The lecture hall had emptied almost an hour ago, but I was still sitting at the desk, buried in my laptop. The screen glowed with a cold blue light, and the numbers in the spreadsheet blurred before my eyes, as if deliberately refusing to add up into anything meaningful.

  "If you don't submit today, the retake will only be in a month," the instructor had reminded me before leaving.

  I definitely didn't have a month.

  So I just pressed my lips together and nodded silently.

  In the end, I had to spend another good half hour in the empty classroom before everything was finally ready.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose tiredly and clicked 'send.' The file uploaded. The email went through.

  "Finally…" I exhaled.

  By the time I left the building, it was already dark. The campus was almost empty; only a few windows glowed in the dormitory across the way. My phone showed the time—later than I had expected.

  Damn this university.

  Honestly, I could hardly wait for the day when I would finally graduate and forget all of this like a bad dream.

  Only half a year left. I repeated that to myself almost every day when I walked back into that unbearable place, which I had enrolled in solely at my mother's insistence.

  Today I had to stay much longer than usual—all because of an important project that, according to the instructor, we were required to submit this very month. Of course, no one cared how much effort and nerves it cost the students.

  I let out a tired breath and opened the transport schedule.

  At this hour, there were already very few buses going to my home.

  The bus would arrive in twenty minutes.

  The next one—only in forty.

  I shivered from the cold and walked faster. I was already impatient to get home as soon as possible.

  I turned onto the familiar street, but after a dozen meters the road was blocked by metal barriers. A sign read: 'No passage. Construction work.'

  The fencing had appeared suddenly.

  It hadn't been there that morning.

  "You've got to be kidding me…" I muttered.

  A worker in a helmet stood to the left, smoking.

  "Excuse me, how do I get to the bus stop?" I asked.

  He waved his hand somewhere along the fence.

  "Go around from that side. There's a temporary path there, you won't get lost."

  "Thanks."

  So I went in the indicated direction.

  The path really was there—a narrow strip between the construction fence and an old building. Wooden boards lay underfoot, unstable in places. The streetlights worked every other one, creating patches of light and shadow.

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  Somewhere above, something was banging, and metal clanged.

  I involuntarily looked up, but couldn't really see anything—only dark silhouettes of floors and the mesh of protective barriers.

  I swallowed, because from the outside it looked rather dangerous.

  The main thing was to get through quickly.

  At that moment, the phone in my jacket pocket vibrated—it was Mom.

  I answered the call.

  "Yeah, Mom, I'm already on my way… no, everything's fine… they just blocked the road here…"

  I stepped forward, focused on the conversation.

  And at that moment, a shout rang out from above:

  "Stop! Watch out!"

  I instinctively lifted my head.

  Something dark broke loose from above and flew toward me.

  It was a brick.

  A moment—too short to understand what had happened.

  Impact. Sharp pain. Ringing in my ears.

  The phone slipped from my fingers, and my mother's voice from the speaker turned into distant noise.

  I felt the ground give way beneath my feet.

  In the end, the last thing I saw was a piece of the night sky between the construction beams.

  Then everything simply disappeared.

  Total darkness fell before my eyes. Not the kind you get when you close your eyes—no. This was different. As if the very space around me had ceased to exist.

  I couldn't feel my body at all.

  Only my consciousness remained.

  Somewhere far away, sounds reached me, indistinct, like radio interference.

  "The pressure is dropping!"

  "Faster!"

  "We're losing her!"

  Who? Me?

  That sudden realization hit me incredibly hard.

  Was I… dying?

  I had always thought death would look dramatic. At least that was how it was shown in movies. That my whole life would flash before my eyes, that I would start praying, even though I had never really believed.

  But instead, only a very bitter thought came to me:

  "Seriously? To die this stupidly? Just from a brick to the head?"

  It hurt so much, and it was so unfair that my life could end just like this. A thousand times over I had already regretted going around that way. I should have just called a taxi…

  And what about Mom? How would she manage alone without me?

  In the last seconds, while my consciousness still held on, that was all I could think about.

  About Mom, who had raised me alone. Who had poured her entire life into me. For whom I was the only, most precious person.

  How would she survive my death?

  That was the most unbearable thing of all.

  But my tormenting thoughts didn't last long.

  My consciousness slipped away rapidly, like sand through fingers.

  And with the last desperate attempt to hold on to reality, I finally sank into darkness.

  ***

  I opened my eyes.

  The first thing I saw was the ceiling.

  Old, wooden, with beams blackened by time and soot.

  Between them hung bundles of dried herbs—or were they weeds?—and someone's dried pelt, either a rabbit or a rat.

  Somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped desperately. The air was stale, heavy, smelling of ash, sour swill, and something else disgusting that made me want to pinch my nose shut.

  I blinked.

  I tried to move and realized I was lying on something incredibly hard and prickly—apparently burlap stuffed with straw. Every millimeter of my body ached, as if I had been run over by a car.

  I died.

  That clear, icy thought came to me immediately.

  I had definitely died after a brick fell on my head from a great height.

  But then… what was happening to me? Where was I now? Was this a hallucination, or was this what the afterlife looked like?

  I sat up, and the world immediately swayed before me.

  Nausea rose to my throat. This body felt foreign. Too light and weak.

  Unconsciously, I raised my hands to my eyes—and nearly screamed.

  Pale. Thin. With broken nails, dirt, calluses on the skin. These were definitely not my hands. The fingers were long, almost translucent, with protruding knuckles.

  I sharply lowered my gaze and saw some kind of rags I was dressed in. A dirty dress made of rough fabric, patched in several places. Strands of light, greasy hair fell onto my face.

  "What the…"

  I didn't have time to finish the thought. I didn't even have time to truly panic.

  The front door—massive, crooked, with a huge gap between the boards—flew open with full force, slamming into the wall so hard that some dishes clattered pitifully.

  He stood in the doorway.

  A man. Huge as a bear, with long gray locks matted into tangles and an unkempt beard. He was dressed in rags. But the most terrifying thing was his eyes. Dark, crazed, with yellowish whites—they stared straight at me with such savage fury that my stomach clenched. My heart skipped a beat.

  "You!" he barked, his voice sounding like a thunderclap in that miserable shack. "Get up immediately, you useless creature!"