Aster’s hands shake so hard he nearly drops the damn thing when he lifts the third brick on the fourth step of No. 7 Heart Lane. Beneath it, a cold metal key winks up at him, faintly catching the guttering light from the street.

  He stares at it like it might bite him. His brain lags, sluggish and waterlogged, struggling to compute how or why he’s doing this at all. Every muscle in his body screams, raw and spent, and the damp chill clings to his clothes like it means to finish him off.

  And yet here he is—three blocks from the alley he should’ve died in. Twice along the way, he almost gave up, and twice, only the sheer fear and memory of that phantom slap got his legs moving again.

  He’s not proud of it. He was barely even present for it.

  Shivering hard enough that his teeth chatter, he fumbles the key at the door, misses once, twice, before finally getting the damn thing into the lock on the third try. The click is quiet but satisfying, like reality grudgingly allows this next step.

  The door creaks open, and Aster’s heart tightens.

  Breaking into someone’s home now. Sure. Why not.

  What if there’s a family inside? A kid? What if he gets himself shot before he even hits twenty-one?

  But at this point, fear is more theory than reality. Desperation already steamrolls logic.

  Inside, it’s nothing like what he expects.

  The hallway stretches out long and elegant, high ceilings and polished wooden floors glowing faintly in the spill of streetlight behind him. Three doors branch off ahead, but the whole place is dark, still, silent—save for his own damp silhouette cast on the floor.

  Aster swallows, throat raw.

  “Hello?” he calls, voice small and hoarse. “Hi. Not a murderer. If anyone’s home, I’ll leave. Swear.”

  No answer.

  The silence hangs heavy.

  He waits a beat, then huffs out a breath that rattles in his chest.

  Maybe no one’s here. Maybe it’s his now. Squatter’s rights, right?

  His feet carry him farther in, tracking little puddles as water drips steadily from his clothes. He looks down at himself and blinks. Soaked. Like he’s been dredged from a river.

  Doesn’t matter. Everything about him has been waterlogged for years now.

  Next to him, a light switch looms. He hesitates—because flipping a light in a stranger’s house feels like the final nail in the break-in coffin—but then shrugs and does it anyway.

  Warm amber glow floods the hallway, soft and almost inviting. It should make him feel safer. It doesn’t. It just makes him feel seen. Exposed. Like every molecule of this house is now aware he’s trespassing.

  The cold clings harder, and the wet fabric sticks to him in miserable folds. He needs heat—something, anything—to stop his bones from rattling apart.

  Bathroom. He finds it: big, spotless, with a shower that looks like it belongs in a hotel. He doesn’t even think. His body’s already moving, hands already yanking at wet clothes.

  The shower roars to life, and when the first blast of hot water hits, it burns like fire. He gasps but leans in anyway. Better the burn than the bone-deep cold trying to put him under.

  He stands there for what feels like hours, though it can’t be more than thirty minutes, letting the heat thaw him, letting the water sluice away not just the grime but the storm of thoughts chewing at his skull.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  But the warmth doesn’t wash away the hallucination, dream, vision—whatever you want to call it. Doesn’t make the man vanish from his memory.

  Finally, he shuts the water off, stepping out on shaky legs, dripping as he stares at himself in the mirror.

  And there he is.

  Almost twenty-one, but he looks older—worn out in that way poverty and stress do to you. His face, the clash of his parents’ features, still shows through.

  His mother’s deep complexion, his father’s lighter tone, mixing into that warm, coffee-cream skin he’s spent his whole life quietly resenting because no one ever seems to know which box to put him in.

  His nose, too strong. His lips, too soft. His eyes, brown and wide, soft like her eyes—kind without meaning to.

  But the rest?

  The bags under his eyes. The wild curls, still damp and plastered to his forehead. The scruffy beard that looks less “rugged” and more “gave up.”

  He stares at that face like it belongs to someone else.

  “A man in a dream,” he mutters, voice flat, “told me where to find house keys hidden under a brick so I can break in, live here, and brew a magic potion to call him back.”

  His mouth twists.

  “Nothing weird about that.”

  The laugh that punches out of him is harsh, sudden, too loud in the tiled space.

  And just like that, the fragile warmth breaks, and the cold anxiety crashes back in.

  He scrambles for a towel, wrapping it around himself like armour, ignoring the heap of wet clothes he abandoned. No way he’s putting those back on—not now, not ever if he can help it.

  Pushing out into the hall, he calls again, voice thin and strange in his own ears.

  “Helloooo? Anyone here?”

  No answer. Just more silence pressing in, thick and uncomfortable.

  The house is pristine. Too pristine.

  Brown sofas arranged with clinical care. White walls, beige carpets—like someone ordered “upper-middle-class taste” out of a catalogue and set it up just for show. The kind of place that’s perfect but dead.

  Aster shakes his head, trying to get his thoughts together before they spiral into something darker.

  Focus. Clothes. Dryness. Sanity, or what’s left of it.

  He heads toward one of the doors, lights flicking on automatically like they’ve been waiting for him.

  The bedroom is big. Clean. Impersonal.

  But it’s the open closet that stops him cold.

  Clothes. Dozens of them. All new. All neatly arranged.

  And all his size.

  His breath hitches.

  “The coincidences just keep coming,” he mutters, voice a little too tight.

  His hands move on autopilot, tugging on trousers and a shirt that fit so perfectly it makes his skin crawl.

  This is too much. Too weird. Too close to some dream logic that’s turned around and bitten him.

  He sinks onto the bed—soft, immaculate—and lets his head fall into his hands.

  “If the key, house, and even clothes are real…”

  He can’t finish the thought; his brain won’t stop spinning.

  The list.

  The man said there’d be a list. Ingredients. Instructions.

  And if that list is real…

  His heart picks up speed.

  If the list is real, then maybe, just maybe, this isn’t insanity.

  His feet are already moving before his mind catches up. He stumbles toward what looks like a kitchen, scanning frantically.

  And there it is.

  Tacked to the fridge with a little magnet, like it’s someone’s shopping list: a yellowed note with big, looping letters at the top—

  “Astral Potion.”