The first thing he noticed was the silence.
It wasn't the kind that came with peace or sleep, but a dead silence — heavy and unnatural, like the world had forgotten how to breathe. No wind. No echo from his own footsteps. Daemon blinked, but the darkness remained.
Daemon floated through an endless canvas of obsidian mist, stars suspended like dying embers in the breath of a god. Gravity didn't exist, yet he stood. Sound didn't travel, yet something whispered just beyond his ears. He couldn't tell if he was dreaming or if the dream had replaced reality altogether.
Time has no meaning here.
His name was Daemon. That much he remembered. But everything else… was blurred, fragmented, like a shattered mirror held together by fear.
"Again...but this time it feels more real...."
His skin glowed faintly. He looked down at his hands and saw veins coursing with molten gold. The light pulsed in rhythm with something he couldn't name but could feel. Each throb echoed like a ticking clock behind his eyes, loud, then louder, then impossibly silent. The silence screamed louder than sound ever could.
Around him, the void pulsed with a cold light. Not warmth, not hope, just the soft, detached glow of ancient, disinterested stars. Galaxies spiraled above his head, but the stars rearranged themselves like they were watching him. Patterns flickered in the constellations: 'a wolf with three eyes, a crown made of bones,' a spiral devouring itself.
The stars — they weren't twinkling. They were watching. Blinking. Conscious.
Daemon took a step forward. There was no ground beneath him, only the illusion of one — like walking on a memory. His feet left no prints, and yet the darkness shifted with every move, trailing whispers in its wake.
A structure loomed in the distance. A tower, obsidian and monolithic, floating in the void. Its surface was covered in glyphs that shimmered like liquid starlight, each symbol shifting when he tried to focus. Time bent around it — seconds lagged, reversed, and looped. Every blink felt like hours; every breath, an eternity.
He walked.
With every step, the whispers grew clearer. Voices overlapping, too many to count, all speaking in reverse. They spoke his name with reverence and fear.
"Dae… mon…"
Then came the voice that was not a whisper.
"You are …."
Daemon froze.
It echoed from everywhere — above, below, and inside. He turned in every direction and finally caught sight of it. He stumbled backward, heart pounding, but the dream didn't break. The stars began to fade, blinking out one by one until only two remained: the Sun and the Moon, massive and close, circling each other like predators in an endless dance.
The Moon bled silver tears that dripped through the void and became flowers. The Sun cracked, leaking golden blood that stained everything it touched — even light recoiled from it.
The voice returned, closer now.
He turned to run.
But the void twisted. The space behind him bent inward, folding like paper soaked in ink. Paths closed. Directions reversed. The stars flickered violently, flashing visions between pulses:
A field of clocks buried in sand, all ticking at different speeds.
A child with golden eyes holding a sun between her hands.
A room with no windows where the ceiling whispered names in a thousand tongues.
A man bleeding moonlight from his eyes, laughing with teeth like broken glass.
His thoughts unraveled. His memories bent. He could feel something inside his head now — a crawling sensation, as if thoughts he'd never had were trying to plant themselves.
Then came the humming. Low and resonant, like a universe-sized heartbeat.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The void split open.
And he fell.
Down through layers of light and shadow, through time like shattered glass. He passed himself — dozens of versions, hundreds, each locked in their own dream, in their own scream. Some were already broken. Some begged him to wake up. One reached out and grabbed his wrist, golden blood pouring from their eyes.
"Don't trust the stars," it said.
Then it was gone.
Daemon woke up in his bed. Morning sun streaming through the window.
Breathless, cold, soaked in sweat.
But his hands were still glowing.
And a single word was written on his ceiling in liquid gold:
"Soon."