There was no beginning to the dream.
It did not arrive the way dreams usually did—no slipping, no falling, no sense of crossing a threshold. Soren simply was somewhere else, awareness blooming without transition, as though the space had been waiting for him all along.
The first thing he noticed was the sound.
A dull, repetitive impact. Not loud enough to be alarming, but steady—too steady. It echoed through the space in uneven intervals, sometimes close, sometimes far, the rhythm inconsistent in a way that set his nerves on edge.
Thud.
Pause.
Thud.
He tried to turn his head toward it.
He couldn't tell if he succeeded.
The space around him felt wrong—not dark, not light, but thick. As though visibility itself had been diluted. Shapes existed only when he focused on them, and even then they refused to stay still, edges wavering like heat distortion.
The ground beneath his feet was uneven.
Stone, perhaps. Or something pretending to be.
When he took a step forward, his foot met resistance—not solid enough to stop him, but heavy enough that he felt the effort echo up his leg. He looked down.
His shoes were gone.
So were his hands.
No—they were there. He could feel them. The sensation of having a body remained intact, but its outline refused to present itself visually, as though his form had been blurred out of the scene.
The thudding sound came again.
Closer now.
He turned toward it more decisively this time, and the space responded by reshaping itself.
Walls rose where there had been none before, tall and pale and curving inward, their surfaces slick and faintly reflective. They reminded him of bone—not in texture, but in implication. Structural. Organic. Unwilling to be questioned.
A corridor formed.
It stretched ahead of him, narrowing as it went, its end obscured by a bend that seemed to fold in on itself rather than turn naturally. The thudding echoed from somewhere within it.
Against his better judgment, Soren moved forward.
Each step grew heavier than the last.
The air thickened, pressing against his chest in a way that made breathing feel intentional rather than automatic. He became acutely aware of the rise and fall of his lungs, the way his breath scraped faintly on the way in.
The thudding resolved into something clearer.
Not an impact.
A chop.
The sound of something heavy striking something softer, followed by a wet, finalizing noise that made his stomach tighten.
Chop.
Pause.
Chop.
The corridor widened abruptly, opening into a room that felt too large for the space it occupied. The ceiling was low, pressing down with invisible weight, and the walls curved inward in a way that made the room feel more like a cavity than a chamber.
At the center stood a table.
It was not a table he recognized, but it carried the undeniable shape of one—flat surface, sturdy legs, utilitarian design. Upon it lay something pale and indistinct, its outline shifting when he tried to focus.
And beside it—
A figure.
His breath caught.
The figure was small, hunched slightly over the table, its movements precise and methodical. It wore something dark that might have been fabric or might have been skin. Its back was to him, shoulders rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm that did not match the pace of the chopping.
Chop.
The figure paused.
Slowly, it turned.
Soren's heart lurched—not because of what he saw, but because of what he felt.
Recognition.
The figure's face was wrong.
Its features were compressed, eyes set too wide, mouth stretched into an unfamiliar shape. Its skin glistened faintly, damp and uneven, mottled in places where it should have been smooth. The proportions were off in a way that made it difficult to look at directly, as though his mind rejected the configuration before his eyes could finish assembling it.
And yet—
It was his mother.
Not in appearance.
In weight.
In the way the space bent subtly around her presence. In the way his chest tightened with a familiarity that carried grief rather than comfort. In the way the room seemed to wait when she stilled, attentive to her next movement.
She did not look at him.
She turned back to the table and resumed her work.
Chop.
The sound landed harder now, reverberating through his bones.
Soren took an involuntary step back.
His heel met resistance.
The corridor behind him had narrowed without his noticing, walls inching closer together until retreat was no longer an option. The air grew thicker, pressing against his throat.
He wanted to speak.
He didn't know what he would have said.
No words came.
The figure's movements slowed.
She set the tool down—not a knife, not quite, but something heavy and blunt, its edge darkened by use. She placed her hands flat on the table and straightened, shoulders rolling back with deliberate care.
Still, she did not turn.
The room felt suddenly expectant.
