took her time to think about the advice Dr. Dingle had given her. Mending the relationship with her Aunt was something that Sam had always wanted. But for some reason, she just hadn't gotten to it. After she was done with her class for the day, Sam decided to go to her dorm. She didn't feel like returning to Henry's apartment to get more of her things as she didn't feel like facing him. Unfortunately for Sam, she had left her room key back in her dorm. She just hoped her roommate was there to let her in. Sam wasn't surprised to see Aria Fields in her black nightgown robe, her jock of a boyfriend propped on the sofa by the tv. It seemed they were watching some movie, and Sam had interrupted them.
"Shouldn't you be at your boyfriend's place?" Aria asked, breaking the silence. She was right. Sam usually spent most of her time at Henry's apartment. The few times she was here, it was for essentials like her pills, which Stella usually picked up and sent over. But those days felt far behind her now.
"Sorry for the interruption," Sam mumbled as she moved past Aria, heading into her room.
As she stepped inside, she froze. The last time she had been here was the night of the incident. Her bed was covered with clothes and scattered comic books. The previous issue of Tower of Fate she had been reading was still open, showcasing the vibrant images she adored—heroes standing against impossible odds, reality bending around them in kaleidoscopic waves of color. She remembered how she hadn't finished it—and new issues had come out since then. Normally, she would've felt a small thrill at the idea. But today, it wasn't the comic that held her attention.
It was the red-stained green rug.
Her chest tightened. The sight made her heart skip a beat. The memories came flooding back—unrelenting. That night. The anniversary of her dad's death. The suffocating weight of it. She hadn't taken her pills. Hadn't wanted to. The spiral afterward was something she still couldn't bring herself to recount in detail, even in therapy. Especially in therapy.
Sam moved toward her desk, sifting through scattered sketch paper, loose pencils, and broken erasers. Her eyes flicked to a half-empty pill bottle. She was running low on the ones she'd left at Henry's place. Her fingers moved mechanically as she searched to see if her aunt had sent a refill.
Her phone buzzed. Two missed calls. Henry. Stella.
She deleted Henry's voicemail without hesitation, but Stella's voice played out in a soft, tired message filled with worry.
"You suffered a horrible trauma, Samantha. I don't deny that. But have you dealt with it?"
The words echoed louder than they should have. Dealt with it.
Was that it? Was she broken because she hadn't mourned properly? Because she had pushed her father's memory into a sealed vault and never dared open it? Or because her mother, the woman she had never known, remained an empty silhouette in her mind?
And yet there was more. Things she could never share. The colors only she could see, the feelings that weren't hers but clung to her skin like shadows. The voices—soft, distant, whispering across her thoughts like old memories from another life.
Was I born wrong?
That thought made her shiver.
Trying to distract herself, she glanced at her laptop, which was open to an article she had pulled up after her last session with Dr. Dingle. It was about a group called the Octagram Movement—a spiritual philosophy Dr. Dingle had mentioned in passing during their talk about trauma and spiritual processing.
Curiosity had gotten the better of her.
The group was strange—but compelling.
They believed that souls were woven from the Earth's breath, that each lifetime was a thread in a great tapestry of adversity. Pain, in their doctrine, was not a wound but a memory—an echo of who you were and a compass for who you were meant to become. Their sacred icon was a wheel of eight rays, each ray representing a spiritual principle: Grief, Endurance, Reflection, Sacrifice, Rebirth, Guilt, Release, and finally, Resonance—the moment one's soul harmonized with the Earth's memory.
Sam scrolled through images of Octagram altars—some minimalist, others beautifully ornate. Circles carved into stone. Candles arranged in fractal patterns. Some devotees wore rings of ash over their eyes, claiming it helped them see the emotional traces left in places of sorrow.
She didn't know why it resonated. Maybe it was the way they treated grief as holy instead of broken. Maybe it was their belief that suffering was part of the soul's echo, not a sign of weakness.
