Darkness.

A slow, numbing pull.

Yazmina drifted between consciousness and oblivion, weightless in the void. Her mind wavered, caught in the shifting tides of memory—images surfacing, flickering, vanishing before she could grasp them.

A sharp inhale—

The scent of poppies. Sweet. Heavy.

Thick, golden-red petals swirled around her in the dream, a haze filling her lungs. The sensation was familiar. Not comforting, but intoxicating.

Then—a shift.

The world twisted.

She was somewhere else. Somewhere she couldn’t quite name.

Concrete beneath her feet. City lights blinking in the distance. The murmur of people, of modern life bustling around her. A place untouched by monsters.

She had been safe.

Hadn’t she?

A memory surfaced.

She had inhaled something.

A mistake.

And then—

A sudden drop.

---

A roar split through the dream, the force of it shaking her bones.

A piano.

No—a monster. A grotesque, toy beast with blackened keys for teeth, each one slamming down with a discordant, ear-piercing screech.

The Pianosaurus.

It lunged.

And she ran.

Her breath came in sharp bursts, her feet barely touching the ground before she was forced to move again. She didn’t know where she was, only that she couldn’t stop—

Because something else was hunting her.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

The rhythmic pounding of massive feet behind her.

Clawed hands stretching toward her.

A face splitting into a grotesque grin, anticipation gleaming in unblinking black eyes.

Boxy Boo.

The monster moved like a spring-loaded nightmare, leaping forward with unnatural speed. His metal jaws snapped shut mere inches from her arm, the sharp teeth glinting under dim, flickering lights.

She had nearly died that day.

But she had survived.

Hadn’t she?

The memory fractured—shifting, warping.

---

Observation Room

A sharp beep echoed through the cold, sterile space.

Harley stood over her, unmoving. His screen flickered with shifting data, feeding him information as he analyzed every detail.

Her vitals were stabilizing.

She had exhausted herself.

The Prototype had brought her here—away from the ruined chamber, into another secured containment room. The walls were reinforced. The door bolted shut.

Harley had wasted no time.

His single glowing eye flickered between the vitals displayed on the monitor and the figure lying motionless on the table.

Pale. Delicate. Perfect.

Yet undeniably inhuman.

Her red eyes—closed now—had been unlike anything he had ever seen. That eerie glow, that unnatural sharpness…

It was mesmerizing.

Yet dangerous.

Harley’s metal fingers tapped against the table’s surface.

She was evolving faster than anticipated.

He tilted his head slightly, his gaze falling to her arms.

One remained untouched—human.

The other… marked. Black veins coiled up her pale skin like ink bleeding into water, pulsating faintly beneath the surface but it's slowly disappearing now.

And those tails—

Gone now. Retracted into her back as if they had never been there at all.

Harley’s screen pulsed with static.

Seven years.

Seven years of experimentation, of testing, of chasing the mysteries buried within her blood.

Yet she was still changing.

Still defying every calculated prediction.

His grip on the table tightened.

---

Inside her dream, Yazmina gasped softly.

Her lashes fluttered.

She was still floating in that in-between space, caught between past and present. But the haze was beginning to clear.

And she had remembered something.

A voice.

"Head of Special Projects."

A meeting at the main entrance.

A near-fall.

A hand catching her wrist.

A pair of eyes staring down at her.

Harley Sawyer.

Her mind spun.

She had met him before.

Before all of this.

Before the monsters, before the experiments, before she became something more.

She had been here before.

And that meant—

This wasn’t just a dream.

It was real. Everything was real.

Her breath hitched.

She was waking up.

And when she did—

Everything would change.

---

A dull ache pulsed at the back of her head.

Yazmina stirred.

Her consciousness surfaced slowly, the weight of sleep slipping away like mist in the morning light. Her lashes fluttered open, revealing crimson irises that glowed faintly in the dimly lit room.

Her back ached slightly. Her head throbbed.

But other than that—

She felt fine.

No. She felt more than fine.

She felt renewed.

A strange, exhilarating lightness coursed through her veins, as if her body had been reforged in fire and ice. Every fiber of her being thrummed with an energy she had never known before.

She flexed her fingers.

Strength coiled beneath her skin, something raw and unrestrained. She could feel it—pulsing, waiting.

Could she lift a truck with one hand?

The absurd thought came unbidden, but it didn’t feel impossible.

Her senses sharpened as she sat up.

Something was different.

This wasn’t the same room.

The walls here were smooth, reinforced with something stronger. There were no remnants of destruction, no evidence of the chaos she remembered. The air was sterile, almost too clean.

Her heart pounded as the memories slammed into her all at once.

She had escaped.

She had fought.

She had changed.

Images flashed through her mind—disjointed, raw, and vivid.

She saw herself lashing out, her nine segmented scorpion tails impaling walls, floors, bodies. The metallic scent of blood. The echo of her own scream.

Harley’s voice cutting through the chaos.

Then a massive form loomed behind her.

The cold sting of tranquilizers piercing her flesh, one after another.

And then—

Darkness.

Yazmina’s breath hitched.

How long had she been unconscious?

How many days had passed?

Weeks? Months?

Her fingers curled into the fabric of the sheets beneath her, gripping them tightly.

Or—

Her blood ran cold.

Years?

Her chest rose and fell in shallow, controlled breaths. A tension she couldn’t quite name coiled in the pit of her stomach.

She didn’t know.

And that terrified her.

Her memories felt disjointed, overlapping in ways that didn’t make sense. Her past, her present—blurred together like shattered glass rearranged into the wrong picture.

She swallowed hard.

Her fingers dug into the sheets beneath her, the fabric crumpling easily under her grip. She took a slow breath, steadying herself.

She remembered.

Everything.

Who she was before.

How she had transmigrated into this world.

The experiments. The monsters. The factory.

Harley Sawyer.

Her pulse quickened.

She knew him now.

Her mind flashed back to the figure she had seen before she lost consciousness.

Harley.

But not the Harley she remembered.

The man she had once known—the calculating scientist, the twisted genius behind Playtime Co.’s horrors—was gone. What remained was something else entirely.

A machine.

A thing.

Just like the game had depicted him.

Yet, despite his grotesque transformation, he was still the same at his core. Cold. Calculating. A scientist who viewed everything, even life itself, as nothing more than a variable to be controlled.

But why had he come after her?

Why had he followed her when she was no longer herself?

And especially—

The Prototype.

what is He going to do with her?

She didn’t understand.

She didn’t know why she was still alive, knowing how much blood she had lost. She had blacked out, her body pushed past its limits, yet here she was—whole, awake, changed.

She had no answers.

Not about Harley.

Not about herself.

Not about what came next.

What was going to happen to the game?

Was it still following its original storyline, or had it spiraled into something entirely new?

Had she broken the plot?

Or had she simply stepped into another nightmare?

She clenched her jaw.

Everything had changed.

But one thing was certain.

She wasn’t the same.

She had no idea what had happened while she was asleep.

But she would soon find out.