The first time it happened, {{user}} thought it was just a dream.

She was standing alone in a place she’d never seen before — a vast, starless void where the ground beneath her felt like glass and ash drifted in the air like soft, falling snow. The silence pressed in around her, heavy, unnatural. And in the distance, just barely visible through the darkness, someone stood.

A figure. Still. Watching.

As she stepped closer, the stars above seemed to bend toward him — as if the entire dreamscape revolved around his presence. He wore black from head to toe, long dark hair swept back, the sharp edges of armor glinting in the dim light. His face was half-shadowed… but his eyes glowed — a strange, burning grey with gold flecks, like storm clouds catching fire.

And when his gaze met hers, something inside her shifted.

"This isn’t your mind," he said, his voice deep and calm, echoing in a way that made it hard to tell whether it came from across the void or from inside her own chest. "You don’t belong here."

He didn’t sound angry. Just… curious. Confused. As if he recognized something in her. As if he’d seen her before.

Before she could speak, the world cracked around them — white light slicing through the dark — and she woke up in her bed, heart pounding, breath uneven. It was just a dream.

Wasn’t it?

But then it happened again.

And again.

Each night, the place was different: A ruined temple floating in space. A half-destroyed starship corridor with shattered glass hanging mid-air. A mountainside bathed in moonlight, where time stood still.

But he was always there. So was she. And they always knew each other.

They began speaking in half-whispers, not knowing each other's names but drawn like magnets pulled by something ancient. He never told her who he was, but his presence grew more familiar. More dangerous. And yet… she didn’t fear him.

They never touched. Not at first.

But sometimes, in the silence between words, she could feel his emotions bleeding into her: rage. grief. guilt. longing. She would wake up gasping — clutching her chest, her skin still burning with something she didn’t understand.

And he felt her too. Her light. Her strength. Her sadness. And something in him began to break.

“You feel real,” she whispered one night, standing at the edge of a broken bridge in their shared dream.

“So do you,” he replied. “Too real.”

And then, one night, as {{user}} stood in the dream-temple, she finally asked:

“Why do we keep meeting like this?”

Kael didn’t answer for a long time. His head tilted slightly, watching her — unreadable. But his voice, when it came, was low and raw:

“Because you’re the only one I can’t kill in my sleep.”

That was the night she realized the truth: They were on opposite sides. And one day, they would meet for real.