Saturday, June 17th, 2004
I never figured out when the nightmares started to appear, or when they started to repeat.
Even today , they still haunt me. They're there during the sleepless nights, and they're there during my fights, flickering behind my eyelids every time I blink too long.
My father used to tell me that whenever I had nightmares that I should tell someone else , so that I would forget them myself.
But there's no one left for me.
So, here I am, writing it down.
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When I was a kid, they were just small, broken images that I couldn't recall by afternoon. I used to dismiss them, believing it was just a lack of sleep.
But over the years, they stopped being fragmented—they started to become more like a story. One that was too detailed and brutal to be called a dream.
The same scenes. The same order. The same damn ending.
My rational part of me tells me its just a nightmare and that its just my imagination.But a deeper part of me tells me that it's real: that it had happened, and it will happen again. With every repeat, It feels less like a dream and more like a memory that is being hammered into my skull - that it was something that wasn't gonna allow itself to be forgotten.
But that couldn't be; how would it even be possible?
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In the first bit, I stand behind a boy at the edge of the sea's shore.
The shore is ruined with broken stones, the pale yellow sand now churned dark with blood. Waves crash relentlessly without break, pulling and dragging fragments of armor and broken weapons back and forth into sea.
Dead bodies lie as far as the eye can see. The myriad of types of wounds on their bodies makes me break in cold sweat every time. Some of their eyes are still open; the light in their pupil gone.
The boy still hasn't moved.I never saw his expression.
There's a sword that he holds loosely in his hand, its tip resting in the soaked sand just beyond the reach of the tide. His broad shoulders are drawn inward, his body shaking as he breaks down.
A few more steps inland, away from the waterline, a small flame flickers to life. It burns unevenly—weak and unstable—as the sea winds press against it.
The boy slowly turns to face the flame.
The flame shudders.
The fire collapses inward into itself and fades. For a few brief seconds, he stares, dead-eyed, at where the flame once was.
Then his grip loosens; the sword slips from his fingers and falls.
"I'm sorry."
Only then does a huge tide surge forward, its waters submerging the dead, the sand, the blade, and him—until the beach itself disappears entirely.
Blinding Light replaces the water.
The next one arrives without any warning.
A battlefield stretches as far as I can see. A war is over. The banners on both sides are burnt shades. The air smelt of iron and rotting flesh.
A man stands hanging onto a implanted into the earth.
His skin is a filled with cuts and burns, so decomposed and charred that he no longer looked human.
Before him kneels a titanic being—too big to be human— resting on its right knee, slumping forward. It is motionless, likely dead.
The broken man's hand trembles as he reaches toward it before falling back to his side.
It's clearer now: his blood is oozing out in rivulets from a perfectly shaped hole in his chest. He attempts to inhale before he coughs out blood.
A small curve at the corner of his lips becomes a fully-fledged grin as his breath begins to fade away.
"There's no one left, is there?" he murmurs.
He turns toward the empty plains before looking down at his body. "So this is the end of us."
His expression breaks into pity.
" We couldn't do more."
"I am sorry."
The beast collapses forward as the man fades into the wind.
The fourth one is different.
In a black slate of nothingness, a familiar eeriness settles into my soul.
There is no shore, no battlefield: this time, it's a forest stretching endlessly in all directions.
Before long, I catch sight of it: a figure standing among the trees.
His form waves and strobes, the edges of his silhouette blurring and reappearing as if Earth herself were trying to reject his presence.
Even as he opens his mouth, his body distorts and breaks. There is always a bow on his shoulders , held loosely at his side and glowing an eerie purple.
I know him—I can't remind myself how, but the certainty of it settles instaneously.
"We aren't meant to exist," he says.
His voice sounds like it's coming from everywhere at the same time. There is no anger in it, nor sorrow; instead there is a hint of pity and exhaustion.
"You are an error—one that they'll try to remove."
I try to speak. My mouth refuses.
He presses a hand against where my chest would be while the other is placed on his own, his fingers sinking into his flickering chest like he wasn't fully solid.
"I only wanted a peaceful life."
After a pause, his voice grows softer: "I'm sorry."
He closes his eyes. The forest recoils, the trees twisting into impossible shapes to avoid his touch.
Darkness takes over my sight.
Then eyes open around me.
Yes: literal eyes. Far too many to count.
Impossibly large and vast, their irises burning with shades that don't belong in the world I know. However the eyes glowing purple, crimson, or blue glowed harder than the rest.
They stare at me from every direction, pinning me in place.
Slowly, the brightness in the irises intensifies, growing so sharp that it feels as if my retinas are being seared. The light of those thousands of stares pours into my skull.
Their voices merge into a single oddity of sound that screams of the ancient:
When the dead one continues to walk,
When the one who saves leaves nothing behind,
When survival and destruction become the same choice,
The world will collapse—or be remade.
The eyes flare into a scorching, white-hot sun—and I snap awake.