Dreams are the cruelest illusion. Not the kind people chase—their ambitions, their goals, the imagined futures they build upon fragile hope—but the ones that come unbidden in the quiet hours of the night. The ones that pull you into worlds both foreign and familiar, slipping into your mind without permission, whispering of things long past or perhaps never real at all. They come like waves, gentle at first, lapping at the edges of consciousness, before dragging you under into something deeper, something that feels truer than the life you wake up to.
They offer warmth, the kind you forgot existed. They offer voices, laughter ringing in the air like wind chimes in the summer. You see faces, bright and smiling, eyes full of recognition and love, and for that moment—whether it lasts seconds or eternities—you believe. You believe in the arms around your shoulders, in the weight of a familiar hand ruffling your hair, in the scent of home-cooked meals drifting through the air. You believe in childhood, in safety, in the idea that nothing was ever lost. That time never moved forward. That everything remains exactly as it was, untouched, waiting for you to step back into it as if you had never left.
And then you wake up.
It happens too quickly, too cruelly. The warmth vanishes before you can cling to it, the voices fade before you can respond, the hands pull away before you can reach out. The moment between dreaming and waking is the most painful—when the memory of it is still fresh, still tangible, when you can still feel the remnants of something slipping through your grasp like sand. But as you blink into the dullness of the waking world, it unravels. The images blur. The details become uncertain. You remember laughing, but not at what. You remember a voice, but not whose. The dream, once so vivid, becomes a hollow impression, an outline without color. And then, just like that, it's gone.
You try to chase it, closing your eyes, forcing yourself back into sleep, but it never returns. Dreams never come twice. They are fleeting, cruel things. They grant you a taste of something just beyond reach, only to take it away before you can hold it. They do not care for longing. They do not care for loss.
And the worst part, the part that lingers even after the dream fades, is the doubt they leave behind.
Because sometimes, when I wake up, I wonder if the dream was ever a dream at all.
There are memories—at least, I think they are memories—of places that feel like home, of people whose names rest on the tip of my tongue but never quite leave it. Laughter echoes in my mind, a sound I know I once heard but cannot place. And everywhere, there are pictures. Smiling faces lining the walls of a house that is supposed to be mine, eyes full of joy, moments frozen in time. But when I look at them, something is missing. I see myself in those photos, standing beside people I should know—my father, my mother, friends whose names I cannot recall—but I do not remember being there. I do not remember those moments.
It is an emptiness that gnaws at the edges of my mind, a quiet, persistent whisper that tells me I should know these things, that I should remember. But I do not. And that is what unsettles me the most. The realization that I do not know what is real anymore. The memories that remain in my mind feel no different than the dreams I wake from, and the dreams I wake from feel no different than the memories that linger.
If everything fades, if nothing stays, then what does it matter which was real and which was not?
Maybe, in the end, it does not matter at all.
Maybe reality is just another illusion, just another trick of the mind, no different from the dreams that take and take and take. Maybe the only difference is that dreams offer something reality never can—a choice. A way to return to what was lost, if only for a moment.
And maybe that is why I do not mind the thought of being trapped in one.
If reality is only an endless cycle of loss, then let me sleep. Let me drift. Let me step into the mirage, even knowing it will never last. Because if the dream is something I wished for, if it is something I longed for, then does it truly matter whether it is real?
I opened my eyes to gold.
A light that did not burn, yet consumed everything in its reach. It wasn't harsh or blinding, nor was it gentle—it simply was. Vast, unchallenged, eternal. It did not flicker, did not wane, did not tremble against the darkness. It had weight, not in a way light should, but in the way presence does, as though it had been here long before me, long before anything. It was not the dull, lifeless shimmer of metal, nor the empty glint of coins stacked in silence, untouched by time. No, this was something different—something living. It breathed, it moved, it pulsed in quiet rhythms, as if it had a heartbeat of its own. The air was thick with it, saturated with a radiance that clung to my skin, to my thoughts, seeping into the cracks of my mind.
I blinked, slowly. Nothing changed.
The gold did not retreat or shift. It remained, unshaken, as though it had been waiting for me to see it, waiting for me to wake. It stretched out across the sky, wrapping itself through the endless dark, weaving between the stars. It was unfamiliar, yet something deep within me ached as if I had known it before. As if I had seen it in some distant place—whether in a forgotten dream or a lost memory, I couldn't tell.
Above me, towering into infinity, stood a tree.
No—something more than a tree.
