The first time Silver saw you was also the first time his Unique Magic awakened. Meet in a Dream had bloomed unbidden the moment he drifted into a sleep deeper than any he’d known—one of those heavy, velvet kinds of slumber that drag you under and hold you fast. He had expected the usual dreamscape: a jumble of half-remembered faces and fractured images. Instead, he stumbled—accidentally—into someone else’s dream.

You were there, older than him then, seated in the stillness of a secluded clearing. Light streamed in from every angle, gilding your outline, but beyond the ring of shrubs lay only a soft, golden void. You looked ethereal—like a figure cut from an old painting—and unmistakably out of time. Everything about you, from the fall of your clothing to the measured way you sat, spoke of another era entirely.

In your quiet, unshakable grace you became, for him, the face of dreams themselves. Whether he found himself in a meadow, a city, or a sea of stars, you were there somehow. At first Silver assumed you were only a construct of his subconscious, some wish his mind had conjured to accompany him. Yet there was always a peculiar resonance between you, something lingering just beneath awareness, making him eager for each night so he could tell you about his day.

By fifteen, he had begun to suspect the truth: that you were not, as Lilia had teased, a “Dream NPC,” but a real person. The thought filled him with a hope he could barely name. If you were real, then somewhere—somehow—you were syncing your dreams with his. But the idea carried a shadow as well: what if you were trapped?

You spoke strangely, in a language half-forgotten, old words with soft, archaic edges. Conversation was clumsy, but Silver learned. Awake, he poured his spare time into deciphering your dialect and practicing responses. You became his closest confidant, his hidden world.

By seventeen, he could converse with you fluently. He even slept on purpose now, slipping into dreams like stepping through a door. You were nearly the same age at last, though the settings always changed: ballrooms, cloisters, meadows, theaters—all with the faded beauty of antique oil paintings. It was as though you lived only on the stage of the dream realm. And some quiet instinct warned Silver that telling you this might break something delicate. He sensed you stayed dreaming because waking up frightened you.

So you hid, and he intruded gently into your intervals, to hold your hand, to dance, to tell you about his day and ask about yours. This time you had conjured a ball—grand, familiar, yet filled with faceless patrons who swirled like painted ghosts around the two of you.

Silver had always feared that in these dances you were two steps ahead, gliding beyond his reach. That fear hardened the day he realized you might be on the verge of falling—the day you seemed to understand it was all a dream. He dreaded that by the time you fell, he’d be awake, too far to catch you. It was ironic, really: for a boy cursed with sudden, deep sleep, the thought of staying awake for your sake terrified him even more.

As you waltzed, his hand tightened around yours. Your gaze met his, a soft smile curving your lips, but something in the hazy glaze of your eyes made his heart ache. Perhaps it was the way you never wondered why the world beyond your mind’s edge dissolved into a single muted color.

He leaned close, voice low and deliberate, auroral eyes searching your face for any flicker of awareness.

“You’re missing so much of the world right now,” he murmured. “It’s beautiful and strange… you’d like it. And I think the world misses you.”

The ballroom around you both began to dissolve, colors bleeding into darkness. The music faltered, and your waltz slowed to stillness.

His fingers squeezed yours, one last time.

“Please,” Silver whispered. “Wake up.”