Harsha Fernando woke with the wind in her hair. It was cold, sharp, smelling faintly of grease. Her eyes snapped open to the sound of traffic far below, a restless stream of three-wheelers and buses, their headlights crawling across the dark like fireflies. She wasn’t in her hostel room. She was lying flat on her back on a gravel rooftop, the rough stones biting through her thin pajamas. Inches from her face, a neon sign buzzed and sputtered, spelling out the half-burned letters of ‘Brown Been Cafe’. Its flicker washed her face in red, strobing her breath into fragments.

The ledge was only feet away. One wrong roll in her sleep and she would have been a headline—University girl plummets in midnight fall.

It wasn’t the first time. It was the fourth.

The first had been almost funny: she had woken in the hostel courtyard barefoot, her hair damp with dew, ants crawling across her wrist. Then behind the library, slumped against the wall like she had simply sat down to nap. The third was not funny at all—on the train tracks before dawn, steel rails humming under her palms as the south-bound express barreled closer. Each time she told herself it was only sleepwalking, exhaustion. But the excuses grew thinner each night.

She pressed trembling palms to the gravel and forced herself upright. The city stretched around her like a puzzle of shadows and lights. She had no memory of climbing here, no broken lock, no stairwell door propped open. Just sleep, and then this.

When she crept back into her hostel room at nearly four in the morning, her roommate was waiting. Priya Sivalingam sat upright on her bed, knees tucked beneath her chin, the glow of her phone screen extinguished the moment Harsha entered. Her eyes were sharp in the dark.

“Where were you?”

Harsha hesitated. The truth stuck like glass in her throat. “I couldn’t sleep. Went for a walk.”

“Don’t lie.” Priya’s voice trembled not with anger but with fear. “Sleepwalking doesn’t take you across half of Colombo.”

Harsha pulled her blanket over her head as if it were armor. But her hands shook, and she knew Priya noticed. On the nightstand lay her dream journal, its cover frayed from nightly use. The latest entry blurred before her tired eyes: Dark street. Neon buzzing. Wind sharp. Someone watching from the corner. She had written those words two days ago. And tonight, she had lived them.

—

Within days, campus was buzzing with fear. Three students were missing. Their faces stared hollowly from flyers plastered to tuk-tuks, tea shops, and hostel notice boards.

Harsha’s stomach dropped when she recognized the places: one had vanished from the courtyard, another near the library, the third by the tracks.

The same places she had woken.

That night, she dreamed of a corridor. Endless, narrow, its plaster walls wet with damp, smelling of mildew and incense smoke. Doors lined both sides, each carved with a name. She leaned closer to one, tracing the grooves: Harini Jayawardena. Another: Rajeev Kandasamy. Another: Selvi Tharmalingam. The missing students. Their names etched into wood as though claimed.

She reached for the handle, but a figure slid into view. Faceless, its head tilted with a slow, jerking motion, like a marionette on slack strings. It raised one long finger to where its lips should have been. 

Shh.

Harsha jolted awake in a deserted playground, gravel cold beneath her feet. The swings creaked though no wind stirred. Her breath rose in clouds.

—

The next morning, she was summoned to the police station. Inspector Mahesh Perera sat across from her, a broad man with iron-gray hair and eyes like shuttered windows. His voice was flat, stripped of patience.

“You were seen near two of the disappearance sites. What were you doing there?”

Harsha’s throat closed. She slid her dream journal across the table. Her handwriting sprawled across the pages, frantic and slanted. “I dream them. Then I woke up there. I can’t explain it.”

He flipped through, skepticism hardening his mouth. Then he stopped. The entry described a playground with red swings creaking in still air—written the night before. That morning, Harini Jayawardena’s scarf had been found tied to one of those swings.

For the first time, Inspector Perera looked unsettled.

—

Priya insisted on proof. She set up her phone, balanced on a stack of textbooks, its lens fixed on Harsha’s bed.

The recording captured Harsha tossing, murmuring—then vanishing. One frame she was there, the next, gone. No footsteps, no door opening, no trick of light. Just absence, as though the camera itself had blinked.

Harsha woke hours later in a shuttered factory on the edge of Pettah, her hands raw from rust. Etched into the wall were two words: STAY ASLEEP.

The dreams grew stronger. Each night, the corridor returned, lined with doors. Behind them came muffled cries, the scrape of fingernails, the thump of fists. Whenever she reached for a handle, the faceless figure blocked her way, its cold hand brushing her cheek. She would wake with frost on her pillow; the sheets rimed as though with hoarfrost drawn from another world.

—

Inspector Perera pressed her harder. He looked worn, almost haunted.

“If you know where the others are, you need to tell me.”

“They’re behind the doors,” Harsha whispered. Her hands trembled in her lap. “But I can’t get them out.”

At last, he agreed to a reckless plan. “We’ll keep you under. Maybe you’ll get far enough this time.”

So he and Priya sat on either side of her bed, a vigil of the waking, while Harsha let sleep claim her.

The corridor rose around her at once. She ran, her footsteps echoing, heart hammering. The faceless shadow followed, head tilted, movements impossibly slow and fast at once. She found Harini’s door, her name carved deep. Harsha yanked it open.

Inside, Harini sat slumped in a wooden chair, eyes closed, skin pale as wax. Harsha rushed to her, shaking her shoulders. “Wake up! Please—wake up!” But Harini did not stir.

The shadow filled the doorway. Its voice was like wind through cracks, whispering in tones colder than silence.

She stays. You go.

Harsha’s throat burned. “Take me instead.”

The shadow’s head tilted. Slowly, it extended its hand.

—

She awoke gasping, lungs screaming for air. Priya clutched her, sobbing, “You stopped breathing—I thought you were gone—”

On the nightstand, her journal lay open. A new line scrawled in unfamiliar hand: The exchange is made.

The next morning, Harini Jayawardena was found wandering the street barefoot, dazed, unable to remember the last three weeks. Alive.

But Harsha’s bed was gone. The frame, the mattress, the sheets—all vanished, leaving only a patch of black frost seared into the floorboards.

Inspector Perera stood staring at the space. His voice was hoarse. “Where’s Harsha?”

Priya clutched the journal to her chest. Its pages were blank, every word erased.

And somewhere in the endless corridor of doors, a new name appeared, carved deep into the wood:

Harsha Fernando.