Chapter 15 · Loopbound - Chapter 15: The Woman Inside the Anchor

The anchor's hum changed pitch the second Callum stepped into the circle.

Vera grabbed his wrist. "Wait. Something's already—"

The glyph array under his feet lit white-hot and the old lab tilted. Not the room. His vision. Like someone yanked a cable in his skull and dragged him sideways through the air. He hit ground that wasn't ground—soft, wrong, the texture of static—and when he opened his eyes he was standing in a hallway that didn't exist.

Same stone as the old wing. Same scorch marks on the ceiling from the anchor breach twenty years ago. But the walls were breathing. In and out. Slow. The kind of slow you feel in your teeth.

"Callum."

His name. From the end of the hallway. A woman's voice, thin and stretched, like it had been recorded on tape and left in the sun too long.

He knew that voice.

He started walking before Vera's shout could catch up to him. His boots didn't make sound. The air didn't move. Everything here was wrong in the way dreams are wrong when you know you're dreaming but you can't wake up.

The hallway curved. It shouldn't curve.