Where the Cracks Begin

Previously

…He had solved the puzzle, pieced together the fragments of a shattered reality, but the experience had left him irrevocably altered. His certainty, once a solid bedrock, had eroded, replaced by a profound sense of unease. He had stared into the abyss of human darkness, and it had stared back, leaving its imprint on his soul. The thin line between sanity and madness, he now understood, was not a chasm, but a whisper, easily lost in the echoing halls of memory and the lingering shadows of the past. He would leave Oakhaven, but Oakhaven, and the ghosts it held, would never truly leave him.