Soren's pulse hammered in his ears.
He took a step sideways instead, trying to circle the table, to see what lay upon it. The movement felt wrong the moment he attempted it—his leg dragging as though caught in something viscous, his foot refusing to lift cleanly from the ground.
Panic flared sharp and sudden.
He tried to move faster.
His legs betrayed him.
Each step became an effort, his feet sinking deeper into the floor with every attempt to pull them free. The surface beneath him rippled faintly, like disturbed water, swallowing his progress inch by inch.
The figure turned then.
Her eyes found him at last.
They were wrong, too—too large, too reflective, catching the dim light of the room and throwing it back in dull, uneven gleams. But there was no anger in them. No accusation. No judgment.
Only distance.
She regarded him the way one might regard a completed task—acknowledging its existence without emotional investment.
Soren's chest constricted.
He tried to step away.
The floor held him fast.
A sound escaped him then, half-formed and raw, torn from his throat by instinct rather than intention. It did not resemble a word. It did not need to.
The figure tilted her head.
Slowly, she lifted one hand—not toward him, but toward the table.
Soren followed the gesture against his will.
The object upon the table shifted, resolving into something his mind refused to name directly. Pale flesh. Small bones. The suggestion of a form that had once been whole and no longer was.
The implication struck him like a physical blow.
His breath hitched violently, lungs spasming as heat surged up his spine, blooming behind his eyes until his vision swam.
He wrenched his gaze away, desperation flooding his limbs. He tried again to run, to flee the room, to escape the weight of her presence and the unbearable stillness of her regard.
His legs dragged uselessly beneath him.
The more he struggled, the deeper he sank.
The floor climbed his calves, then his knees, clinging and unyielding. Every attempt to move forward or back resulted only in greater entrapment, his body swallowed inch by inch by the unresponsive surface.
The figure watched.
She did not move to help.
She did not move to stop him.
She simply was.
The walls began to close in.
Not rapidly—no dramatic collapse, no sudden violence. Just a slow, inevitable narrowing of space, the ceiling lowering, the air compressing until every breath felt like it scraped against something sharp on the way in.
The chopping sound returned.
Not from the table.
From everywhere.
Chop.
Chop.
Chop.
It echoed inside his skull, synchronized now with his heartbeat, each impact reverberating through his chest until he could no longer tell where the sound ended and his body began.
The figure's face softened.
The monstrous distortions receded slightly—not enough to make her human, but enough to make her distant. Less immediate. Less oppressive.
She stepped back.
The room shuddered.
The table dissolved into fragments of light that scattered and vanished before they could strike the ground. The walls blurred, their bone-like surfaces losing definition, sagging inward as though melting.
The floor released him abruptly.
Soren stumbled forward, nearly falling as his legs finally obeyed him. He did not hesitate this time.
He ran.
The corridor stretched endlessly ahead of him, curving and folding in impossible ways. Lights flickered overhead—dim, inconsistent, casting long shadows that twisted and writhed along the walls as he passed.
Behind him, he felt her presence recede.
Not chasing.
Not following.
Simply remaining.
His legs grew heavy again, each stride harder than the last. The corridor tilted downward, the ground slanting just enough to sap his momentum, gravity pressing him back with relentless insistence.
He gasped for air, lungs burning.
The chopping sound faded.
In its place came a new sensation—pressure, diffuse and omnipresent, bearing down on him from all sides. Not a voice. Not a command.
A weight.
The corridor fractured.
Walls split into overlapping planes, some sliding away, others folding inward. The floor rippled beneath his feet, threatening once more to claim him.
Soren stumbled.
As he fell forward, the space around him dissolved entirely.
The corridor collapsed into light.
And for a brief, disorienting moment, he was nowhere at all.
_________________________
There was still no ground.
No corridor.
No room.
Just absence—thin and stretched, like a space that had been hollowed out and left unfinished.
Soren existed within it without shape or orientation, awareness suspended in a way that made time feel irrelevant. He could not tell whether moments were passing or collapsing inward, only that something persisted beneath the nothingness—something waiting.