She found herself bookmarking the page, even downloading an illustrated guide on the Octagram's teachings. There was a poem at the end of one section:
We are not the flame,But the burn it leaves behind—In the ashes, the truth stirs,Waiting to be named again.
Sam stared at the lines.
A lump formed in her throat.
She didn't know what she believed. But the idea that her pain meant something… that the chaos in her head might not be a curse… it was the first time in a long while something felt like it fit.
Without thinking, she reached for her sketchbook and pencils. Her hand moved on its own, sketching the wheel of eight rays. Her own version. Softer edges. A fractured moon behind it. Eyes inside the spokes.
She didn't stop until her eyelids grew heavy and the colors on the page began to blur. Eventually, the pencil slipped from her fingers, and she drifted off to sleep, her unfinished drawing glowing faintly in the light of her desk lamp.
When Sam woke up, her body felt stiff, her limbs tangled in the blanket like forgotten thoughts. Blinking away the fuzz of half-sleep, she reached for her sketchbook.
It was open—though she didn't remember opening it. And what she saw pulled the breath right from her chest.
Pages. Dozens of them.
Her hands trembled slightly as she flipped through. Each sheet bore a variation of the same figure: the Golden Prince.
He stood with regal posture in one image, his silhouette carved against the backdrop of a storm-torn sky. In another, he knelt with his blade plunged into a river of starlight, his reflection warped by ripples. One sketch depicted him standing at the center of a burning wheel—eight arms of light radiating from behind him.
Sam paused. That image hadn't been part of her original story. She blinked and traced her finger along the rays. The Octagram. But why would the symbol appear here, in his story?
The Golden Prince had always been a figment of comfort, born from the tales she spun with her father when she was small. He was the keeper of her secret dreams, the one who faced monsters in the dark. In the original version, he journeyed through a cursed land to reach a crystal tower, where he believed a princess awaited rescue. But when he finally arrived, he found no damsel. Only a mirror—and a girl in a cloak who had already saved herself.
It had been her father's idea.
"You're the princess and the hero, Sammy. Remember that."
The memory lanced through her heart with bittersweet clarity.
She flipped to another page. The Prince's expression here was different. Sad, almost haunted. His face was still beautiful—chiseled cheekbones, a jawline that could've been drawn by divine hands—but there was something deeper behind his eyes now. Something she hadn't drawn before.
Pain.
In one sketch, his luminous blue eyes were shut, his golden armor cracked and rusted. In another, vines of shadow coiled around his arms, pulling him toward the earth while his crown floated just above him, unreachable.
Sam rubbed her eyes. How long had she been drawing? It had been so long since she let her imagination roam like this, unfiltered. It felt raw, like something had poured out of her, and her pencil had simply followed. There were no clean lines—just emotion, just instinct.
And the more she stared at him, the more she felt like he wasn't just a character anymore.
He was becoming something.
Or maybe becoming her.
She turned the page to a final sketch—unfinished, as if she'd stopped mid-stroke. The Prince knelt at the edge of a cliff, staring down into an abyss. Behind him, the same wheel of light burned faintly—but this time, it looked like it was breaking apart, with only three rays still holding: Reflection. Grief. Rebirth.
Her breath caught.
The Octagram again.
Sam sat up and grabbed her phone. She reopened the guide she had downloaded, scrolling to the section about visions and archetypes. The Octagram Movement had a term for recurring symbolic figures that emerged in dreams or unconscious art. They called them "Soul Mirrors."
Figures that reflected a person's innermost struggle and spiritual path. They weren't guides or saviors—they were fragments of the self, waiting to be understood, integrated, or let go.
She stared back at the sketch.
"Maybe I should take another nap," she murmured, stretching lazily.
Just then, a sudden flash of light illuminated the room. Sam froze, her body stiffening as she turned around. Her breath caught in her throat. A black dot hovered in the middle of her room as if someone had painted a perfect circle in the air. She rubbed her eyes, thinking she might still be dreaming. But the dot didn't vanish. Instead, it began to expand. The air grew heavy, and the room trembled. The wind picked up, rattling the windows and shaking the wardrobe. Sparks of golden-green energy crackled and burst forth from the growing anomaly. Then, the black dot transformed. It stretched and shifted, reshaping itself into a crystalline surface—a shimmering mirror that stood tall and rectangular, dominating the space.
