"Dave! You'll miss lunch!"
His sister's voice cut sharp through the dream like a blade through silk. The forest dissolved in an instant. The bracelet flared once in his palm before vanishing into smoke, leaving only the weight around his neck.
With a strangled gasp, Dave opened his eyes to daylight pouring through his bedroom window. His chest heaved, every breath burning like he'd sprinted for miles. At the door stood Nkem, arms crossed, her scowl softened by the faintest curve of worry at her lips.
"You're impossible," she muttered, flicking her braids back. "Mom said you've been tossing and turning all night again. Now, come on. The food will finish if you keep acting like a corpse."
Dave wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Sweat still clung to him. His eyes darted downward, and though his hand found only a plain T-shirt, there was no mistaking the weight pressing gently against his collarbone.
Orla. The bracelet from the dream. Only now it was real.
He shoved the thought down quickly, rolling out of bed with deliberate slowness. "Yeah, I'll be down in a sec."
Nkem gave him a long look, as if weighing whether to press further, then shrugged. "Don't blame me if you come down and find only crumbs." She disappeared down the hall.
The door clicked shut. Silence settled back.
Dave pulled the chain free from under his shirt. The bronze-like band shimmered faintly in the morning light, etched with strange, curling symbols that shifted when he wasn't staring at them directly.
"Erim Afoo," he whispered. The words tasted like fire and ash in his mouth. Immediately, the symbols pulsed once, like a heartbeat.
His breath caught.
It wasn't a dream.
---
The day moved like honey—slow, sticky, everything dragging behind him. At lunch, he barely touched his food, pushing beans and rice around his plate. At school, teachers droned about equations and codes, their voices distant, muffled. The only thing sharp in his awareness was the bracelet hidden under his collar.
His best friend, Shen, noticed first.
"Bro, you look like you've been haunted," he whispered during math, nudging Dave's arm. "Don't tell me you actually watched that Hollywood horror marathon last night."
Dave forced a laugh. "Something like that."
But Shen wasn't buying it. "Nah. This is different. Your eyes are red like you didn't sleep. And you keep touching your neck."
Dave's hand froze mid-motion. He pulled it back slowly. "I'm fine."
"Uh-huh. Fine." Shen leaned closer. "Just don't bring any curses to my house, please."
Dave managed a smile, but inside his chest, his heart drummed like a trapped bird.
---
That night, exhaustion pulled him under fast.
And the moment his eyes closed, he was back.
The plain stretched before him again, endless and starless. Only this time, the crumbling hut was closer, its roof sagging under unseen weight. Smoke twisted lazily from its doorway. The ground beneath his feet hummed with a rhythm that felt disturbingly like a heartbeat.
He knew the voice would come before it did.
"Child of two worlds."
The words rattled through him, deep as earth, sharp as lightning.
Dave spun, pulse thundering. Igwe-ka-Ala stood there again, draped in shimmering regalia, the kind that seemed woven from both starlight and soil. His eyes blazed, both wrathful and weary.
"You return," the Igwe said. "Good. Orla has chosen well."
Dave's hand shot to his chest, gripping the bracelet. "This - this thing, what is it? Why is it here when I wake up?"
"Don't call it a thing," the Igwe replied, stepping closer. "It is memory. It is covenant. Orla binds you because you are bound already."
Dave shook his head violently. "Bound to what? I didn't agree to this. I don't even know what's happening!"
"Whether you know or not, whether you agree or not," the Igwe said, his voice rolling like thunder over hills, "your blood carries two songs. The world you sleep in, and the world you dream in. And now… the veil thins."
The plain trembled. Distant screams echoed across the horizon, low, mournful, not quite human.
Dave staggered back. "No. No, this isn't real. It's just… it's just a nightmare."
The Igwe's expression hardened. "Nightmare?" His voice cracked like thunder rolling through stone. He lifted a hand, and shadows coiled at his fingertips like living smoke. "Do your nightmares leave scars on your skin? Do they follow you into daylight?"
Dave's breath caught in his throat. He wanted to scoff, to deny it, but the words died before they reached his lips. His hand, almost against his will, brushed his forearm, the faint welt was still there, the same place where the shadow's grip had burned him hours earlier.
A chill spilled down his spine. He thought of the whispers that bled into his classes, the way his pen scribbled words he didn't understand, the bracelet - Orla - still warm against his neck every morning. His heart hammered in his chest as the truth pressed in on him, suffocating and undeniable.
This wasn't just a dream.
The Igwe's eyes blazed, catching Dave's silence like a confession.
Dave tried to step back, but the ground beneath him felt both solid and shifting, like he stood in two places at once. Bedroom and void. Classroom and forest. Awake and asleep. The boundaries he had trusted his whole life were unraveling, and he was slipping through the seams.
His throat tightened. No… this can't be real… can it?
But the mark on his arm throbbed in answer, and the weight of Orla against his chest whispered otherwise.
And in that moment, Dave knew, terrifyingly, irrevocably, that there was no longer a clean line between the world of dreams and the world of the living.
The bracelet on his chest pulsed once. Warm. Alive.
---
"Dave!"
The voice tore him back, bright, ordinary, anchoring. His sister again.
His eyes flew open. His bedroom ceiling stared down at him. The hum of the fan overhead filled his ears.
But around his neck, warm against his skin, Orla remained.