Caleb was drowning in blood with the sound of fluttering feathers.
Not his own blood, Not Rachel's, Not Isaac's but Someone else's.
In the coma, there were no boundaries between time, space, or memory. Only flashes. Smells. Screams that had already happened—or were about to.
At first, he relived the night, he relived every excruciating detail.
The thump of Rachel's body against the car.
The horrifying sound of steel tearing through flesh.
The warm spray that hit his face when Isaac's throat was cut.
The Raven, staring from the shadows.
But then… the dreams changed, he found himself standing in the middle of a suburban playground, not familiar to him but not unfamiliar either.
It was raining hard. Thunder echoed in the distance. The sky above was low, bruised purple.
A little girl stood by the swing set. Alone. Maybe seven years old. Long hair in two neat braids. A yellow raincoat too big for her frame. She looked up at him, unsure, eyes large and blue.
"Are you my dad?" she asked.
Before Caleb could answer, he heard tires screeching.
A silver sedan spun through a nearby intersection. The driver tried to stop—hydroplaned.
The girl didn't even scream.
The impact was like a gunshot—sharp and wet.
Her body folded. Her little boots flew off her feet. She bounced once. Then didn't move.
Caleb ran to her—but he never reached her.
The Raven stood in his path. Head tilted.
White spiral on its shoulder, now glistening like bone beneath oil.
Its eyes were bottomless.
Without warning another dream phased in replacing the horror that was just born.
A high school gym. Caleb watched helplessly from the rafters.
A boy, no older than Isaac, stood in the middle of the court holding a shotgun.
Tears on his cheeks. Blood on his shoes.
Students screamed. A teacher tried to intervene.
Bang.
The teacher fell.
Bang.
Another student collapsed, throat spraying.
Caleb shouted. But no one heard him.
The Raven was perched on the scoreboard. Watching.
Dream after dream.
A car plunging off a bridge.
A woman dragged into an alley, crying for her baby.
A fire swallowing a nursing home.
Each one more vivid than the last.
More detailed. More real.
He couldn't stop them. He could only watch.
And each time—the Raven was there.
Not leading. Not stopping.
Just… present.
Then came the final dream.
Back in the playground.
Rain again.
The girl was there. Her blood still staining the grass. But this time, she looked at him and whispered:
"You weren't fast enough."
Then her eyes turned black.
The Raven landed beside her body.
Its wings spread.
And everything went dark.
Caleb woke screaming.
His chest jerked upward, muscles spasming. Alarms blared around him. Nurses rushed in.
"Easy! Sir—easy! You're safe!"
He gasped for breath like he'd just clawed his way up from a grave. The mask over his mouth was wet with tears—or maybe sweat. His heart pounded against the monitors.
"Rachel... Isaac..." he croaked.
The nurse lowered his bed. "You've been out for days. You're in the ICU. Just breathe."
He barely heard her. He was still in that playground. Still tasting the rain and blood. Still seeing the child's crushed body in the grass.
Two days later, after they removed the breathing tubes and let him eat soft food, the news came.
An orderly left a TV on in the background.
A breaking story.
"A tragic accident in Scarborough this morning—seven-year-old Ella Jensen was killed after being struck by a vehicle near her school's playground..."
Caleb's spoon dropped into his tray.
He turned toward the screen.
Yellow coat. Two braids. Same face. Same swing set. Same scream.
His hands trembled violently.
"...witnesses say she was alone when it happened..."
The news anchor's voice faded to static in Caleb's ears. His chest felt like it was caving in.
He had seen this.
Exactly twenty-four hours ago.
In his dream.
The nurses called for sedation, but he didn't resist. He just stared at the flickering TV screen, mouth dry.
That night, back in his hospital bed, the room dim and quiet, he stared at the window.
And there it was.
Perched silently on the windowsill.
The Raven.
Its spiral-shaped white marking gleamed faintly in the moonlight.
Its eyes bored into his.
And Caleb knew—this wasn't over.
Something had changed in him.
Something had awakened.
And it had teeth.
Weeks flew by, torturously, painful, deservingly.
The nurses called it progress when he started walking again.
Caleb called it punishment. Every step down the hospital corridor sent a jolt through his torn muscles, but the pain felt right. Honest. Like something he deserved.
He barely spoke. The hospital psychologist had stopped coming by on day five after he refused to say more than seven words: My wife and son were murdered. I watched.
But the dreams didn't stop.
Every time he closed his eyes, he fell through blackness into tragedy. Always a new face. A new scream. A new death. A child crushed beneath a school bus. A man shot in a liquor store. A mother burned in an apartment fire, clutching her baby in her arms as the flames closed in.
Each one painted with perfect, merciless clarity. He could smell the smoke. Hear the screams. Feel the wet blood on his skin.
And every time—the Raven watched.
On the eighth night, after they cut back his pain meds, he sat hunched on the edge of his hospital bed in the dark, cold sweat clinging to his back, his hands clutched into trembling fists.
His body was healing. But his mind was not.
It was splitting.
Like his skull was cracked from the inside and the screams were leaking out through the fractures.
He stared at the blank wall across from him like it might give him an answer. His voice, when it came, was low. Broken.
"Why are you showing me this?" he whispered. "Why me?"
No one answered.
But he could still feel the Raven's eyes on him, even when it wasn't there.
Like a black thread had been tied from his spine to something ancient and cruel perched just outside the world.
Caleb grabbed a pen and began scrawling on a napkin. Dates. Times. Descriptions.
He wrote down everything he remembered from the dreams. The faces. The clothes. The places.
Then he turned on the hospital TV and waited for the nightly news.
Each broadcast confirmed what he feared.
Every death. Every tragedy, exactly twenty-four hours after his dream.
To the minute.
He stopped sleeping.
Instead, he sat up, cold coffee in hand, dark circles eating into his face. He watched the city burn on-screen while the dreams piled behind his eyes like corpses.
And every time he blinked, he saw it, A shape on the windowsill. Wings folded. Eyes like tar pits.
The Raven.
Its white spiral shone like a curse.
Caleb leaned his forehead against the cool window glass, fists clenched.
"Are you… him?" he whispered.
The words tasted like rust.
"Are you… Isaac?"
His voice cracked on the name.
The Raven didn't answer, It never did, but it stayed, watching, waiting.