Then sensation returned.
Not sight.
Not sound.
Pressure.
It wrapped around him unevenly, tightening in places that made no anatomical sense. His chest felt compressed, as though an invisible weight had been set upon it and forgotten. The effort of breathing returned suddenly, jarringly—lungs dragging air inward in shallow, uneven pulls.
In.
Out.
Too fast.
Something brushed against his arm.
The contact was wrong—too sharp, too localized, as though a thin hook had been embedded just beneath his skin. The sensation startled him, cutting through the void with abrupt clarity.
He tried to pull away.
Nothing happened.
The pressure increased.
Another sensation followed—cool and creeping, sliding along his forearm in a way that made his skin prickle. It did not burn. It did not sting.
It invaded.
A sound surfaced then, distorted and distant.
Not the chopping.
Something else.
A voice—but fractured, stripped of meaning by the space between them. It reached him warped, stretched thin, as though it had passed through layers of interference before arriving.
"…reathe…"
The word dissolved before it could settle.
He frowned—or tried to. The effort sent a ripple through whatever remained of his awareness, making the pressure spike sharply in response.
Another sound overlapped the first.
"…steady…"
The syllables slid past one another, overlapping and incomplete. They did not register as language so much as intrusion, sound pressing against him from outside the nowhere, demanding attention he could not give.
Too loud.
The realization struck with sudden panic.
The sounds were too loud, crowding the edges of his awareness, piling atop one another without rhythm or mercy. They pressed inward the way the walls had in the dream, compressing space until there was nowhere left to retreat.
Stop, he tried to think.
Or perhaps he tried to say it.
The attempt failed.
His body felt wrong.
Heavy.
Unresponsive.
The sense of limbs returned in fragments—his arms first, numb and distant, as though they belonged to someone else. His legs followed more slowly, not with sensation but with weight, dragging him downward into something unseen.
He became aware of restraint.
Not deliberate.
Not cruel.
But firm.
Something held him in place at the shoulders, pinning him just enough that movement became impossible. The realization ignited a sharp, instinctive dread that flared hot behind his eyes.
Trapped.
The thought surfaced unbidden, raw and immediate.
Another voice cut through the noise, closer this time.
"…here… just here…"
The words blurred together, stripped of context, their intent lost to distortion. To Soren, they sounded less like reassurance and more like insistence—an attempt to anchor him to something he did not understand.
The pressure on his chest increased again.
His breathing stuttered.
Air scraped its way in, catching painfully at the back of his throat. Each inhale felt incomplete, as though his lungs refused to expand fully, constrained by something invisible and unyielding.
He tried to force a deeper breath.
The effort sent a surge of panic through him.
The sounds grew louder.
Not clearer—louder.
Multiple voices now, overlapping and indistinct, their tones blending into a formless wall of noise that pressed in from all sides. He could not separate them. Could not tell how many there were.
Could not tell what they wanted.
Make it stop.
The thought pulsed weakly through the chaos, immediately swallowed by the rising din. His awareness buckled under the strain, the nowhere stretching thin beneath the weight of sensation.
Something cold pressed against his skin again.
This time at his wrist.
The contact was precise, deliberate, sending a spike of discomfort through him that felt disproportionate to its intensity. His fingers twitched in reflex, the movement small but undeniable.
The response came instantly.
Pressure tightened.
"—don't—"
The word reached him broken, stripped of edges, its tone sharp with urgency. To Soren, it landed as command rather than concern, the sound forcing itself into his awareness with unsettling authority.
His pulse spiked.
Fear surged hot and fast, blooming in his chest until it crowded out everything else. The nowhere contracted around him, the emptiness giving way to a suffocating sense of too much—too much sound, too much sensation, too much presence.
He tried to open his eyes.
Light exploded behind his lids.
Not brightness—fragmentation.
Shapes pressed against his vision from the inside, fractured impressions bleeding through the darkness: pale surfaces, sharp lines, something metallic catching and reflecting light in brief, blinding flashes.
The intrusion was overwhelming.