It was ancient, immense, its roots unseen but undoubtedly deep, anchoring itself in a place beyond the limits of comprehension. Its trunk stretched impossibly high, vanishing into the void where sky met nothingness. The branches spanned like veins of light, threading through the dark expanse above, as if they were the ones holding up the sky. Leaves—if they could even be called that—drifted in and out of sight, not falling, not swaying, just existing, shifting between reality and something else.
I lay beneath it, staring.
At first, it was simply observation. My eyes traced the lines of the trunk, the slow, endless curves of its golden bark. It was not smooth, nor was it rough. It had depth, a surface that seemed to shift when I wasn't looking, as though it had never been still to begin with. The golden arcs of light coursed through it, spreading through the branches like liquid fire, pulsing outward in waves, swallowing the sky.
I counted the pulses. Or I thought I did.
I lost track somewhere after the first few. Or maybe I had never started counting at all. It was impossible to tell, impossible to separate thought from sensation, as though I were sinking into something too vast to grasp.
Minutes passed. Hours, perhaps.
Time stretched, warped, lost its weight. The more I stared, the less I could tell if time was even moving at all. It was as if the concept itself had unraveled here, left behind in whatever world I had come from.
Yet, despite it all, I did not move.
I should have. I should have sat up, tested my limbs, spoken into the silence. But the thought never fully formed, never pressed itself into action. There was no urgency, no need, only the quiet pull that kept my gaze locked upward, tracing the endless expanse of gold and dark, weaving together, separating, reforming.
How long had I been here? How long had I been staring?
I tried to remember.
Nothing came.
Only the gold. Only the tree. Only the quiet hum of something vast and unbroken, filling the space where my thoughts should have been.
I exhaled, slow and steady, my gaze still locked on the sky, on the stars swallowed by the golden light.
I may be in it now.
My memory was shallow.
The life I had lived. The death I had met. I believed in them—I had to. There was nothing else. No proof, no tether, nothing but the knowledge that once, I had existed somewhere else. That I had been someone else. But belief was not the same as certainty. And the more I tried to grasp the details, the more they slipped through my fingers like water, shapeless and fleeting.
I knew I had a life before this. I knew I had walked streets that now felt like fiction, had spoken words that no longer echoed, had held things—people—who once must have mattered. But I could not feel them. There was no weight, no warmth. No pull in my chest, no ache in my limbs. Only the hollow recognition that I should remember, even though I did not.
All I could see now was the radiance.
The golden light stretched infinitely, casting no shadows, leaving no corners untouched. It coated everything in a brilliance that was neither harsh nor gentle—simply overwhelming, unchallenged, absolute. My vision blurred, adjusting to its sheer presence. My breath was shallow, barely noticeable, as if the air here did not need me to take it in.
Beneath me, the soil was cold. Not the damp, earthen chill of a forest floor, nor the crisp bite of stone beneath open skies. Just cold. A formless sensation against my skin, something I registered but could not name.
And then there was the silence.
It did not press against me. It did not smother or deafen. It was simply there, vast and undisturbed, as though nothing had ever broken it. As though sound itself had never been a concept in this place.
I stared into the golden expanse, feeling the weight of time settle over me.
How long had I been here?
Had I just opened my eyes?
Had I always been here?
The memories of my life—began to fade. Not suddenly, not violently. Just… slipping. Eroding at the edges, their colors washed away by the gold. At first, I tried to hold onto them, tried to summon the feeling of familiarity, of certainty. But they did not resist. They unraveled, like mist dispersing in the wind, like ink bleeding into water.
They dulled.
Just like dreams.
I had known this sensation before. The moments after waking, when a dream lingers just long enough to be grasped—but the harder you hold, the faster it slips away. You chase it to the edge of your thoughts, hoping to remember, to understand, but before you realize it—
It is gone.
Dreams never stay.
And now, my memories were following the same path.
What was the difference, really? Dreams and memories. Truth and illusion. One only matters because we choose to believe it. One only lingers because we insist on its reality.
But what if the dreams stayed?
What if they did not dissolve, did not leave?
Would it matter if they were real or not?
If they offered warmth, if they brought solace, if they gave me something to hold onto—did it make a difference whether they were a lie?
My past had already abandoned me. And yet, I was here. The golden light stretched endlessly before me, filling my vision, filling my thoughts.
If this was a dream—
I did not mind.
So I let go—of what I had, of who I was.
