After a minute, Roland woke with a violent gasp. His lungs dragged in oxygen that felt too cold for his body.
His body lay flat against a smooth surface that did not feel like soil, stone or wood. It felt… wrong. Like touching a memory of texture rather than the texture itself.
His head throbbed instantly.
A deep, stabbing ache spread from the back of his skull to the center of his forehead, pulsing in uneven waves. He groaned and pushed himself up slowly. Hands trembled as he steadied his breathing.
The room around him came into focus. It was enclosed but not normally.
The walls didn't meet at proper angles. They bent inward at strange slants, forming shapes that didn't quite settle into squares or rectangles.
Some corners stretched longer than others, while some seemed shorter than they should be. The pace itself had been folded carelessly and forced into position.
The ceiling hovered above him at a distance that felt uncertain. When he stared at it too long, it appeared closer. When he blinked, it seemed farther away.
"What… is this place…" he dry and unsteady.
Then he noticed the door. It stood at the far end of the room. A simple rectangular outline.
Without hesitation, Roland began moving toward it.
One step... Two steps... Ten steps...
His breathing steadied slightly as he focused on reaching the exit. The door remained in sight at the same position ahead of him.
But something felt wrong. After several more steps, he slowed. The distance… hadn't changed. The door was still exactly where it had been.
Exactly the same. Roland frowned. He broke into a run, pushing himself forward harder.
The door refused to come nearer. His breathing turned uneven again.
"No… no, that is not possible." he muttered, forcing himself to run faster.
His legs strained, muscles tightening as panic slowly crawled into his chest. The door remained distant... unreachable.
Like a painted image pretending to be real.
Roland stopped abruptly, chest heaving as sweat formed along his forehead. His pulse hammered loudly in his ears.
All of a sudden,
He felt it a crushing, suffocating sensation that pressed directly against his existence. The longer he stood still, heavier it became. Settling onto his shoulders, his chest, his skull.
His knees trembled. Pain returned, sharper than before. He staggered forward instinctively, taking several hurried steps.
The pressure lessened slightly...?
Roland froze in realization.
His breathing grew shallow as dread settled inside his chest.
"I… I can't stay in one spot… I have to keep moving… after every few seconds…"
He turned slowly, scanning the warped geometry of the room again. Forcing himself to keep pacing in short, restless movements to avoid the crushing weight returning.
Then another thought struck him. He should not be alive.
His head throbbed violently as he whispered again,
"How… am I still alive…?"
His gaze lifted slowly toward the unreachable door. His eyes widened slightly as fragmented knowledge surfaced from training lectures, old case files, warnings spoken half-jokingly by senior agents.
About anomalies, dimensional distortions, things out of their comprehension...
"Is this…a 4D anomaly…?"
Roland kept moving in short. Pacing in uneven circles while his mind worked harder than his body.
Panic tried to rise again but he forced it down. Breathing fast would waste energy and wasted energy meant slower thinking. Slower thinking meant death in a place like this.
He stared at the door again.
Unreachable by running straight.
"Alright… think. If distance doesn't change… then movement alone isn't the problem."
He crouched slightly while still shifting side to side.
The geometry bothered him. Not because it was strange, but because it felt intentional. Lines that should have met did not. Corners leaned away from each other as if refusing contact.
Then he noticed it one thing.
When he moved diagonally, the door's edges shifted. He didn't notice it at first but after numerous trials of focus and patience.
When he stepped straight forward, nothing changed. But when he moved sideways while advancing, the outline of the door bent slightly, like an image seen from a different angle.
Roland's eyebrows rose in slight amusement.
"So, this is what it is." he whispered.
He began walking in angled patterns. Zigzags, short diagonal strides while keeping constant motion.
The pressure stayed manageable as he adjusted his pattern carefully, forcing himself not to stop. Step by step, the door's frame came closer and grew larger.
After several minutes of angled movement, Roland finally stopped within arm's reach of the door, chest rising and falling steadily.
He stared at it.
Roland stood before the door. His chest rose and fell in strain, yet relief refused to come.
Reaching it had not solved anything. If anything, it had made the situation worse. Up close, the door was not a door.
It only pretended to be one.
The frame bent in ways that defied sense. Its borderlines folded into themselves like overlapping reflections. The handle had changed shape every time he blinked.
One moment it resembled a knob, the next it stretched into a thin vertical line. Then flattened into something that looked painted rather than real.
Even the surface refused to stay consistent.
"How… am I supposed to open this…?" he said in low voice, a fraction of losing hope was blooming larger.
His hand hovered inches away but he didn't dare touch it yet.
His thoughts began haunting himself.
He replayed the moment in the forest again and again. Choosing to go harvest, choosing to follow along, choosing not to argue harder when Henry stayed behind.
"I should have stayed back there. Should have listened more… trained more… thought ahead…"
What if this was it?
Not a heroic fight but a shameful, useless death.
Just a quiet disappearance into something nobody would ever understand. His breathing grew uneven as doubt pressed against him from all sides.
For the first time since entering this place, the fear wasn't just physical. It was personal. It surrounded questions he didn't want to answer but was forced to.
Was he truly ready to be here? Or had he only believed he was stronger than he actually was?