The first thing Creed became aware of was the softness beneath his cheek—familiar cotton sheets that smelled faintly of the academy's standard-issue detergent.
His eyes fluttered open to the sight of afternoon sunlight streaming through his bedroom window, casting the same warm patterns across his desk that he'd seen just the day before.
The crystal chandelier above him caught the light in gentle rainbows, just as it was the day before.
For a moment, he simply lay there, his mind struggling to reconcile the peaceful normalcy of his surroundings with the vivid, terrifying memories that felt more real than the mattress beneath his body.
The web-filled chasm, the screaming darkness, Nicholas trapped in organic cocoons, the entity with its impossible eyes—all of it crashed over him in waves of recall so intense his stomach lurched with phantom vertigo.
