Chapter 6

Sure enough, the trap was set for that night.

At 11:30 PM, the dorm lights went out. The hallway silences stretched, and the entire building was plunged into darkness.

I lay in my bed, my heavy blackout curtains zipped tight, my duvet pulled up to my chin. My eyes were wide open in the dark.

About an hour passed. Around 12:30 AM, I heard it.

A faint, rustling sound coming from Chloe's bunk. It was incredibly soft, like fabric dragging across fabric.

"Rustle. Rustle. Rustle."

The sound moved from her bed to the wooden frame, sliding down the wall onto the tiled floor.

Then came the almost silent scrape of scales sliding across the cold floor.

It was moving toward me.

In my past life, I would have been fast asleep by now. But tonight, I was as awake as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.

Every inch of my skin tensed, my hair standing on end. The horrors of my past life played on a loop in my brain.

But I didn't move.

I waited.

The sliding sound got closer and closer, until I could feel a sudden drop in the air temperature near the floor.

A chilling draft crept in.

And then, I heard a sound.

It wasn't a snake's hiss. It was a wet, muffled, human-like grunt, squeezing out of the snake’s tiny throat.

It was laughing.

At the bottom of my blackout curtains, there was a tiny two-centimeter gap. The black-and-red head of the snake slowly poked through, its red-flecked eyes glinting in the dark, its black tongue tasting the air.

In my past life, this was the exact moment I broke.

But tonight, I pulled my blanket tight, rolled over to face the wall, and whispered in a voice so quiet only I could hear:

"Sunny, you're up."

Beneath my bed, the lid of Sunny’s backup enclosure slid open without a sound.

Something massive was slowly crawling out from the darkness. It didn't make a sound, but it carried an overwhelming, suffocating pressure that seemed to freeze the very air in the room.

It was a primitive, instinctual dread—the kind carved deep into the DNA of every prey animal.

The little black-and-red snake instantly froze.

It wanted to run.

But it was already too late.