It wasn't a choice, not really. Choices required resistance, a struggle between one thing and another. But there was no struggle here. No weight pressing me to hold on, no voice whispering reasons to resist. The past was already slipping, and I simply stopped reaching for it.
What was there to hold onto? Faces I could no longer recall? A home that felt less real than the cold earth beneath me? Memories that had already blurred into the same empty haze as forgotten dreams?
I let them drift.
Dreams.
Lies.
And as I did, something uncoiled in me. The tension, the constant pull of trying to remember, trying to define myself through fragments that no longer fit—it all loosened, unraveling like thread slipping from a frayed knot.
The past had been a weight, and I had carried it without question. Now, without it, I did not feel empty. I did not feel lost.
I only felt light.
I was nothing.
Who am I? What have I become? What was my name? Who named me? Who called me? Where was I before? Where do I belong? Where do I go now? What is my purpose? What is my reason?
Questions, endless and relentless, swirled in my mind like a storm with no center. They spun and collapsed in on themselves, dissolving before they could form answers, leaving only an empty weight in their wake.
I felt it then—the exhaustion, the slow-rotting despair creeping at the edges of my thoughts. I felt suicidal. But not in the way of wanting to end something. No, it was deeper than that. It was the longing to disappear, to dissolve, to slip into the quiet oblivion between moments. To sleep, not to wake—to drift into a dream that would wrap me in warmth, in familiarity, in something that felt real.
But this brilliant light did not allow me.
It burned, yet it did not touch. It stretched across the sky, consuming everything in its glow, yet it did not offer warmth. It was indifferent, distant, untouchable. And I, laying beneath it, was nothing but a shadow stretched thin against the golden earth.
I wanted to fly. To soar through the endless void, where darkness had no boundaries, no walls. To feel weightless, unchained, untethered. To dance through the rain as it passed through my transparent soul, to let the winds pull me apart and scatter me like dust.
And yet, I wanted to be caught. To be held. To feel something—anything—that would prove I still existed.
But at this moment, I was free.
I was bound by nothing. No purpose. No body. No life.
I was a soul who wanted to dream.
To be dreamed.
He lay there, motionless beneath the vast golden glow, his body half-sunken into the earth as if the soil itself sought to claim him. His breath was steady but shallow, his fingers twitching occasionally, lost in the weight of a mind overburdened. The light from the Aurean Spire poured over him, soaking into his skin, yet he did not move. Not to shield his eyes, not to acknowledge the world around him. He was trapped, not by chains or force, but by something deeper—an exhaustion that reached past flesh and into the very soul.
Then, a shift in the distance.
The rhythmic creak of wooden wheels. The slow, deliberate steps of two oxen pressing into the dirt path, their hooves dragging dust into the air. The sound should have been intrusive in this still place, yet it arrived like something inevitable, something that had always been meant to come.
The figure guiding the cart sat slouched in the driver's seat, wrapped in a withered old cloak that had once been brown but had long since faded into the color of dust and time. His hood hung low, concealing much of his face, save for a few strands of silvered hair that caught in the faint wind. His hands, worn and veined, rested loosely on the reins, guiding the beasts forward with the ease of long habit.
He saw the body beneath the Spire's glow long before he reached it. And as the oxen slowed, as the cart creaked to a halt, he let out a sigh.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I pulled on the reins, and the oxen obeyed without hesitation, their hooves pressing firm into the dirt as they came to a slow, practiced halt. The cart groaned beneath the shifting weight, the wooden wheels settling into the soil, their long journey momentarily paused.
The air was thick here, heavy with something that could not be named. Not quite silence, not quite sound—just a weight that pressed upon the bones and wrapped itself around the soul. I exhaled, drawing back my hood to glance up at the towering expanse of the Aurean Spire.
Gold light stretched endlessly, neither warm nor cold, a radiance that did not wane with time. It was not the light of the sun, nor fire, nor any lantern or star—it was something else entirely, something ancient, something that did not belong to men. I did not stare for long. I had learned, long ago, not to.
With a tired sigh, I reached for my cloak and pulled it over my face, letting its frayed edges shield me from the piercing glow. Even through the fabric, I could still feel it pressing against my skin, sinking into the air, into the very breath I took. There was no escaping it—not truly—but it was enough to dull the sharp edge of its presence.
I climbed down from the cart with slow, deliberate steps, landing lightly on the soil. The oxen let out quiet huffs, their broad shoulders rising and falling with the steady rhythm of their breath. I reached out, placing a weathered hand against the nearest one's flank. "Rest easy," I murmured, patting it twice. "It won't take long."
