Chapter 1
The dream never started at the beginning.
It always dropped him somewhere near the end.
The sky above the ocean was wrong. Not dark, not stormy, not even broken. Just incomplete, like someone had erased pieces of it and forgotten what used to be there. Entire sections of stars were missing, leaving strange empty shapes in the night that didn't look like darkness at all.
Beside him, Liora laughed as the wind pulled her hair across her face.
"Why are you staring at me like that?" she asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. "You look like you just discovered a new color."
"I might have," he replied calmly.
"Oh really? What color?"
He glanced at the empty sections of sky.
"…Missing."
She stared at him for two seconds.
"That's not a color."
"Not yet."
Liora burst out laughing, loud and unrestrained, the sound somehow warmer than the cold wind rolling in from the ocean. "You're impossible."
"I'm accurate."
"You're weird."
"That too."
She stepped closer to the edge of the cliffs, looking out over the silent water while the broken sky reflected faintly on its surface.
"You're going to fall one day," he said.
"I'm not."
"You say that with alarming confidence."
"You say everything with alarming calmness."
"That's because panic rarely improves the situation."
She bumped his shoulder lightly. "You talk like someone who already knows how the story ends."
He looked back at the empty sky.
"…I think the story might be broken."
That was always the moment the dream changed.
The wind died first.
The ocean stopped moving.
Then the stars began to disappear.
Not explode.
Not fade.
Just vanish.
One by one.
Leaving behind nothing at all.
Liora noticed his expression. "Okay, now you're worrying me. What's wrong?"
He looked upward, trying to understand something that felt both terrifying and strangely familiar.
"I think something is editing reality."
"That sentence is deeply concerning."
"I agree."
The silence deepened until it felt like the entire universe had stopped breathing.
And somewhere inside that silence—
something noticed them.
Something that hated existence itself.
Liora turned slowly toward him. "What's happening?"
He tried to answer.
But the dream always ended there.
Her hand reaching toward him.
Reality collapsing.
Then—
nothing.
He woke up staring at the ceiling of his apartment.
"…Again," he muttered.
Morning sunlight filtered through thin curtains while distant traffic murmured somewhere below the building. The dream was always the same. Same girl. Same cliffs. Same sky missing pieces like a badly edited painting.
And every time he tried to remember her face clearly, it slipped away like a forgotten word.
He sat up slowly and ran a hand through his slightly messy black hair. "If my subconscious is going to produce apocalyptic nightmares every night, it could at least include context."
Your expectations of narrative clarity are unrealistic, another thought replied immediately.
He sighed.
"Good morning to you too."
The voice wasn't exactly separate from him. It was more like a second version of his thoughts—slightly sharper, slightly faster, and annoyingly confident.
Technically we are the same person.
"Yes, but you're the irritating half."
I prefer the term observant.
He stood up and glanced at the mirror above his desk.
His reflection looked perfectly normal.
Black hair. Slightly wavy from sleep. Black eyes. Average height. Completely forgettable appearance.
Which was ironic, considering his life had never been particularly normal.
His parents had died when he was nine.
Car accident.
That was the official explanation given by a social worker who seemed very concerned about how he would react.
Apparently children were supposed to cry during that conversation.
He hadn't.
Not because he lacked empathy. It simply hadn't felt real. People died all the time. The information was sad in theory but strangely distant in practice.
That's not a healthy emotional response, his inner voice commented.
"It's efficient."
It's concerning.
"Everything about me is concerning."
That much had been confirmed by several teachers over the years.
"You're intelligent," one teacher had told his foster parents once, "but he behaves like he's only half present."
Which was fair.
Because the other half of his mind was usually busy imagining things that didn't exist.
Everything changed when he discovered art.
Drawing, painting, sculpting—anything that involved turning impossible ideas into something real. The moment he started creating, the strange emptiness inside him disappeared. Time moved differently. Thoughts aligned.
Which was how the worst student in normal school somehow became the best student in one of the city's most prestigious art academies.
Life was weird like that.
"Morning, mysterious genius."
Adrian appeared beside him at the entrance of the art studio holding two coffees.
Adrian had decided they were friends months ago.
This decision appeared irreversible.
"You look like someone who just survived a philosophical crisis," Adrian said.
"I had the apocalypse dream again."
"The what dream?"
"The recurring one where the universe collapses."
Adrian handed him coffee. "You say that like it's a casual inconvenience."
"It's repetitive."
"That's worse."
Classes passed slowly. Students worked on sketches while music played softly through speakers. Most of them struggled with concepts like composition or symbolism.
For him it felt natural.
Ideas simply appeared.
Fully formed.
Your shading is lazy, his inner voice commented.
"It's stylistic minimalism."
It's laziness.
Adrian glanced over. "Did you just argue with your drawing?"
"No."
"Good."
"Arguing with myself would be weird."
Later that afternoon he stood by the tall studio windows looking down at the street below. Cars moved through the intersection while pedestrians crossed between them in chaotic patterns.
Then he saw her.
A girl walking along the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street.
Wind moved through her hair as she approached the crosswalk.
Something about her presence hit him instantly.
A strange tightening in his chest.
Familiar.
Interesting, his inner voice said.
"Don't start."
The traffic light changed.
People began crossing.
The girl stepped forward with them.
Then a truck horn exploded through the air.
He turned his head just in time to see it— a delivery truck speeding far too fast toward the intersection. The driver slammed the brakes but the vehicle was already sliding across the wet asphalt.
The pedestrians hadn't noticed yet.
Especially not the girl.
She was looking down at her phone as she stepped further into the street.
"Seriously?" he muttered.
His body moved before his brain finished the sentence.
He pushed away from the window and ran.
Down the hallway.
Down two flights of stairs.
Through the academy doors and onto the sidewalk.
By the time he reached the street the truck was only seconds away.
People were shouting now.
The girl looked up.
Too late.
No, he thought.
The word didn't feel like a thought.
It felt like a command.
Something shifted.
Not the world itself.
More like the angle of the moment.
The truck's tires suddenly lost traction at exactly the wrong time. The vehicle slid sideways just enough to change its path by a few degrees.
At the same time he reached the girl, grabbed her arm, and pulled her backward with all his strength. They stumbled onto the sidewalk together as the truck roared past less than a meter away before crashing into a barrier down the street.
Silence followed.
The girl looked up at him, clearly shocked.
Up close something about her face struck him like a half-remembered melody.
Not identical.
But painfully close to something buried deep in his memory.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
Her voice made the strange feeling worse.
For a moment he forgot how to respond.
Then the crowd pushed between them and she disappeared down the sidewalk.
He stared after her.
"…That was strange."
You adjusted reality, his inner voice said.
"I tripped."
Reality tripped.
"Same difference."
He glanced at a nearby shop window.
And froze.
For a split second his reflection changed.
His black eyes shimmered with shifting colors like light through a prism. His hair flickered with the same impossible spectrum.
Then everything returned to normal.
He stared at his reflection for several seconds.
"…Okay."
A pause.
"…That might be new."
Inside his mind the other voice sounded thoughtful.
Interesting.
He rubbed his face slowly.
"If I've secretly been editing reality this whole time," he muttered, "someone really should have mentioned it earlier."
The voice paused.
Then answered quietly.
Maybe someone did.
And somewhere deep inside him—
something ancient stirred