The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly, their sterile glow casting sharp shadows across the small hospital room. Room 306—isolated at the end of the west wing, where the long-term patients lay in uneasy slumber.

Dr. Adrian Holloway had long since stopped expecting anything from this room’s occupant. **Patient Evelyn Roe**. _Age: 23. Status: Comatose for nine months following an unexplained incident. _No recorded brain damage, no known relatives, no apparent reason why she wouldn’t wake up.

And then, at exactly 3:06 AM, she did.

Nurse Calloway had been the first to witness it—Evelyn’s eyelids flickering, her fingers twitching against the sheets before she gasped awake, her body rigid as if something had snapped her back into reality.

But she did not speak.

She only stared, wide-eyed, her breathing shallow.

When Dr. Holloway arrived minutes later, the tension in the air was palpable. Nurse Calloway stood pale and stiff by the bed, clipboard clenched too tightly in her hands.

“She’s awake,” the nurse murmured. “But…”

Dr. Holloway turned to Evelyn. Her gaze was distant, unfocused, yet there was something behind her eyes—something deep, bottomless, like she was staring at a place none of them could see.

“Evelyn,” he said gently. “Can you hear me?”

She blinked. Once. Twice. Then, slowly, she nodded.

A breath of relief escaped him. This was a miracle. Nine months of silence, broken in an instant.

“Do you know where you are?”

A slow, shaky nod.

His pulse quickened. “Do you know what happened to you?”

A pause. Then, the faintest shake of her head.

Nurse Calloway exhaled, her grip on the clipboard loosening. “Should we bring in a psychologist? Maybe—”

Evelyn’s fingers twitched. Then she lifted her right hand—the first real movement she had made since waking—and pointed to the bedside table.

A pen. A notepad.

Dr. Holloway exchanged a glance with the nurse before reaching over and placing them in her trembling grasp.

Evelyn’s breathing hitched as she held the pen like it was foreign to her, like she wasn’t sure it would obey her hand. Then, with a slow, deliberate motion, she pressed the tip to the paper.

And began to write.

The first message was simple.

“**I CAN’T SPEAK.**”

Dr. Holloway nodded, keeping his voice steady. “That’s okay, Evelyn. We’ll figure that out. Right now, I just need to understand what you remember. Do you recall anything from before waking up?”

Evelyn hesitated. The pen trembled in her grasp. Then, after an agonizing moment, she wrote again.

“**NOTHING.**”

No memories. No recognition. A complete void.

Dr. Holloway frowned, but before he could respond, Evelyn’s pen twitched violently in her grip. She gasped suddenly, her pupils dilating.

Then, without hesitation, she began to write again. Faster. Desperately.

“**IT’S STILL HERE.**”

The words were jagged, scrawled with frantic urgency.

A chill crawled up Dr. Holloway’s spine. “Evelyn,” he said carefully, “what is still here?”

Her breath came quicker now, shallow and uneven. Her grip on the pen was white-knuckled. The heart monitor beside her began to beep faster.

And then she wrote:

“**THEY KNOW.**”

Nurse Calloway took a step back, her face paling. “Doctor—”

“Evelyn,” Dr. Holloway pressed, suppressing the uneasy knot forming in his gut. “Who knows?”

Her lips parted soundlessly as she stared up at him, terror flooding her gaze. And then—

The overhead lights flickered.

Not just a flicker—a violent, shuddering strobe, the bulbs buzzing like a swarm of dying insects. The heart monitor spasmed with distorted beeps, the screen glitching out.

And Evelyn’s hand moved one final time.

The pen scraped across the notepad, the ink soaking through the paper like it had been carved into flesh.

One word.

**BLOOD**.

The moment the last letter was formed, the room plunged into total darkness.

The machines flatlined, but the sound was not mechanical—it was human, a distorted, strangled wail that echoed through the walls. The shadows in the corners of the room deepened, lengthened, moved.

And then Evelyn dropped the pen—her entire body seizing violently, her back arching off the bed as if something had grabbed hold of her.

Dr. Holloway lunged forward, gripping her shoulders, but her skin was ice-cold.

“Evelyn!” he shouted over the chaos. “What’s happening?!”

But then, suddenly—

The lights snapped back on.

The machines hummed back to life. The air in the room settled.

Evelyn lay limp against the bed, her eyes fluttering shut.

Silence.

Dr. Holloway’s own breath was ragged, his pulse hammering in his ears. He turned to the notepad with dread curdling in his stomach.

The ink of the last word, **BLOOD**, had **bled through every page**.

And beneath it, carved into the wooden surface of the bedside table—as if done by invisible hands—was one final phrase.

“**IT’S TOO LATE.**”

And then, in the hallway outside, the emergency alarms began to blare.

Because all across the hospital, patients had started waking up at once.