He recoiled instinctively, awareness folding inward on itself like a defensive reflex. The world beyond the nowhere grew louder still, the voices rising in pitch and urgency until they blurred into an unintelligible roar.
His breathing faltered.
In.
Out.
Too shallow.
The pressure on his chest felt crushing now, bearing down with relentless insistence. He could feel his heartbeat racing, each thud echoing painfully in his ears, out of sync with the noise surrounding him.
This was wrong.
The certainty surfaced dimly, buried beneath panic and confusion. Whatever this was—wherever he was—it was not supposed to feel like this. The realization did nothing to help him orient himself.
Instead, it fed the dread.
The nowhere began to tear.
Not abruptly.
Slowly.
The edges of his awareness frayed, thin seams of distortion spreading outward from a central point of pressure. The sounds warped again, stretching and bending into something unrecognizable.
The voices faded—not all at once, but unevenly, as though pulled away piece by piece.
The pressure remained.
But it changed.
Where before it had felt external—imposed—it now felt internal, blooming outward from somewhere deep within him. A familiar weight settled into his chest, heavy and diffuse, bearing down with the same inescapable presence he had felt at the end of the first dream.
Not a voice.
Not a command.
A weight.
The nowhere shifted.
Light dimmed.
Sound receded.
The sensations tethering him to his body loosened gradually, the sharp discomfort at his arm and wrist fading into dull echoes. The restraint eased—not because it had been removed, but because it no longer mattered.
His awareness slipped.
The transition was subtle enough that he did not notice it happening. One moment he was drowning in sensation, the next he was falling—gently, inexorably—back into something deeper.
The pressure followed him.
It did not lessen.
It guided.
Shapes began to form at the edges of the darkness, indistinct at first, their outlines wavering as though undecided. The sense of motion returned—not forward or backward, but downward, sinking into a space that felt both vast and claustrophobic.
The dread returned with it.
Quieter now.
Colder.
More deliberate.
Soren tried once more to surface—to reach for the fragments of sound, the painful sensations, anything that might anchor him to waking.
The effort failed.
His awareness slipped fully beneath the surface.
The nowhere closed behind him.
__________________________
The descent was gentle.
So gentle that Soren did not recognize it as falling at all.
Awareness returned not with shock, but with a muted sense of arrival—like stepping into a room he had already been standing in, the shift so subtle that only the change in air gave it away. The nowhere softened around him, thickened, reshaped itself into something with edges again.
Darkness, but not empty.
Distance without depth.
The pressure was still there.
It pressed against him from all sides, familiar now in its persistence. Not crushing. Not urgent. Simply present, a constant that shaped the space around it the way gravity shaped matter.
Soren tried to orient himself.
The effort felt slow, dulled, as though his thoughts were moving through something viscous. When he reached for the idea of his body, it responded in fragments—weight in his limbs, the faint suggestion of breath, the awareness of being held together rather than whole.
The ground resolved beneath him.
Not suddenly.
Gradually.
A surface emerged—smooth, pale, uninterrupted by texture. It did not reflect light so much as absorb it, swallowing whatever illumination existed until the space felt evenly dim. There was no horizon, no wall, no ceiling.
Just a vast, open plane stretching outward in every direction.
Soren stood at its center.
Or perhaps he lay.
The distinction felt unimportant.
He took a step.
This time, the movement worked.
Relief flickered faintly in his chest, brief and fragile. He took another step, then another, the sensation of motion grounding him just enough that his thoughts sharpened at the edges.
The pressure shifted.
It did not increase.
It rearranged.
The space ahead of him bent subtly, curving inward as though something unseen had taken interest. The pale surface darkened in places, shadows blooming without a clear source, gathering in a loose shape that drew his attention forward.
Soren slowed.
Instinct tugged at him, a familiar warning that arrived too late to be useful. He knew—without knowing how—that he should stop, that continuing would lead him somewhere he did not want to go.
He moved anyway.
The shadows resolved into form.
