There's a point where the mind fractures so quietly, you mistake the pieces for clarity.
Dominic hadn't slept in days. Real sleep, anyway. The kind where your breath slows and you forget the weight of everything. Instead, he drifted in and out of waking nightmares ,flashes of red, bloodied hands, voices screaming his name from inside walls.
First, Austin went missing.
No trace. No note. Just… gone.
Then Reynolds. Same script. Different day.
But the one thing they had in common?
Dominic was the last person to see them both.
At first, people assumed they just disappeared. Runaways. Ghosted the world. Boys do that sometimes. But Dominic knew better. Or at least… he thought he did.
Because one night, with trembling hands and a feverish pulse, he unlocked his phone and found a video.
His own face. Pale. Distant. Almost… empty.
His voice:
"I killed Austin. And Reynolds… he's next."
He didn't remember recording it. But after that, it all spiraled.
He stopped answering calls. Shut every curtain. Burned every photo. The walls whispered. Shadows shifted.
Reynolds showed up one night—worried, soft-spoken, still believing in the boy he once called brother.
He found the video. He connected the dots.
Before he could speak, Dominic snapped.
The next thing he remembered was the blood. Screams echoing off his skull. And Reynolds... silent.
But no body.
Just emptiness.
Like it never happened.
Two days later, Dominic tried to end it.
The chair beneath him. The belt around his neck.
And one final note, scrawled in frantic loops:
"If my mind is a weapon, who pulled the trigger?"
He stepped off.
And bang.
The door burst open.
Police. Lights. Voices like thunder.
They saved him.
But not from death.
From whatever lived inside him.
The case was handed to Mr. Ephriam Onyix, a man known for solving puzzles others feared to touch. A social psychologist with ice in his veins and a gaze that sliced through lies like silk.
After weeks of study, Onyix spoke just one sentence to the press:
"Dominic is not guilty."
But that's when the real nightmare began.
Because if Dominic didn't kill Austin…
If he didn't kill Reynolds…
Then where the hell are they?