After the nightmare...
Elias jolted awake.
His chest heaving. Sheets soaked with sweat. The scream lodged in his throat like bone.
The room was spinning.
This all was too vivid to be called a dream, yet, too strange to be called a reality for Elias.
He clutched his chest—still feeling the weight of the knife. Still tasting blood that didn't exist. His hands trembled with memory.
But… he had never left this bed.
Had he?
The room was unfamiliar in its silence. Not the silence of peace—no. The kind that stretched too far. As if something had been listening.
Elias sat up slowly, breath shallow.
The fire in the hearth had long since died. The windows trembled faintly under the weight of the storm outside. Rain streaked the glass like claw marks.
He was not in some rundown apartment now.
The chamber was carved in pale stone, its beauty too quiet, too restrained—like the man sitting on the edge of the bed.
Silver hair clung to his damp shoulders, strands catching the candlelight like threads of moonlight.
His skin looked cold to the touch, lips stained faintly red from the blood he'd coughed earlier.
And his eyes—deep, still, the color of a storm seen from beneath the sea—watched the room as though it might vanish at any moment.
A single candle flickered on the nightstand, melting into a dish shaped like a lion's maw.
And on the floor…
A photograph.
It hadn't been there before.
He blinked—and the world narrowed.
It was him.Not the man from dream whose even name he doesn't know, but him.
Smiling. Arms around two children.
The same faces. The same light. The same impossible memory. But he was in the photo instead.
He reached down, fingers trembling—not from fear, but a strange, slow recognition, as if his soul remembered what his mind could not.
He could still hear the silence after the scream.
And then the photo turned into ash...in front of his eyes.
Elias was surprised, still processing what was happening exactly...
Then a knock shattered the stillness.
No. Not a knock.
A slow, deliberate creak.
The door.
It was opening.
He wasn't expecting anyone. No servants at this hour. No guests.
No one who should be there.
And yet someone was.
A shadow spilled into the hallway. A flicker of movement. Barely seen.
His heart didn't race. It slowed.
As if preparing.
He rose from the bed, silently, like something ancient waking in him. Something that had long waited in dreams.
He glanced once more at the place where there was a photo before.
Then at the door. Their was no one
And one thought bloomed—unwelcome and consuming:
Who was that man in my dreams… and why do I remember it like it was me?
The candle snuffed out.
And everything went dark.
He stared at the ash from the photo,his name now echoing in his mind like a bell toll. Elias. That was who he was now. But in the dream, it wasn't.
Or maybe it was.
He didn't remember holding that knife. But his hands still trembled as if they had.
And somewhere deep in the marrow of him, a truth waited—patient, grim.
He rose. Walked to the window.
The rain hadn't stopped.
And neither had the memory.
------
The next morning:-
The room was dim, filtered in gold by the late sun slipping through sheer curtains. The house was quiet. Far too quiet for a place once belonging to a duke.
Elias couldn't sleep a wink at night, he was laying on the bed, surrounded by silence and warmth—but no comfort.
His skin, once kissed by the light of swords and sun, now paled like old parchment. His breath came steady but slow—the kind that belonged to someone caught between waking and sleep.
And behind his closed eyes, flickering like smoke and memory—
There he was again.
That man.
Always the same one. The shadow he saw last night still vivid in his mind.
A memory?? A Forgotten Past?? This was the only answers Elias could come up with.
His dreams were only bits and pieces becoming more vivid as time goes by, but every time he saw the same man—
Sometimes laughing, sometimes bleeding. Sometimes standing in front of a grave with eyes so hollow they could drown the world.
And Elias could feel it, every time—like he wasn't watching a dream, but remembering it.
He stirred beneath the covers. His body, though no longer too weak to walk, still hadn't fully recovered. But the physicians had begun whispering strange things. About impossible improvements. About how fast he was healing.
As if something inside him refused to stay broken.
Not enough to be called healthy—but enough not to die.
His fingers twitched over the bedsheets. He blinked toward the pale ceiling, waiting for the haze to clear, but it never did. The room was the same as always. Modest, noble, sunlit—but empty.
Had he always been here?
Or was it that other place?
That strange apartment with white walls and creaking wood… where someone had died.
Someone like him.
The line between the two blurred more each day.
-----
After some time of racking his brain.
A knock at the door made him come out of his trance.
Soft. Hesitant.
Then it creaked open.
"...Young Master."
It was the butler—grey-haired, sharp-eyed, and with a voice like wind across snow. He stepped inside quietly, careful not to startle the stillness.
"You haven't eaten," he said gently. "Forgive me for being persistent, but…"
Elias didn't respond. His gaze shifted to the side—not out of rudeness, but because he wasn't entirely present.
He still tasted blood from the dream.
Still smelled rain.
Still felt the cold tile of that apartment floor beneath his knees.
The dreams had started when the sickness came. And ever since, they had only grown clearer, longer, deeper. Each time he woke, the dream clung to him—like smoke that wouldn't leave the skin.
He was starting to forget which life felt more real.
The butler followed his gaze to the bookshelf—stacked neatly with letters. Each sealed in wax, bearing the family crest: a sword coiled in flame.
Messages from his men.
From his knights.
From those who hadn't forgotten him.
The youngest Swordmaster in the kingdom. The one who vanished after falling ill. The one said to be second only to the king in status, and first at skills in entire Empire.
His men, they still believed he'd return.
They still waited.
The butler approached, lifting one letter delicately. "They train every morning," he murmured. "Same place. Same hour. Just in case you show up again."
Elias didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
The ache in his chest wasn't grief. It was older than that.
It was recognition.
He had lived a good life once. Raised with love. Wealth. Respect. He wasn't alone, not really. The butler and his wife loved him like their own. The knights revered him. His name still echoed through camps and capitals.
And yet…
Since the illness, none of it felt real.
Not the warmth of this house. Not the food. Not even the passing seasons.
Only the dreams.
And the man in them.
Each time, the same apartment. The same death. The same silence. Cheap wood floors. A single photo fallen to the ground.
Two children. A smile. A storm outside the window.
A man who shouldn't exist.
But did.
Elias closed his eyes.
Was he dreaming of that man?
Or was that man dreaming of him?
They shared too much. The same sharp quiet. The same cold fury. Even their silence sounded the same. And though Elias had never met him… he remembered the moment he killed him.
Like he'd been there.
A whisper slipped out of his lips.
"Who are you?"
The butler stiffened. "Young master?"
But Elias didn't answer.
Sleep had already begun to pull him back under. Gentle at first, then dragging.
Butler saw his master sleeping and tucked him in like a child, looking at him with genuine affection and left not to disturb him.
---