It wasn’t until he saw the thing in the corner that he knew his whole world had changed. Its form was wrong—impossible, even. The way it shimmered, half-there and half-not, defied every rule he’d lived by. His beliefs about what was true and not, what should exist and what couldn’t, shattered in an instant. He wanted to look away, to pretend he hadn’t seen it, but he couldn’t move. The room seemed smaller, suffocating, as if reality itself had warped around the thing. In that moment, he realized: there would be no going back to the life he once knew.