If you're the heroine of the novel then I shall be your new no-extra
## Aeon's Nightmare: Reality Bites
Aeon, a college kid with an apocalypse-novel obsession, never imagined living one. Hunched over his workstation in the design unit workshop, the usual student murmurs faded into the background. An unsettling chill crept in, raising goosebumps on his arms. Whispers of "freezing" rippled through the class.
The tutor, Ms. Hawthorne, wrestled with the thermostat, her brow furrowed. The heater remained stubbornly silent, its clicks swallowed by the growing unease. It was late – the maintenance crew should've been here ages ago. To add to the weirdness, the Wi-Fi had flatlined, leaving an eerie digital silence.
With a sigh, Ms. Hawthorne dispatched Emily, her timid assistant, to fetch someone from maintenance. "Urgent!" she stressed.
Hours bled into one another. No Emily. Faint screams echoed from the hallway, dismissed as drama club antics by most. Aeon, lost in a heated debate about the design project, barely registered the chaos brewing outside their bubble.
Then, the door creaked open. A flicker of relief crossed the tutor's face. "Emily's back with—" Her smile froze, replaced by raw terror.
The figure that shambled in wasn't Emily. It was a grotesque caricature, eyes vacant, hunger gnawing at its decaying face. A primal fear gripped Aeon – Zombie.
Pandemonium erupted. Shrieks pierced the air as chairs toppled and the room devolved into a maelstrom of terror. Aeon's mind, usually calm, warred with his trembling body. A memory sparked – a weekend devoured by a book featuring the badass zombie slayer, Layla. Now, he was living that story, trapped in a virus-ravaged world.
Layla. On the brink of her ninth regression, a terrifying loop threatening to unravel reality itself. Aeon, inexplicably, knew the rules: ten regressions, the absolute limit. Layla, doomed to fail, to regress, to repeat. But the book offered no clues about the tenth regression, the one where she found a wish stone. What did she wish for? And if she fell further, would the world reset, erasing Aeon from existence?
Across the room, Layla watched Aeon with narrowed eyes. Amidst the chaos, he stood out. While others screamed or fled, he moved with a calculated grace, as if he'd rehearsed this nightmare a thousand times. A flicker of morbid curiosity sparked within her.
"What an odd duck," Layla mused, her fingers tightening around the makeshift weapon clutched in her hand. "Why can't I remember him from the past loops?"
The undead clawed at the barricaded door, their moans a constant reminder of the danger. Layla couldn't shake the feeling that Aeon was a puzzle piece missing from her fragmented memories. Was he a glitch in the system, a wildcard thrown into the mix? She'd seen countless faces – allies, enemies, and those who faded into oblivion with each regression. But Aeon defied categorization.
He shouldn't be here, yet he was. A living enigma. His calm focus was a beacon in the storm, and Layla couldn't help but be drawn to it. Perhaps he held the key to breaking the cycle, a thread she could grasp to unravel the fabric of fate. As Aeon met her gaze with a flicker of understanding, Layla's lips curved into a half-smile.
"You're no ordinary survivor," she whispered, her voice lost in the pandemonium. "And neither am I."
A primal growl rumbled from Aeon's throat, a promise echoing amidst the pandemonium. "I will survive this. end this."
ZERO8 · Seram
