Julia falls into a hidden world where teeth are fortresses and bacteria are closing in. When she is confronted by a terrifying figure, the battle for the city suddenly becomes personal.
Julia had never trusted mornings. They were loud, unfair, and always arrived too soon. That morning was worse than usual: she had slept through her alarm for the third time that week, and now she was stumbling into the bathroom with her hair sticking out in every direction, one shoe half-tied and her school bag still unzipped.
She grabbed her electric toothbrush, flicked it on, and shut her eyes for a second, hoping she could steal a few more seconds of sleep before the day started. The brush trembled against her teeth. Then it gave a strange, scraping shiver, and the familiar buzz turned into a rough rattle, like something knocking from the inside.
Julia opened her eyes.
The sink was spinning.
Water surged upward in a shining spiral and yanked her forward before she could let go. She gasped, reached for the counter, and missed. The bathroom vanished in a flash of white foam and cold light, and suddenly she was falling through a tunnel that smelled sharply of mint and metal.
She landed hard but not on tile. It was warm and soft beneath her, like the surface of a tongue, and the thought was so ridiculous that she almost laughed. Almost. Because when she pushed herself up, she saw she was standing inside a mouth the size of a city.
Teeth rose around her like polished towers, blindingly white and impossibly tall. Between them darted tiny winged figures in silver armour, no bigger than insects but moving with the speed of soldiers. Blue light pulsed through the air as if the whole place were lit from within. Far off, an old man with a grey beard and a stained apron swung an irrigator like a weapon, blasting back a horde of snarling, sticky shapes that clung to the cracks between the teeth.
Julia took one step backward.
Something cracked behind her.
She turned.
A figure emerged from the shadows, hunched and uneven, its skin rough as stone, its eyes glowing with a sick yellow light. More shapes followed it, dragging themselves out of the dark between two molars. Their voices came out in a wet, clicking hiss.
“Not so fast,” the first one said. “If you want to go any farther, girl, you’ll have to answer for your brushing.”
Julia’s throat went dry. The creatures spread out around her, cutting off the only path she could see, and the old man in the distance shouted something she couldn’t make out over the rising hum beneath her feet.
Then the leader lifted one clawed hand and smiled.
And Julia realised it knew her name.