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The sounds began in the silence.

Not a crescendo, but an infiltration—a soft, relentless scratching that seemed to originate not in the room around her, but inside the canals of her own ears. Cassandra lay perfectly still in the dark of her graduate housing apartment, the thin blanket a weightless shroud over her slender form. Her eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling’s vague shadows. She was awake. She had been awake for the last forty-seven minutes, according to the pale green numerals on the bedside clock. And yet the sounds persisted.

Scritch-scritch. Scrape. A dry, multitudinous friction, like the mandibles of a thousand insects working over stone. Then a softer, wetter gnawing. It was sound without image, a darkness given voice. It filled the hollows of her skull.

This was the seventh night.

The first time, she had blamed it on stress—the looming shadow of her dissertation defense, the pressure to crystallize her thoughts on phenomenological ethics into something coherent, bulletproof. She’d taken a sleeping aid. It had muffled the sounds but not erased them; they’d simply become the texture of her drugged dreams, a background hum to surreal visions of empty libraries and endless footnotes.But tonight was different. Tonight, the sounds… resonated.

A slow heat began to uncoil deep in her belly, a liquid warmth that felt separate from her, a thing with its own intent. It spread, viscous and insistent, tracing the lines of her lower abdomen. Her breath hitched. She pressed her thighs together under the blanket, a reflexive gesture of containment. The motion sent a shocking, electric pulse through her nerves. She felt the smooth cotton of her pajama pants against her skin, and the sensation was suddenly, unbearably acute.

This is not me, she thought, her mind a clear, cold pool above the rising warmth. This is physiological nonsense. A stress response.

Yet her body was not listening. The scraping, gnawing sounds seemed to find an echo in her own blood. Her nipples tightened against the soft fabric of her tank top, a sharp, almost painful awareness. Between her legs, a low, steady throb had begun, keeping time with a pulse she could now feel in her throat.

Cassandra, the rational one. Cassandra, who could deconstruct Kantian imperatives with serene precision. She felt a flush of shame—hot, prickling—across her chest and neck. It battled with the warmth, creating a dissonant, thrilling …