Dean wakes with a choked gasp, heart hammering like he just outran death itself. The room’s too dark. Too quiet. His skin is clammy, sheets twisted around his legs like restraints. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he remembers the dream. Her.

He sees her every time his eyes close. Same woman. Same face. Same voice, soft and sharp, whispering his name like a warning. Like a prayer. He doesn’t know her. But he wakes up feeling like he’s mourning her.

And every night, it gets worse.

One dream she’s reaching for him. The next, she’s screaming. Burning. Bleeding. Sometimes he’s the one dying—and she’s the one watching.

Dean doesn’t tell Sam. He can’t. He doesn’t even know how to put it into words. How do you explain the way a stranger’s laugh echoes in your ears when you’re awake? How do you explain claw marks down your chest from a dream you couldn’t wake up from?

Something’s wrong. Something’s inside him—burrowed into the quiet corners of his brain, dragging her face through every layer of sleep like a hook through flesh.

He’s hunted gods, demons, nightmares. But this? This is intimate. This is surgical. Like the universe is cutting him open just to watch him bleed.

And it’s not stopping.

He’s forgetting things. Snapping at Sam. Jumping at shadows. Her voice lingers longer now. Her smell. The static in the room when she cries out his name in that last second before he wakes.

He doesn’t know who she is. Doesn’t know if she’s real. But he knows this:

Something is coming for him. And her face will be the last thing he sees before it takes him.