And within the surface was a...
Sam couldn't believe her eyes. She didn't want to believe it. The only thought running through her mind was that she had finally lost it. Desperate to wake up from what felt like a vivid dream, she slapped herself hard across the cheek.
"Wake up!" she muttered under her breath. Nothing changed. The figure in the mirror remained. The person's face was indistinct, obscured somehow, but their clothing stood out: a black trench coat paired with matching pants and boots.
"Who are you?" Sam asked, the words escaping her before she could think. She didn't know why she asked—it just felt like the right thing to do.
No response.
The figure turned away for a moment, then faced her again. Sam's voice cracked as she asked, "Hello? Are you real?"
The crystalline surface of the mirror rippled and then began to solidify. Slowly, the figure's face became clear. Sam's heart stopped. It was him. The same person she had just finished sketching. Her golden prince. Sam's mouth opened, but no sound came out. She could only stare as the vision before her came into sharp focus. He was exactly as she had imagined him—dressed in a black trench coat and pants, with hair that gleamed like pure gold. His bronze skin glowed faintly, as though kissed by the sun itself. Her golden prince was real.
Sam's hand moved on its own, rising toward the surface of the mirror. She felt an inexplicable pull, a deep urge to touch him. And then he mirrored her movement, raising his hand as if to meet hers. Their fingertips met. The touch wasn't just visual—Sam felt it. She felt the warmth of his skin radiating through the mirror. A jolt of energy shot through her, and then something strange happened. A pulse. A strange, otherworldly pulse burst from their connection, rippling through the air like a shockwave. Sam stumbled backward, tripping over her own feet as the mirror shattered before her eyes, breaking into fine white dust. For a moment, she simply sat there on the floor, staring at the space where the mirror had been. Her mind reeled, unable to process what had just happened. One moment he was there, and the next, he was gone. Sam pressed her trembling hands against her head. I've lost it. And then it hit her. A ringing noise tore through her skull like a siren, loud and unrelenting.
****
The next thing she knew, she was stumbling through the streets, dazed and disoriented. People walked past, giving her curious or disapproving looks, probably assuming she was drunk. Her stomach churned, hollow, and aching after she had emptied it in a nearby alley. And then it struck again. A splitting headache pierced her mind, sharper than before. Sam gasped as vivid images flooded her vision. It was overwhelming—a torrent of scenes she couldn't control. She screamed, clutching her head as her knees buckled.
Passersby stopped, some retreating in concern, others whispering as they pointed their phones at her. But Sam barely noticed. She was trapped in the onslaught of images. She saw a fight—a chaotic battle in what looked like an office space. It felt familiar, though she couldn't place why. And then her vision shifted to a massive pillar of pale light that pierced the night sky. The light was blinding, otherworldly, and impossibly powerful. A shockwave erupted from it, clearing the sky of clouds. Yet, as Sam glanced around, she realized no one else seemed to notice it. The world around her moved on, oblivious. But Sam knew. Deep down, in the pit of her soul, she knew the light was the source of her pain—the cause of the pounding in her head. Without a second thought, Sam started running. She didn't know where she was going or why, but she knew one thing: she had to reach the light.
The path Sam took to get to the light felt familiar. She boarded one of the Red Line trains heading downtown and, just as she suspected, ended up in front of her therapist's building. The sixteen-story skyscraper in the south of Loop Nexus district, loomed above her, casting long shadows in the fading light. Sam hesitated, her nerves fraying. The pale light she had followed was gone, but the lingering pain in her head refused to fade. She wondered if Dr. Dingle was still in her office. The doctor sometimes worked late, well past the building's closing hours. It was only a quarter past seven, so there was a chance she might still be there.
