Chapter Text
Zed doesn’t remember falling asleep.
But when he opens his eyes, he’s somewhere else .
The fluorescent lights overhead hum softly, flickering in an irregular rhythm that sends sharp shadows darting across the walls. The hallway stretches long and empty before him, lockers standing in stiff, uniformed rows, their chipped paint curling at the edges like old wounds. The air is thick , stale—like a place long abandoned, yet somehow still waiting for something.
His footsteps don’t make a sound.
The realization unsettles him.
He glances down at his sneakers, the well-worn soles that should be slapping against the floor, but—nothing. The silence presses down around him, swallowing everything whole. Not even the faintest echo follows him as he takes a tentative step forward, then another.
The school is foreign. But at the same time, it’s not .
The walls are lined with faded posters , their messages curled into whispers of another time:
Vote for Homecoming King!
Go Split River High!
Football Tryouts This Saturday!
He doesn’t recognize the names, the faces, or the team colors, but something about them pulls at him, dragging a thread through his chest, tugging it tighter with every glance.
His breath comes uneven now, shallow.
He doesn’t belong here.
But he knows these hallways.
Not in the way he knows Seabrook High—the bright colors, the carefully blended student body, the vibrancy of the undead and the living coexisting in ways they never should.
No, this place is muted , its color palette drained to grayscale, its spirit long since evaporated into something… hollow .
Still, his feet move, carrying him forward, deeper into the halls. Past the faded banners. Past the classrooms with doors left half-open , as if someone had left in a hurry, never bothering to return. The desks inside are perfectly arranged, yet there’s an eerie wrongness to their stillness. A staged emptiness , like a dollhouse abandoned mid-play.
Zed shudders.
He doesn’t want to go further.
But he does.
Down another hall. Then another. The corridors twist, bending in ways they shouldn’t, leading him in loops that make no sense . The walls seem to breathe , stretching taller when he looks too long. The shadows lengthen.
And then—
A whistle?
The sharp, shrill blast of a referee’s call, distant but unmistakable, cutting through the silence like a blade.
Zed freezes.
His heart slams into his ribs. He turns, expecting— what? A football game? A team running drills? The sound doesn’t belong here, not in this empty, ghost-town school.
But the field is nowhere in sight. Only more hallways. More lockers.
And a weight in his chest that tightens, like something grieving deep inside him.
He takes another step, and suddenly the hallway isn’t empty anymore .
Figures. Blurred, indistinct figures.
People? Shadows? They shift at the edges of his vision, just barely out of reach, just beyond recognition . A girl’s laugh echoes—warm and familiar—but by the time he turns, it’s already fading, slipping through his fingers like smoke.
His throat is dry. His pulse thrums against his skull.
He’s not supposed to be here.
But something is waiting for him.
Something knows him.
A door stands at the end of the hall, slightly ajar, and he feels it before he even sees it. A pull. A tug. A weightless pressure in his ribs, urging him forward.
His hand trembles as he reaches for it.
The moment his fingers brush the wood—
A sharp, brutal impact.
The world shatters .
Pain explodes through his skull, through his ribs, through his chest—his breath rips from his lungs like it’s been forced out , stolen by something unseen. His vision blurs, his knees buckle , and for a second, the ground disappears beneath him.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling—
Zed jerks awake with a gasp, searing cold in his chest, his hands clutching at sheets that aren’t his.
The dorm is dark. The room is silent. Dead silent. Ironic. The world around him is real again. Solid.
But his hands are still shaking.
And for some reason, the name Split River High is seared into his brain, carved there with the weight of something long, long forgotten.
Something that isn’t his.
But somehow, was .