Chapter 6: A Shattered Awakening

Chapter 6: A Shattered Awakening

The first thing to return was the smell.

Antiseptic. Sharp, clean, and suffocating. For a delirious moment, Leo thought he was by his mother’s bedside, that he had fallen asleep in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair and was waking to the familiar, rhythmic beep of her heart monitor.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

The sound was there, a steady, electronic pulse to his left. But this wasn’t the gentle rhythm he knew. It was insistent, sharp, and it was measuring him.

The second thing to return was pain. It wasn't a single point of agony, but a symphony of it, conducted in every nerve ending of his body. A dull, throbbing bass drum pounded in his skull. A searing, electric riff played along his left leg and arm, and a chorus of deep, bruising aches sang from his ribs with every shallow breath he took.

Leo’s eyes fluttered open, blinking against a light so white and absolute it felt like an assault. He was staring at a perforated ceiling tile. He turned his head, a slow, agonizing process that sent fresh waves of pain through his neck, and took in his surroundings.

A sterile white room. An IV stand with a clear bag dripping liquid into his arm. The insistent, beeping machine by his bed. He was in a hospital. The stark, clean environment was the absolute antithesis of the dark, oppressive exam hall at Blackwood, with its Gothic shadows and the suffocating scent of old paper and dust.

It was over. He was safe.

The memories rushed back then, not as a coherent narrative, but as a feverish, chaotic slideshow. The gaunt face of Professor Finch. The cold, grey eyes. The impossible strength in his grip. The click-click-click of a silver stopwatch. A page turn, revealing the glossy, staring eyes of a dead boy. The whisper at his ear. The Zippo lighter, a tiny, hateful star. The explosive, crystalline sound of shattering glass. The rush of wind. The sickening, final lurch as the world came up to meet him.

He must have hallucinated. That had to be it. The pressure, the desperation for the scholarship, the anxiety over his mother… it had all culminated in a complete psychotic break. He’d arrived late, found the exam hall empty, and his stressed-out mind had conjured the rest. The fall was real, of course. He must have panicked and stumbled, crashing through the window in his delusion. It was the only explanation that made any sense.

A nurse bustled in, a kind-faced woman with tired eyes. "Well, hello there, sleeping beauty," she said, her voice a welcome note of normalcy in the chaos of his thoughts. "You gave us quite a scare. Took a nasty fall, from what they tell me. You're lucky to be alive, son. Multiple fractures in your leg and two ribs, a concussion, and more bruises than I can count. But you're going to be okay."

"What… what happened?" Leo asked, his voice a dry, unused rasp.

"You fell from a third-story window at Blackwood Academy," she said, checking his IV drip. "Some students in a dorm across the quad saw it happen and called 911. You've been out for almost a full day." She patted his uninjured arm. "You just rest. You have some visitors, but I told them they needed to wait until you were awake and lucid."

"Visitors?"

"A police detective and someone from the academy," she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "The school man looks like he's about to jump out of his own skin. Been pacing the hallway for hours."

The nurse left, and the fragile comfort of his hallucination theory began to crumble. Why would a detective be here for a simple, stress-induced accident?

A few minutes later, two men entered the room. The first was a man in his late forties with a rumpled suit, a weary, grim expression, and eyes that had seen far too much. He carried the heavy aura of law enforcement like a second coat. The second man was younger, dressed in a sharp but slightly ill-fitting blazer, his face pale and beaded with sweat. He clutched a briefcase to his chest like a shield. This had to be the academy counselor.

"Mr. Vance? I'm Detective Miles," the grim-faced man said, his voice a low gravel. "This is Mr. Davies, a counselor from Blackwood."

Mr. Davies offered a twitchy, forced smile. "Leo. We are all so incredibly concerned. The academy wishes you a full and speedy recovery. What you went through must have been an incredibly stressful ordeal."

Leo’s heart began to beat faster, a frantic rhythm that made the monitor beside him quicken its pace. "The exam…" he started, needing to know. "Was I… was I the only one there?"

Davies’s eyes darted nervously toward the detective before settling on Leo. "The exam was, ah, administered under special, isolated conditions to accommodate your late arrival," he said, the words clearly rehearsed. "It's understandable that the pressure might have been… overwhelming."

They were trying to build a narrative. The stressed student, pushed too far, who breaks and jumps. It was neat. It was clean. It protected the academy. But it wasn't the truth.

"There was a man in there with me," Leo said, his voice gaining a desperate edge. "The examiner. He locked the door. He tried to… he tried to set me on fire."

The words sounded insane as soon as they left his mouth. Davies’s face paled further, and he looked at Detective Miles with an expression that screamed 'I told you he was unstable.'

But the detective’s grim expression didn't change. He simply watched Leo, his gaze steady and unreadable. "Tell me about the examiner, son. What did he look like?"

"Old. Gaunt. A tweed suit," Leo said, the images flashing in his mind. "He had this… silver stopwatch."

Detective Miles’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. He didn't dismiss it. He didn't call for a psychiatrist. He just listened.

"We understand this is difficult, Leo," Mr. Davies cut in, his voice placating. "But we're really just here to talk about your exam."

The word 'exam' hung in the sterile air, a key that unlocked all the horror. The illusion of safety, the fragile hope of a simple delusion, shattered completely. This wasn't just in his head.

Detective Miles reached down and lifted a large, clear plastic evidence bag, placing it carefully on the rolling table beside Leo’s bed.

"This exam?" the detective asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

Leo stared. Through the clear plastic, he saw it. The sheaf of thick, creamy paper. At the top, the severe, archaic font was unmistakable: APPLIED THANATOLOGY. Below it, he could see his own frantic, spidery handwriting, the clinical descriptions of murder and pain. The top corner of the first page was blackened and curled, a scorched remnant of his desperate, fiery defiance.

But that wasn't what made the air freeze in his lungs.

Splattered across the pages, stark and horrifying against the white paper and black ink, were distinct, unmistakable flecks and smears of crimson. They weren't his. He hadn't been bleeding when he wrote it. The pattern was a fine, atomized spray, just like the one he had described in his answer to the very first question.

The fever dream was real. The nightmare was in his hands. And the proof of it was lying in a police evidence bag, stained with a dead man's blood.

"We need you to tell us exactly what happened in that room, son," Detective Miles said, his voice a low, serious command. "Every single detail."