Morning began with emptiness.
Greg opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for several long seconds. The ceiling was wooden—rough—dark beams blackened by years of soot. A dried blade of grass hung down between the boards.
Greg frowned.
He didn’t remember this ceiling at all.
He was lying on a prickly straw mattress, covered with a wool blanket that smelled of sheep and smoke.
“Where am I?” he rasped. His sleepy voice sounded чужой and creaky.
He sat up, rubbing his temples. His head didn’t hurt—no.
It was… empty.
Like someone had opened his skull during the night and scooped all his thoughts out with a big spoon, leaving only hollow silence.
He looked around.
A small hut. A hearth with cold ash. A crooked table with… what? A belt. A bag.
Everything felt familiar, but like something seen in a dream. Like when you come to a distant relative’s house—sure, you’ve been here before, maybe five years ago, but you can’t remember where the toilet is.
Greg stood. His feet hit the cold dirt floor. His body moved on autopilot: walk to the water tub, scoop water into his hands, splash it on his face.
The cold water cleared his vision a little.
A piece of polished metal hung on the wall, serving as a mirror. Greg walked over to smooth his hair. He was used to seeing ash-white in his reflection. That color had been with him for the last couple years—had become part of him.
Greg froze.
He blinked. Then leaned closer, almost touching the cold metal with his nose.
“What the hell…?” he breathed.
Right above his left temple, in the familiar ash-white sea, a strand stuck out.
It was black.
Not just dark—blue-black, like oil, like a starless night. It looked чужеродной, like a dirty stain on a clean tablecloth.
Greg grabbed the strand between his fingers. Yanked.
It hurt.
So it was real.
He started frantically checking his head, turning one side to the “mirror,” then the other.
Here was another one. On the back of his head. A thin black snake slipping through the gray. And another, right at the base of his neck.
Yesterday they weren’t there. He was sure.
Yesterday he was just an old fifteen-year-old teenager.
And today the invasion began.
His heart thudded up into his throat. This wasn’t that melancholy calm from the field.
This was panic.
Animal fear—the fear of someone waking up and finding they’ve grown a third arm.
“No, no, no—too early,” he whispered, backing away from the mirror. “Too early. I needed to… I was supposed to do something.”
He looked at his hands in the reflection.
They were shaking.
Then he looked into his eyes.
Yesterday they’d been sky-blue—the color of a clear summer day.
Now, in his left eye, right near the pupil, a tiny dark speck had appeared.
Like a drop of ink falling into a glass of water.
“What the fuck…” Greg stumbled backward and tripped over a stool.
He hit the floor hard, elbow cracking against dirt, but he didn’t even notice. He sat on the earthen floor in a чужая hut, stared at an unfamiliar hearth, and felt the black strands on his head burning his skin.
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“What am I doing here?” he asked the emptiness.
No answer.
Only one clear, panicked thought: he’d forgotten something жизненно важное—something he had to do before the blackness swallowed everything.
He started pawing at the floor, the table—without knowing what he was looking for. Instinct screamed:
Find an anchor. Find what ties you to reality.
His fingers hit the leather bag on the table. He tore the clasp open.
Inside was a small, worn notebook.
His shaking fingers grabbed it.
This had to be the answer. The anchor.
Greg opened the first page. The handwriting was familiar, but it was like it belonged to someone else—hurried, ugly.
“Greg. Village of Eldur. Supposedly a shepherd.”
That was it.
The next page was blank.
Greg stared at the stingy lines.
“What the…” he whispered. “That’s all? That’s nothing. What does that even give me?”
He looked up and scanned the hut. чужие walls. чужой smell.
“What ‘Greg’?” Who was that? Was this his home?
Cold sweat spread down his back. If that “Greg” wasn’t him, then—
“What’s my name?” he asked out loud.
Nothing in his head. No first name. No last name. Only ringing silence.
He looked back at the notebook.
“Supposedly… Greg.”
The name felt in his mouth like a чужой stone. Wrong. Not his.
He needed to see himself again. To make sure he still existed. He bolted back to the polished metal on the wall.
Greg looked—and recoiled, slamming into the table.
“A-a-a—!” a hoarse scream ripped out of his throat.
A minute ago the left eye had a tiny black dot.
Now his left eye was half black.
The ink was spreading across the sky-blue right before his eyes, eating the iris like a disease. The pupil smeared into an ugly blot.
“What the hell?!” he shouted.
There wasn’t enough air in the hut. The walls pressed in. This place was a trap. He needed воздух. Run. Anywhere—just away from that mirror and that blackness inside his own head.
