Wakey, wakey! The voice of his mother jolted him awake.

  He looked around, trying to grasp whether it was already morning or still night, his eyes still red from sleep—only for the analog wall clock to disappoint him with its verdict: 7:15 A.M.

  "Oh man, I just slept! How could time be so wicked?" he groaned.

  "If time needs to be wicked to do its job, that’s fine by me," Rachael said, leaning against the wooden doorframe at the entrance of his room.

  "Anyway, make sure you get dressed for school. Your breakfast is on the dining table—if you like, you can pour it into the cooler," she added before leaving his room.

  "Okay, Ma."

  "And don’t forget, your pocket money is with—"

  His mother’s voice faded into the background. His mind was no longer on what she was saying but on his legs, which had suddenly begun seizing up. He noticed they felt so weak—almost like they weren’t his own.

  He had felt it earlier, right after waking up, but he had brushed it off, thinking it was just fatigue from all the walking he had done yesterday. His school was far from home, after all, and he assumed his legs were simply protesting the strain.

  "Why won’t they move?" he muttered, struggling to lift them. But trying to move them felt like lifting a 500kg weight.

  "Wow! I have school to go to—why is it now that you refuse to answer me? Why now?" His frustration turned to panic as he strained to move again, his stomach tightening, his face contorted in discomfort.

  "Hngh," he moaned, a voice of struggle escaping from within him—only for it to be trapped by the fleshy uvula at the back of his throat. The only thing that managed to escape was a breath of exertion, sighing out through his nostrils.

  Panic set in. He started calculating possibilities, formulating desperate solutions that even his subconscious mind struggled to process.

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  Then, like a slap of reality, the answer hit him.

  "Now I get it—it was the dream!"

  Before he could process that thought, his alarm blared, jarring him back to the present. He turned to glare at it with the intensity of a military commander, but what his eyes reported back threw him into deeper distress.

  7:30 A.M.

  "Eeeeyiii!"

  He hadn’t even started getting dressed!

  In a frenzy, he dashed to brush his teeth, took a shower at an insane speed, and dressed for school. It wasn’t until he was already buckling his belt that he even remembered his legs had been immobile just moments ago—but there was no time to dwell on it now. He shoved that mystery to the back of his mind.

  Before he knew it, he was combing his hair, strapping his wristwatch onto his wrist. Only then did he glance at the time again.

  7:45 A.M.

  He hurried to the drawer in the corner of the living room and grabbed his eyeglasses. As he closed the drawer, his eyes landed on the picture hanging on the wall—the portrait of his matriarchal ancestors.

  He stepped closer, standing before the vertically arrayed photographs.

  "I don’t know what my matriarchs are hiding from me, but I do know one thing—whatever it is, the answer is right under my nose."

  He casually put on his glasses and turned to leave—only to freeze mid-motion.

  Something caught his eye.

  It was only for the tiniest millisecond—a flicker of something unusual in his grandmother Lois’s picture.

  He squinted, turning back to the portrait to focus on it again.

  And there it was.

  A series of dots and dashes running down the right side of Lois’s tableau, perfectly aligned with the direction her eyes and hands were pointing—like an arrowhead leading to something.

  He pulled off his glasses.

  Nothing.

  He put them back on.

  There it was again.

  "Stop playing tricks on me, glasses! I’ve been using you for years!" he muttered.

  Then another thought struck him.

  "Instead of obsessing over how eerie the glasses are, why don’t I focus on what they’re revealing?"

  Determined, he left the glasses on. Observing the dots and dashes carefully, he murmured,

  "They seem to be blue… blue Morse code?"

  "The dots and dashes are definitely Morse code, but the color… I don’t know. I might need to delve into thermography to figure out what that means."

  He turned back to the drawer to grab the glasses’ case—only to pause.

  Inside the drawer, lying right next to the case, was another pair of glasses.

  They looked identical to the ones he was wearing.

  Before he could process this discovery—

  "ELINQUA!"

  His mother’s scream shattered his thoughts.

  He quickly checked the time, remembering that he had meant to spend no more than five minutes by the pictures. But now, the time told a different, silent tale.

  7:54 A.M.

  "Shit!"