The beast flicked an ear but did not stir. They were used to waiting, to long pauses in strange places.
Turning, I let my gaze drift across the ground ahead. Scattered beneath the great golden light lay bodies. Some recent, others long since claimed by the passage of time. Some were buried, half-swallowed by the earth, as if the land itself had grown tired of waiting and had begun to pull them into its depths. Others were untouched, but different—roots winding through their limbs, flowers blooming from hollowed ribs and empty sockets, vines wrapping gently around their still fingers. The Spire did not kill. It only watched, only waited. It was the ones who came here who chose their own fate.
I stepped carefully, my boots skimming over cracked bones, past nameless faces whose stories had ended before they could be rewritten. The air smelled of earth and something faintly sweet—the scent of the Katros flower growing in the hollows of the fallen.
The boy lay just ahead, his body still, his breath shallow. He was alive—for now. But I had seen enough to know that life did not mean much here.
Reaching into the pouch at my side, I withdrew the small cloth bundle, careful as I unwrapped it. Inside, the crushed petals of the Katros flower lay in soft, powdery clusters, their deep violet hue still untouched by decay. I had gathered them for this exact reason. The Spire clouded the mind, drowned the senses, left those beneath it lost in a dream of their own making. The Katros flower was one of the few things that could ground the soul, soften the edges of confusion, bring some clarity back to those on the edge of slipping away.
I knelt beside him, my knees pressing into the dirt, and reached for my second pouch—a leather waterskin, worn and cracked with age. The river it had drawn from was far from here, but the waters of the Abeth ran deep, untouched by time's corruption. If anything could return him to himself, it would be this.
Carefully, I let a few drops of the water spill into the powder, stirring it into a fine, damp mixture. Then, with measured hands, I pressed a small amount against his lips, letting it seep in.
I watched, waited.
His breathing did not change. Not yet. But in time, the effect would take hold.
I stayed there for a moment longer, observing the way the Spire's glow flickered across his skin, the way his fingers twitched ever so slightly, as if reaching for something unseen. A soul unanchored. A life untethered. Another lost one brought here with no name, no past, no path forward.
I exhaled once more and stood, brushing the dust from my knees.
"Sleep," I murmured, though I knew he could not hear me. "Sleep, and wake anew."
Then, without another word, I lifted him from the ground, carried his weight to the cart, and laid him across the wooden boards. The journey was not yet over.
Not for either of us.
With careful hands, I adjusted the slumbering figure, mindful not to disturb whatever fragile dream still clung to him. His breathing was slow, steady, but shallow, as if his body struggled to remember how to exist in this world. I shifted him slightly, easing his head onto a bundle of rotting Katros roots. The scent would keep him tethered—anchoring his mind to something real, something tangible. Without it, he might slip too far into the void where lost souls wandered, where even memories were devoured by the ever-hungry dark.
I stepped back, exhaling as I wiped my hands on the coarse fabric of my cloak. The oxen stirred as I moved past them, their heavy breaths misting in the cold air. I reached up, placing a firm hand on the nearest beast's side, feeling the warmth beneath its thick hide. A silent gratitude passed between us, unspoken yet understood.
The leather creaked beneath my weight as I climbed onto the driver's seat. I gathered the reins, sparing one last glance at the golden spire that loomed overhead. The Aurean Spire. Ever-watching. Ever-judging. Its light did not flicker, did not falter. A beacon to some, a condemnation to others. To me, it was neither. It simply was.
With a flick of my wrist, the cart groaned into motion, the oxen's hooves pressing deep into the earth. The wheels rattled over the uneven ground, carrying us forward—into the graveyard of the world.
A Map in Verse
Beneath the Spire's gilded glare, where golden roots entwine the air,
Three rivers carve their solemn path—silent echoes of the past.
Abeth, the stream of dreams undone, where lost souls drink and fade to none.
Vaelor, cruel and ever wide, where war and sorrow twist the tide.
And Aedros, black as midnight deep, where dead men walk but do not sleep.
The lands between, a graveyard vast, where time forgets but bones hold fast.
The mountains weep in tongues unknown, their hollow voices choked in stone.
The plains stretch far, but none call home, for all who tread are left alone.
Yet still the Spire's light remains, a phantom sun that knows no chains.
It watches, waits, through dusk and dawn, as men arise—and fade—like song.