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Prologue
It started with a dream. I know—that's a cliché. But how else am I supposed to begin? It really did start with a dream.
But was it a dream?
I don't know anymore. Maybe it was a hallucination. A figment of my overworked, overstimulated mind. Maybe it was the rhythmic sway of the train, lulling me into a strange mental twilight. Or maybe—just maybe—it was something more. A message. A warning. A doorway.
A calling.
Ah—sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let me start again.
My name is Ray. Just Ray. No fancy middle name. No meaningful surname passed down through generations. Just… Ray. I'm eighteen years old. An orphan. A first-year university student at Cambridge. That last part usually impresses people, though I don't understand why. Intelligence doesn't equal stability. In fact, I think intelligence only makes you more aware of how absurd everything is.
I live alone in a cramped apartment that seems to be held together with hope and peeling duct tape. The walls are cracked, the windows scream with every gust of wind, and the floorboards creak like they're whispering secrets to one another. There's mold in places I didn't know mold could grow. The pipes rattle like bones, and I've learned not to question the things that come out of the toilet. Let's just say the snake incident wasn't even the weirdest thing I've seen in there.
But I manage. I always do.
I grew up in an orphanage, the kind that tries very hard to seem cheerful while hiding the cracks under layers of faded paint and forced smiles. I was told my parents left me because of financial issues and a messy divorce. That's the official story. The one they give all the kids so we don't start thinking too deeply. But I never really believed it.
I'm not exactly a likeable person. Not in the traditional sense. I tend to say things people don't want to hear. I question things they'd rather leave unquestioned. I observe too much, speak too little, and when I do speak, it's often the wrong thing at the wrong time. I'm the guy who unintentionally makes people uncomfortable just by existing. So I came up with my own theory:
Maybe they abandoned me because they couldn't stand the way I made them feel about themselves.
I'm not asking for pity. I don't feel sorry for myself. I just see things a little differently.
I've always been fascinated by human behavior. Not in a warm, empathetic way—more like a biologist watching an unpredictable experiment spiral into chaos. People say they're rational, compassionate, evolved. But I've seen the cracks. The contradictions. The cruelty hidden behind smiles. The lies they tell themselves and each other, just to keep moving forward.
That's why I chose psychology. Not because I want to help anyone. No, I chose it because I want to understand. To dissect. To unravel the mess of motivations and masks that make up the human psyche. I find it… beautiful, in a way. All those tangled contradictions. All that hypocrisy. It's like watching a spider spin a web that it's going to get caught in.
And I watch.
I always watch.
Which is why that dream—or whatever it was—unsettled me so much. Because for the first time, I felt like I was the one being watched. Like something had slipped through the cracks in my mind and seen me. Not the version I show people. Not the polite student or the sarcastic loner. But the real me. The one even I try not to look at too closely.
It felt personal. Intimate. Like being pinned under a microscope, my thoughts laid bare, my soul peeled back layer by layer. It was both terrifying and… thrilling.
I remember darkness. Not the absence of light, but a living, breathing thing that wrapped itself around me like smoke. There were whispers—too soft to make out, but heavy with meaning. Something was there. Watching. Waiting. Judging.
And somehow, I knew: this was only the beginning.
Because in that moment, I didn't feel like the observer anymore.
I felt like the experiment.
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