Jakob, the night-shift security guard, wasn't at his usual spot behind the desk near the building's entrance. He was always there, a constant presence, often letting Sam in when she arrived for late-night appointments. But this time, the desk was empty. Strange. Pushing open the door, Sam entered the building. The doors, usually locked after hours, were surprisingly open. Normally, Jakob would buzz her in, but tonight the door gave no resistance. She shrugged it off. Maybe he had left it open for her, anticipating she might come by. He was always considerate like that. Sam turned left toward the elevators but stopped abruptly. The gate bar—designed to block entry without scanning a key card—was wide open. Another oddity. Again, she tried to rationalize it: maybe Jakob left it open for the cleaning crew. But deep down, she knew something was wrong. She could feel it in her bones. Her head throbbed like a drill burrowing into her skull. Taking a deep breath, she pressed on, stepping into the elevator and pressing the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, a chill crawled over her skin, prickling her like a swarm of tiny insects.
When the elevator doors opened, Sam froze. A wisp of black smoke was seeping from the direction of Dr. Dingle's office. Her first thought was fire, and she broke into a sprint. The door to the office was wide open, and as she reached it, a pungent stench hit her like a brick wall—death and sulfur, sharp and nauseating. Sam gagged, her empty stomach twisting painfully. She had nothing left to throw up, but her body still tried, convulsing as she fought to keep herself upright. Steeling herself, she stepped into the office. The smell was stronger inside. The cozy, calming atmosphere that once defined the space was gone, replaced by a suffocating malevolence that sent shivers down her spine. The room was in chaos: shelves splintered, books scattered across the floor, shards of the white chandelier glittering like fallen stars. Large holes gaped in the walls, and long claw marks scarred the surfaces.
It looked like a storm had torn through the office. Sam, dazed and overwhelmed, stepped forward—and her foot landed on something hard and squishy. She recoiled, looking down to see a blackened tentacle oozing yellow pus that hissed as it burned a hole into the floor. She stumbled back, her mind spinning. Was this real? Was she hallucinating? No. This was real. It felt real. Her gaze snapped to the center of the room, drawn by a pale light. There, by the desk, sat Dr. Dingle—or what was left of her. Her body was slumped across the desk, blood pooling beneath her and spreading to the floor. Sam's instincts screamed at her to run. To get help. But she didn't. Above the chaos hovered the source of the light—a shard of crystal, glowing with an otherworldly brilliance. Its light pulsed, sending fresh waves of pain stabbing through Sam's skull. She gritted her teeth and pushed forward.
"Dr. Dingle?" she whispered. Her voice trembled. Her body screamed for her to turn and leave, but she forced herself to move closer. The doctor looked like she was simply resting her head on the desk, but Sam knew better. She reached out, gently touching her shoulder and pulling her back to see her face.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Dr. Dingle's eyes were burned out, charred sockets staring blankly at nothing. A silver dagger was embedded in her gut, the blood surrounding it already darkening and drying. Sam stumbled back, her hand covering her mouth to stifle a scream. Just then, the crystal shard in the air shot forward, streaking straight at Sam's chest. She leaped back instinctively, losing her footing and crashing onto a pile of scattered files. The shard pierced her chest, disappearing inside her. Pain exploded through her body, worse than anything she had ever felt. She screamed, the sound tearing through the room as her body convulsed. The smell of urine and shit hit her nose, making her gag again. She must have passed out because, when she opened her eyes, she was lying on the floor, her head resting against a stack of fallen papers. One file caught her attention—her own. Her picture and name stared back at her from the cover. Among the scattered files, hers was the only one unsealed. She looked back at Dr. Dingle's lifeless body. Her stomach churned at the sight of the burned-out eyes and the dagger protruding from her abdomen.
"What the fuck have I stumbled onto?" Sam muttered, pressing a trembling hand to her chest. She couldn't feel anything unusual, but the shard—whatever it was—was now inside her. Her instincts finally kicked in. She ran. The image of Dr. Dingle's mutilated body burned itself into her mind, a nightmare she knew would haunt her forever.