Terminal Witness. A Gothic Speculative Novel of Suspended Dying - Amy Wertz

When forensic pathologist Dr. Alison Cole discovers a strange geometric pattern in the retinas of the dead, she assumes it's a rare medical anomaly.

It isn't.

The deeper she looks, the clearer the pattern becomes-perfect, deliberate, and impossible. At its center: a human-shaped absence. Something that appears only at the moment of death. Something that is not supposed to exist.

As the phenomenon spreads beyond the bodies she examines and into reflections, windows, and mirrors, Alison realizes the truth: she is no longer just observing it.

It is observing her.

With the help of a colleague, she uncovers a hidden history of those who have seen it before-people who tried to understand it, escape it, or survive it. None succeeded. Because the rules are simple:

You cannot unsee what you have recognized.
And recognition is consent.

As her mind and body begin to change, Alison is forced to confront a final, impossible choice-resist and be consumed slowly, or surrender to something vast, patient, and eternal.

Because something has been watching every death in human history.

And now, it has learned how to enter.

TERMINAL WITNESS is a literary cosmic horror novel about observation, identity, and the cost of looking too closely in a world where death is not the end-it is documentation.

For readers of Annihilation, The Fisherman, and Mexican Gothic.