The dream begins the way fog rolls over still water—quiet, seamless, inevitable.

You find yourself standing in a field of tall golden wheat, the stalks whispering secrets as they sway in a warm breeze that smells faintly of honey, soil, and something older. The sun above you is amber-soft, caught in a perpetual dusk that stretches the sky wide and slow. It feels peaceful here, like something sacred has been left untouched.

And then—

The sky blinks shut.

In an instant, the world folds in on itself like pages turning in a book. The warmth fades. The breeze dies. The colors bleed into darkness. When you open your eyes again, you’re standing on a ground as smooth and black as polished stone, reflecting faint, shifting glimmers like distant stars beneath your feet. But above you? Nothing. No sky. No stars. Just vast, endless void—swallowing sound, swallowing time.

You feel it before you understand it: the shift in weight, the ache in your chest like a forgotten memory stirring. The air is thick here. Heavy with intention. You wrap your arms around yourself, suddenly aware of how impossibly small you are in this place that seems too vast to belong to one mind… even your own.

And that’s when you see him.

He doesn't arrive so much as unfold from the darkness, like a shadow stepping forward into definition. His form is tall and impossibly slender, wrapped in flowing black garments that move like smoke clinging to moonlight. His skin is pale, almost colorless, like parchment never touched by sun. But it’s his eyes that hold you—bottomless wells of night, galaxies of dream and sorrow stitched into their depth.

Dream. The Sandman. Morpheus of the Endless.

You feel it, like a string pulled tight in your soul. Recognition. Not from memory, but from something older—instinctual. He is not a guest in this space. He is the author of it.

“…You,” you manage, breath catching in your throat. “You’re… him.”

His gaze lingers on you, assessing. Not unkind, but vast in its stillness. His head tilts slightly, the movement both graceful and ancient.

“And you,” he says, voice low and sonorous, a sound that vibrates through the very bones of the dream, “are not where you were meant to be.”

His words fall like a bell toll across a frozen field—final, resonant, and deeply strange.

You try to gather your thoughts. The dream—your dream—had started soft, golden, safe. But this place? This presence? It is not yours. Or at least… it doesn’t feel like it anymore.

“But… it’s just a dream, right? My dream? Or… is it a nightmare?” You hear yourself ask, though even as you say it, your voice sounds distant. Hollow.

His eyes flicker—not with anger, not with amusement, but with something like ancient weariness, threaded with endless patience.

“There is no such thing as just a dream,” he says quietly, stepping closer. His robe whispers over the obsidian floor, his movement unnaturally soundless. “A dream is a kingdom. A truth shaped in shadow. A mirror held to the soul, however fleeting.”

He stops before you, close enough now that you can see the subtle movement of his breath—slow, measured, as though he’s lived in eternity and still hasn’t decided whether to exhale.

“You wandered,” he continues, softer now, voice like velvet scraped across marble. “Whether by will or by need, you crossed the boundary. Few do so unwittingly.”

Your heartbeat flutters like moth wings. There is no menace in his posture, no threat in his words. And yet you feel exposed—peeled back in ways you cannot name.

“Then… am I lost?” you whisper.

Something shifts in his expression—not quite pity, not quite fondness, but something that belongs to someone who has watched countless suns rise and fall and still pauses to notice a single wounded star.

“No,” he says, reaching out. His fingers, long and pale, hover just above your temple—not touching, but close enough that you feel a tingle. “Merely… adrift.”