[center][img] https://i.imgur.com/Giafp5b.jpg[/img][/center][hr][url= https://i.imgur.com/vO53A97.jpg]Mana’s[/url] eyes snapped open with a startling sense of emotion and a dashing passing of alertness. Blurred delirium was what drove her vision for the first few moments before light and the natural world around her came back into focus. A swift look around confirmed she was still in her bedroom, still splayed out among the tangled bedsheets and riff raff of her unkempt spot. But as she tried to sit up, a seething pain gripped at her chest, one so dense she held a hand over it with gritted teeth.

Something was wrong, yet everything was perfectly normal. Blankness and delusion played themselves over her eyes like a slow-moving reel in an old-fashioned film. The sensation dulled down as her breath slowed; she didn’t realize she was near the edge of a panic attack until she heard her own voice quiver in the silence of darkness. Closing her eyes, Mana sought to focus on the last memory she had, the last bit of imagery and thought to come to her mind.

She recalled what happened in her dream, before she dozed off…there were voices, ones that pushed against her mind as if her head was ready to explode. Above those voices was silence, a creeping sensation that sought to coat her body and form with an icy embrace. Once it did, a great force slammed into her chest with its weight, seeping into her bone and flesh until even her veins saw fit to freeze over though her skin. For what was probably a night terror, the dream felt all too real to her regardless.

Perhaps then, that was why she continued staring at the darkness. The gleam of her eyes and the weight in her chest never left, only subsided for now. And when she did close her eyes, she could still hear the deafening silence, one so sharp it was almost as if she could pick apart voices among them. More focus, and the same, creeping sensation washing over her came again like a wave of ice rolling itself over her body in turbulent waters. She may not have understood it or comprehended what happened to her, but she knew [i]something[/i] had. [hr]