He burst outside, nearly ripping the door off its hinges. Bright morning sun blinded him. He ran without seeing the road, stumbling over roots and stones. Fences flashed by, bushes—
“Greg! Greg!” came a shout from somewhere to the side.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t know who they were calling. He just wanted the noise in his head to stop.
“Hey, Greg!”
Someone jabbed him hard in the ribs. Greg skidded to a stop, almost fell, and turned.
The same boy stood there. Tim? Tom? Yesterday they’d been watching clouds.
The boy frowned at him.
“Greg, what’s wrong with you? You’re running like you’re possessed.”
Greg was breathing hard. His heart hammered in his throat. He stared at the boy like a life ring. This kid knows him. This kid knows answers.
Greg grabbed the boy by the shoulders. His hands shook.
“Greg…” he gasped. “Is my name Greg?”
The boy froze. Surprise shifted to confusion.
“Did you hit your head or something?”
“Is my name GREG?!” he almost shouted in the kid’s face.
The boy looked up.
And then he saw it.
The black strands in the white hair.
And the left eye—now half blue, half dead black.
Surprise turned into pure, raw fear.
“Let go!” the boy squealed. He tore himself free, stumbled back, then turned and sprinted toward the village, heels flashing.
Greg stayed standing in the middle of the dusty road alone, watching the child run. The panic slowly loosened, giving way to a familiar защитная обида.
“What the hell…” Greg muttered, running a hand through his strange hair. “Am I really that scary? I just asked my name and he—”
He sniffed, trying to pull himself together.
“Great. Just perfect. If kids flinch away from me, how are girls supposed to look at me? This look definitely doesn’t work for me.”
Greg walked into the village. His feet carried him along the path like he’d walked it a thousand times.
Everything around him was painfully—nauseatingly—familiar.
But he couldn’t remember why.
“After this turn,” he muttered, “there should be a house with a crooked roof. And a well.”
He turned the corner. The crooked-roof house was there. The well too.
“No way…” Greg stopped. “How do I know that? Am I psychic? Or did I live here?”
There were people outside. A woman with a basket of laundry lifted her head and smiled.
“Good morning, Gre—”
Her smile froze. She saw his hair—half white, half black. And the eye. The basket fell from her hands. The woman stumbled back, muttering something like a prayer, then turned and fled, slamming her gate behind her.
Others reacted the same way. First recognition and warmth. Then they looked at his face—and it became чистый ужас. They hid. Shuttered windows. Locked doors.
Greg felt like a monster. A leper.
“What’s wrong with you people?!” he shouted at the empty street. “I just wanted to ask the time!”
Panic surged again—sticky, cold. Like he was losing himself. Like he was a ghost that forgot to die.
Greg turned and ran back to his hut. It was safe there. No one there.
He slammed inside, shut the door, and pressed his back to it, breathing hard. His heart was pounding like a trapped rabbit.
“What am I doing here?” he whispered. “Who the hell am I?”
He walked back to the mirror, afraid to raise his eyes.
But he did.
The left eye was fully black now. No pupil—just a bottomless void. The hair split perfectly in half: left side darkness, right side gray.
“Well,” Greg exhaled. “Not my best look. I look like an undercooked zebra.”
He crooked a smirk at his reflection.
“And the name ‘Greg’… yeah, no. Sounds like a branch snapping. Who even names kids Greg?”
Then a sharp pain stabbed his head—like someone screwed a bolt into his temple. It was the feeling of loss. He was forgetting something important. Right now. This second. A chunk of information was being erased forever.
Greg grabbed his head, then lunged for the table.
The notebook.
He flipped pages like a madman, hunting for anything that explained this chaos.
His finger landed on a crooked line:
“The boy in the village. You can trust him.”
Greg stared.
“What? What boy? The one I scared half to death five minutes ago? Great plan, past me. Genius.”
His stomach growled loud. Panic was panic, but he was starving.
Greg sighed. His body moved on its own toward a plain little cabinet in the corner. His hand found a hidden crack, pressed a secret button. The door clicked open.
Inside: jerky and dry bread.
Greg froze with a piece of meat in his hand.
“Holy shit,” he mumbled through a mouthful. “I didn’t even know there was a stash. But my hands did. Like it’s not the first time.”
He chewed, feeling calm seep back in with the food. Everything was insane—black eye, holes in memory, people running from him.
But the meat was good.
“Alright,” he said to the emptiness, swallowing. “Whatever. Problems don’t get solved on an empty stomach. I’ll finish eating—then I’ll go look for that kid. Hopefully he doesn’t bring the guards with pitchforks.”
Greg took another bite and sat on the floor, feeling like the strangest creature in the world.
