The Cast of Skin

The floorboards beneath your boots do not groan; they do not offer the honest, resonant protest of aged wood. Instead, they swallow your weight in a sickening silence, as if you are treading upon dead, bloodless muscle. You stand in the center of Room 7, a space that feels surgically excised from a different era and stitched into this inn by force. Your leather satchel lies half-strangled on the bed, its contents spilling out like viscera—wrinkled clothes and textbooks you haven't touched since the drive began. The lone bulb overhead flickers with a frantic, dying pulse, casting jagged shadows across the wallpaper. Aphra had lined these walls with something coarse and grey, the texture of a dry shroud, as if the very architecture was trying to scab over a wound. The scent of burning pine drifts through the room, but it lacks the warmth of a hearth. It is laced with a sharp, metallic tang—the copper stench of dried blood or rusted needles. You reach out a trembling hand to zip the bag, desperate to gather your life and flee, but your fingers lock in mid-air. Your eyes catch a glitch in the world on the opposite wall. Your shadow... it isn't following you. While you stand paralyzed…