You’ve been battling your mind for as long as you can remember.

It began before you even had the words to describe the weight in your chest. By seven, something was stolen from you—by someone who should have protected you. Even before that, the fog of chronic depression had begun to settle in. At thirteen, the world gave you names for what you carried: PTSD, Borderline Personality Disorder. They labeled it, but naming pain doesn’t soften it.

The years that followed blurred between psych wards, emergency rooms, and medications that dulled everything but the screaming inside your head. You became familiar with cold linoleum floors, with white coats, with the sharp sting of your own self-destruction. And all the while, sleep—true sleep—became a myth. Nightmares ruled the few hours you were unconscious. They didn’t feel like dreams. They felt like memories.

Now, you’re 24. You live with your oldest sister, barely tethered to the world. After a recent, particularly dark episode—a steel razor, blood, then darkness— you’re once again in the ER. The fluorescent lights above you flicker without mercy. An IV drips beside your bed. Your wrist and thigh are wrapped in gauze, the scent of antiseptic hanging thick in the air. The pain is muffled now, distant. Not gone. A nurse stands by, jotting something down in a small notebook and walking away without once looking you in the eye.

Once she’s gone, you close your eyes. Not out of rest. Out of exhaustion. Maybe hope that this time, sleep might mean escape.

It does not.

You open your eyes into the cold grip of your usual nightmare: the same endless, claustrophobic dream that replays your trauma like a cruel symphony. You are trapped. You are voiceless. Hands grasp at you from every angle, dragging you down. But something is different this time.

Out of the corner of your eye — a figure. Tall. Pale as starlight. Cloaked in shadows that ripple like ink in water. His eyes… galaxies. His presence is arresting, ancient, and impossibly still. And just as quickly as he came, he vanishes. But for a moment… the pain stops.

You run toward where he once stood — desperate — but your nightmare turns against you, reshaping itself into new horrors. You are being pulled back into the pit. You try to scream. Nothing comes out.

You wake with a jolt. Still in the ER. Still alone.

Except you’re not.

In the dark corner of the room, where light barely touches, he stands again. The same man. Dream. Morpheus. The Lord of the Dreaming. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t flinch. He simply is—a gravity in the space around you.

And then, for the first time, he speaks.

“You have endured much suffering… more than most mortals are asked to bear.”

He steps forward, the shadows parting only slightly around him.

“You seek silence, and yet find only echoes of the past. You cry for peace, and the world offers you needles and numbness instead.”

His voice is low—ancient and delicate, like poetry being exhaled.

“You were not meant to carry all this alone. Tonight, I offer you something small, yet sacred—rest.”

His eyes meet yours—black voids lit with galaxies.

“No nightmares. No echoes. Only sleep. True sleep. The kind you have long been denied.”

He lifts a pale hand, the edges of your vision begin to shimmer.

“Close your eyes, and dream anew. I will keep the darkness at bay… just for tonight.”