Chapter 1: The Toll of Waking

Leo's eyes snapped open to the familiar ceiling of his cramped studio apartment, heart hammering against his ribs like a caged animal desperate to escape. The dream clung to him with phantom fingers—that endless stretch of cracked asphalt suspended over an ocean of tar, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of something following behind him, and worst of all, the face.

His own face, but wrong. Twisted into a smile that stretched too wide, eyes that reflected nothing but hunger.

He sat up, running trembling hands through his dark, sweat-dampened hair. The digital clock's red numbers burned into his retinas: 3:47 AM. The same time he'd been waking up for the past three weeks, ever since the dreams began.

"Just a dream," he whispered to the empty room, his voice hoarse and unconvincing. "Just another fucking dream."

But even as he said it, Leo knew something was different this time. The usual fog of sleep wasn't lifting. Instead, the nightmare's details remained sharp and vivid—the smell of hot asphalt, the sound of wind chimes made from rusted spoons, the sensation of something wet and cold seeping between his toes.

Leo froze. Wet? He threw back his thin blanket and stared down at his feet in horror.

They were soaked. Dark water dripped steadily onto his hardwood floor, forming small puddles that reflected the pale light filtering through his window. The water was wrong—too thick, too dark, carrying with it the scent of rust and decay that had no place in his sterile apartment.

"No, no, no..." Leo scrambled out of bed, nearly slipping on the wet floor. His analytical mind—the same one that solved coding problems at his mundane office job—desperately sought rational explanations. A burst pipe above his unit. Condensation from the old air conditioning. Anything but the impossible truth staring him in the face.

He grabbed a towel from his bathroom and began frantically mopping up the water, but with each swipe, more seemed to appear. The dark liquid felt wrong against the fabric, too viscous, leaving stains that looked almost like oil but smelled of something far more organic and unsettling.

That's when he noticed it—a small piece of paper tucked under his pillow, where his head had been resting moments before.

With shaking fingers, Leo pulled out what appeared to be a receipt. The paper was damp and yellowed, printed with faded ink that seemed to shift and writhe in the dim light. At the top, in an ornate font that hurt to look at directly, it read: "TOLL RECEIPT - PASSAGE CONFIRMED."

Below that, a series of numbers that made his blood run cold: the exact coordinates of where he'd been standing in his dream, on that impossible bridge stretching endlessly over an ocean of darkness. And at the bottom, in handwriting that matched his own but felt utterly foreign: "Payment pending. Next passage required within 72 hours."

Leo's hands began to shake so violently that the receipt fluttered to the floor like a dying moth. He backed against the wall, his bare feet still dripping that wrong water onto his apartment floor. This couldn't be happening. Dreams didn't leave physical evidence. Dreams didn't follow you home.

But the wet footprints leading from his bed to where he now stood told a different story.

He closed his eyes tightly, counting his breathing the way his therapist had taught him years ago. One, two, three... When he opened them, everything would be normal. The water would be gone, the receipt would be a product of his sleep-addled imagination, and he could chalk this all up to stress from his job and too many late nights staring at code.

One... two... three...

Leo opened his eyes. The receipt lay on the floor exactly where it had fallen, its edges curling as if touched by some invisible flame. The water remained, and now—God help him—there were more wet footprints appearing on his floor. Not his own this time, but smaller, moving in a deliberate pattern around his apartment as if someone invisible was pacing.

A sound drifted through his window—faint but unmistakable. The soft, musical chiming of metal against metal. Rusted spoons caught in a breeze that shouldn't exist in his fourth-floor apartment in downtown Portland.

Leo stumbled to his window and pressed his face against the glass. The city sprawled below him, normal and reassuringly real, but in the reflection of the glass, he saw something that made his bladder nearly release.

Another face stared back at him from behind his own reflection. His face, but wearing that too-wide smile from his dream. The mouth moved, and though no sound came through the glass, Leo could read the words forming on those familiar-yet-alien lips:

"Time to pay the toll, Leo."

The reflection raised one hand and pressed it against the inside of the glass, as if it were standing right behind him in the apartment. Leo spun around, heart exploding in his chest, but nothing was there except his sparse furniture and the spreading pools of impossible water.

When he turned back to the window, his normal reflection stared back, pale and terrified. But written in the condensation that definitely hadn't been there before, appearing letter by letter as if traced by an invisible finger, were the words: "THE BRIDGE REMEMBERS."

Leo stumbled backward, his rational mind finally cracking under the weight of the impossible. He was losing his mind—that was the only explanation that made sense. Stress-induced psychosis, maybe, or a complete mental breakdown triggered by years of isolation and dissatisfaction.

But as he bent to pick up the receipt with numb fingers, its paper felt real. The water soaking his feet was undeniably present. And somewhere in the distance, those wind chimes continued their ghostly song.

The receipt's coordinates burned in his memory now, as clear as if they'd been tattooed behind his eyelids. Part of him—the rational part that was quickly drowning under waves of terror—knew he should throw the thing away, maybe check himself into a hospital, seek help.

But a darker part, a part that had been growing stronger with each recurring dream, whispered something else entirely. The coordinates were real. They led somewhere. And maybe, just maybe, if he was brave enough to follow them, he could find answers instead of madness.

Leo looked at his reflection in the dark window one more time. His own face stared back, but now he wasn't sure if he could trust even that.

"Seventy-two hours," he whispered to himself, reading the receipt again. The words seemed to pulse with their own malevolent life.

Outside, the city hummed with its usual nighttime energy, oblivious to the impossible horror unfolding in one small apartment. Leo Vance stood alone in his spreading puddles of dream-water, holding proof that nightmares could follow you home.

The toll had been paid, but the passage was just beginning.