Hana woke to someone whispering her name in a language made of dripping.
She was on her side, hand pinned under her cheek, watching a dream in which train carriages had grown roots and crawled away into the forest. The whisper nudged them. The wheels softened. Metal split along grain that wasn't there. The trains bent, folded, ran like water between the trees.
"Hana—"
The sound stretched wrong, too thin, too wet.
Too much. Too fast.
The forest tilted. The tracks slipped loose and slid under her ribs—
She jerked upright.
For a second she stayed half inside it. The dark around her still held the shape of trees. The breathing in the room came in uneven clusters—too many lungs, or not enough. Her own pulse filled her ears, heavy enough to blur the edges of everything else.
"Hana—"
Closer now.
She turned toward it, but the room lagged behind the motion. Shadows dragged. The ceiling didn't settle where it should.
Her hand slipped off her cheek. Skin pulled where it had stuck; a line of damp hair clung along her jaw. She blinked. The first blink didn't clear anything. The second came slower.
The whisper came again, and for a moment she thought it was her own breath catching in her throat, reshaped into something else.
"H—na."
Not right.
Her chest tightened. She held her breath to listen.
Nothing.
Then—under it—a delayed answer.
The pipes shifted beneath the floor. Not all at once. One section creaked, then another answered a beat late, the sound traveling in pieces instead of a line. A hollow knock followed, out of place with the first.
The whisper broke apart inside that.
"Too—" something said.
Or the pipe caught.
"—much."
Hana pressed her palm to the floor beside her. The wood felt cooler than it should, damp in patches. The vibration came through it unevenly—one pulse, then a gap, then a softer echo that didn't match.
"Too fast," something added, thinner, almost swallowed by the next creak.
She stayed still a second longer, trying to decide if that had been outside her or not.
Her breathing didn't line up with the others in the room. She tried to match it. Missed. Tried again.
The door.
She pushed herself up. The first step tilted. She caught herself on the edge of a cabinet, fingers slipping slightly before they found grip. Her balance corrected a fraction too late, like the floor had waited before agreeing to hold her.
The handle felt colder than the air. Not just cool—metallic, biting at the pads of her fingers. When she turned it, it resisted halfway, stuck, then gave suddenly with a soft jerk that pulled her forward.
The door opened with a drag along the bottom edge. The sound came in two parts—the scrape, then the echo of it a breath later.
She stepped out.
The air outside hit her ankles first—cooler than inside, sharper, carrying wet grit. The platform underfoot wasn't even. Water had pooled in shallow dips; her toes found the edges, then slipped into colder patches. Something granular shifted under her heel.
The rain didn't fall straight. It came in bursts that hit the roof in hard, scattered strikes, then dropped out, leaving a hollow space before the next wave arrived. The far side of the station answered late, the sound lagging behind the near impacts.
The lamps flickered.
Not all at once. One dimmed, then another caught up. The glowbug jars pulsed unevenly, their light swelling and shrinking out of sync. The strip of foxfire she'd lent to one post guttered, then flared, then settled at a lower burn.
For a moment she thought the sky had dropped.
No—something about the distance felt wrong. The dark pressed closer than it should, but when she tried to fix it, it slid back out again. Clouds moved low, or maybe fast, or maybe she was still misjudging how far anything was.
She took another step forward. The platform gave a faint answer under her weight—wood shifting against metal, a delayed creak that followed her instead of meeting her.
Beyond the track-beds, something moved.
Water.
The river.
She blinked again, slower this time, trying to separate it from the afterimage of the dream. For a moment it held the shape of the crawling trains—long, segmented, bending where it shouldn't. She waited for it to resolve.
It didn't, not cleanly.
It spread instead.
Too wide. Or too close.
Just rain, she told herself. Just runoff. It always swelled—
A piece of debris struck something submerged with a dull, off-timed knock. The sound came late, as if it had taken a longer path than it should.
The smell reached her next. Not just water. Rot—soft, organic—but threaded through with something sharper, metallic, like old runoff stirred up from below.
Her foot shifted. The vibration came up through the platform—a low, uneven tremor that didn't match the rhythm of the rain.
The river moved again.
No—slid.
Not forward. Sideways, in a way that didn't track with the bank. The surface broke into pieces of reflected light that didn't line up with anything she could see. Lines of neon bent where no signs stood. Headlights crossed paths where no road ran.
A shape passed under it.
Long. Too smooth.
She tried to fix it as reflection—just light breaking, just—
The image stuttered.
Fragments of brightness lagged behind the movement, then snapped forward to catch up. The curve of something—moon, maybe—split into segments that didn't rejoin properly.
The water didn't hold a single surface. It held layers that slipped past each other.
"Hana—"
She turned.
Nothing stood behind her. The platform stretched empty, lamps flickering out of step.
The pipes answered again under the floor, a staggered series of knocks.
"—slow," something tried to say.
Or the joint slipped.
She looked back at the river.
It shifted again, just enough to break the pattern she'd been trying to hold onto.
Not just flooding.
Not just reflection.
Her breath came shallow now, not matching the pace of the rain or the sounds under her feet. She stayed where she was, one foot slightly forward, waiting for the ground to settle into something she could trust.
It didn't.