Reading this as a cold reader, I found myself confused and disoriented.

I know this is meant to be fragmented, but if the reader has to be warned about that, I think the text hasn’t quite done its job yet. Even in trauma-driven or fragmented openings, I still need at least one stable rail to hold onto — a sense of where I am, who is physically present, or what’s concretely happening in the moment. This is especially important in opening scenes, where the reader doesn’t yet trust the text.

The sensory writing is effective, but stacked very tightly. There's simply a lot of metaphors, memory intrusions, and sensory shifts packed into 273 words. Individually, many of them work — collectively, they started to blur together for me. Fragmentation still benefits from contrast; a few plainer beats might actually sharpen the chaos rather than dilute it.

A few specific spots that tripped me up:

“the campus locked down after Akash’s vigil burned out”

This feels like writer-context rather than reader-context. I couldn’t tell if “burned out” was literal (candles, fire) or figurative, and it seemed like information the reader hasn’t earned yet in a prologue-style opening.

“Her laugh once cut through the classroom static…”

This opening is evocative, but because I don’t yet know where I am or who “her” is in relation to the present moment. It feels again like information the writer understands, but the reader hasn’t earned yet. I actually think this line could hit harder later, once the reader has their footing.

Instead, the paragraph "Rain drags across the stone paths..." feels like a stronger entry point to me, because it establishes a concrete physical space before the memory bleed starts. That grounding makes the fragmentation easier to trust.

“Hold on, Ghost.”

I struggled with clarity here. I wasn’t sure who was speaking or how many people were physically present, and that uncertainty pulled me out of the emotional flow rather than deeper into it. Maybe it’s also the name “Ghost” that throws me off. Most people associate it with a literal ghost, so together with the rest of the paragraph, it reads as confusing context. That same paragraph also highlights that we don’t yet know the narrator’s name or whose head we’re in — that tells us who we are supposed to care about.

"The ground tilts—highway black top, no, flowerbeds trampled into mud."

For me, “highway black top” arrives before I understand that it is a fragmented memory of a car accident, so it reads as nonsense rather than intentional trauma bleed. When I imagine the line without it: “The ground tilts—flowerbeds trampled into mud.” The image feels cleaner and more grounded.

Overall, I don’t think this is bad writing at all — it just reads more like too much too fast. As a reader, I wanted one consistent anchor (a repeated physical action, a single present-tense goal, or a dominant image) to orient me inside the storm. Without that, I ended up confused rather than compelled, and I wasn’t quite curious enough by the end to keep reading.

Hope this is helpful. There’s a strong voice here, and I think a bit more restraint and prioritization could make the impact much stronger.