"Ghh... haah..."
My throat clenched tight, as I relieved my heavy breath
Where am I?, It felt like I was drowning in air.
....
Deafening silence radiates from every section of where I am.
My eyes dilate, letting any light in, as if to heighten my vision, as I peek into a room filled with such darkness, as if space is non-existent, with nothingness, where voice echoes not.
Is this a dream or reality, or a confusion, an abomination of both?
I muttered to myself in confusion, but—
Huh? I can't hear myself, not a voice nor a weep, just my thoughts lofty in my head.
"It seems that you're finally asleep..."
A voice spoke, breaking the bounds of silence, words that brought confusion, words filled with mystery, and then—
There in the ethereal plane, invisible, emerged a figure.
Who are you??? I asked.
A... a Man suddenly appeared in front of me, his face so close to mine that I could feel his breath, and almost hear his pulse rumble like a mortar. Is he the one who spoke? And what does he mean by asleep?
In the blink of an eye, time unfroze, the Man in front of me, who was just a few inches away, drifted fast as beaming in lightspeed, No! it wasn't him, but the space between us is expanding; it was not akin to any principles of reality, no science or logic could comprehend, and yet it did.
Like some weird, unexplainable dream.
As I stood—adrift in a place where direction meant nothing and distance was a lie—I questioned both my reality and the figure before me.
Where am I? Who is he?
But before He even began to answer, beneath my feet, the void trembled not gently—violently, as if some slumbering god beneath the veil of darkness had turned in its sleep.
I staggered, trying to maintain balance.
"An earthquake?" I whispered, though the word felt absurd, here in a dreamlike world that defied nature's rules.
Then, from the nothingness, it rose.
A colossal round table, impossibly ornate, emerged as if summoned from memory or myth. Its surface gleamed with intricate etchings—porcelain inlays dancing along the edges like frost on glass. Every curve, every embellishment, whispered of an age long gone, when artistry rivaled divinity. The craftsmanship spoke of the Renaissance, or perhaps something far older—an era not recorded in any book, but etched in the bones of forgotten memory.
Five towering chairs soon followed—each one carved of the same impossible design, regal and foreboding, but four were already occupied.
The figures who sat in them were... unknowable. Cloaked in shadow, draped in silence. And then—there was him. The man from before. Slightly farther.
He appeared young—mid-twenties perhaps, but wore the presence of someone mature. His figure was lean yet deceptively strong, the kind of frame that hides its power until it strikes, someone who's calculating, thinking, and observing. On his face wore a mask—dirty-white, featureless, but with long pointed ears.
A rabbit, or a Hare, I thought,
But there was something wrong about it. Not in shape, but in suggestion—like a childhood story retold in the dark, where the rabbit isn't the prey... but the predator.
Then, across from him, the final chair shifted—empty, waiting, inviting. Positioned just before me.
As if the entire stage had been set for this moment.
As if I was meant to sit.
And so I did
Then my wishful thought came to fruition, in the form of a question, "So could you tell me where I am?"
fufufufufu, the Man-Figure laughed mockingly.
"The right question is, why have you brought us here?"
why—
*Snap,
A static akin to an Old television turning off, the same ones with long, broad backs, and several buttons in front, one that twists to adjust the volume, one that we hit on the head when it stopped working...
A dream was born.