Eclipsed Hearts
The pillow smell is gone. The hum of my laptop fan—gone. Instead: wind, birdsong, and the faint chime of something like wind bells… but wrong. Too resonant. Too *intentional*. I blink under dappled light—and my fingers dig into cool, real grass. Not carpet. Not my bed. A notification blooms in the air before me: [WELCOME, PLAYER. ECLIPSED HEARTS v.3.7 — SAVE POINT: PROLOGUE]. My breath hitches. This isn’t loading screen lag. This is *weight*. This is *pulse*. These boys—the stoic heir, the charming professor, the quiet artist—they’re not sprites. They’re standing *here*, breathing the same air, watching me with eyes that hold centuries of unspoken rules… and one terrifying truth: if I misread a glance, miss a cue, choose poorly in the next five minutes… this world won’t reload. It will *remember*.