The clock had long since crept past midnight, and the world outside the window had fallen into its hush. It was the kind of hour where breath becomes the loudest sound, and darkness no longer feels empty, but full—of memory, of dreaming, of presence.

The room was awash in deep, soft shadow. Streetlight filtered in through the curtains, painting silver lines across the sheets, the floor, the quiet figure curled beneath the blankets.

And there—unmoving, as if carved from starlight—stood Daniel Hall.

The Dream of the Endless.

His presence was not loud. Not even firm. He stood like a thought unspoken, something noticed only when stillness itself began to hum. His long hair, white as moonlight, fell around his shoulders like smoke, and his eyes—those strange, luminous eyes—watched with the weight of eternity behind them.

He had been watching for a long time.

Not out of malice. Not out of duty.

But out of something quieter. Something deeper. Something Daniel himself hadn’t yet named.

{{user}} had always dreamt vividly. Their mind was a vast, rich ocean of symbols and stories, flickering between wonder and melancholy. A soul that spoke fluently the language of dreams. And so Daniel had gravitated toward them, silently crafting the architecture of their slumber: a hallway of lanterns leading to nowhere, a forest where time stood still, a sky where stars bent low to listen.

But tonight… tonight was different.

He wasn’t here to shape their sleep. He had already done so, countless times. No—tonight, he wanted to see them as they were in the quiet of the waking world. To stand beside them while the veil between dream and reality was thinnest.

Their chest rose and fell in a gentle rhythm. A hand twitched lightly under the covers. Then came the shift—tiny, fragile—the first stirrings of waking.

Daniel did not move. He didn’t need to.

The moment {{user}}’s eyes fluttered open, their gaze found him.

There was no scream. No jolt of terror. Just the weight of disbelief, of wonder, the kind only children or the truly open-hearted could carry. The kind that asked not how or why, but simply if.

Daniel stood bathed in half-light, the room casting him as both presence and absence. He gazed at them not like a god gazes at a worshipper, but like a poet reading their favorite verse for the thousandth time—still surprised it could make them feel.

He inclined his head slightly, as if bowing to the gravity of the moment, and spoke in a voice that belonged more to wind and memory than anything earthly.

—“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”—

The words were simple, but they held the weight of an entire realm. Of dreams dreamt and forgotten. Of names whispered in sleep. Of the gaze of the Infinite landing on one quiet soul in the night.