A figure stood ahead of him, some distance away, its outline faint but unmistakable. It did not move. It did not react to his approach. It simply existed, anchored to the space in a way that made the surrounding emptiness feel suddenly constrained.
Soren's chest tightened.
Recognition stirred—not sharp, not immediate, but inevitable. It settled into him like a truth he had been avoiding, heavy and unyielding.
His mother stood before him.
This time, she was not wrong.
Not grotesque.
Not distorted.
Her shape was softer now, her proportions closer to what he remembered. The severe wrongness of her earlier form had receded, leaving behind something quieter and more unsettling in its familiarity.
She looked… distant.
Her face lacked detail, features smoothed as though viewed through frosted glass. Her eyes were there, but unfocused, their gaze directed somewhere past him rather than at him. She wore no expression he could name—not sorrow, not anger, not disappointment.
She did not accuse.
She did not reach for him.
She did not speak.
She simply stood, hands folded loosely at her front, posture relaxed in a way that felt painfully inappropriate for the weight of recognition pressing into his chest.
Soren stopped several paces away.
The space between them stretched, thick with unspoken meaning. He became acutely aware of the silence—not the absence of sound, but the way it pressed inward, amplifying every shallow breath, every faint hitch in his chest.
He tried to swallow.
The effort scraped uncomfortably against his throat.
Something was wrong.
Not with her.
With him.
The realization crept in slowly, unfolding without urgency. He searched her face for something—any indication of what she felt, what she knew, what she might say.
There was nothing.
The guilt surfaced anyway.
It did not arrive as a thought.
It arrived as weight.
It settled into his chest, heavy and cold, dragging his shoulders down, bowing him inward under its insistence. His pulse quickened, each beat echoing too loudly in the open space.
This is my* fault.*
The certainty did not feel imposed.
It felt remembered.
His breath stuttered.
He took a step back.
The ground resisted him.
Not with the violent pull of the earlier dream, but with something subtler—his foot lagging just enough to throw off his balance, the surface beneath him yielding slightly before firming again.
He frowned.
Tried again.
Another step back.
The same resistance met him, a faint drag that made the motion feel wrong, as though he were moving against a current too gentle to notice until it mattered.
He looked down.
His legs were there.
They looked whole.
But when he tried to shift his weight, to turn, to put distance between himself and the silent figure ahead, his movements slowed inexplicably. Each step required more effort than the last, his limbs growing heavy without warning.
The pressure deepened.
Not around him.
Through him.
It pressed inward from every direction, a diffuse force that seeped into his bones, into his muscles, into the space between thought and action. His breath shortened, lungs refusing to expand fully, as though something inside him resisted the act.
He tried to move faster.
Panic flared, sharp and immediate, lighting his nerves as he willed his body to respond.
It didn't.
His legs dragged now, each step labored, his feet barely lifting from the surface before sinking back down. The pale ground seemed to cling to him, not pulling him under, but refusing to let him go.
Soren's heart raced.
He turned abruptly, abandoning the attempt to retreat inch by inch. He pivoted, trying to run—away, anywhere but here.
The movement failed halfway through.
His balance faltered, the sudden shift sending him stumbling forward. He caught himself just in time, hands bracing against nothing, the effort leaving his arms trembling.
Behind him, he felt her presence.
Still distant.
Still unmoving.
Still there.
He forced himself upright.
Then he ran.
Or tried to.
The space stretched ahead of him, endless and featureless, the pale surface blurring beneath his feet as he pushed forward. His body lagged behind his intent, each stride shortened, slowed, as though the air itself had thickened around him.
His breathing grew ragged.
In.
Out.
Too shallow.
The pressure followed him, not pursuing, not chasing—simply remaining constant as he moved within it. It did not punish his attempt to flee.
It rendered it meaningless.
His legs grew heavier with every step.
Muscles burned with effort, the sensation dull and distant, as though filtered through layers of numbness. The ground dragged at his feet, his calves, his knees, each movement sinking him deeper into resistance.
Soren gasped for air.
The sound echoed faintly in the vastness, swallowed almost immediately by the surrounding silence. The lack of response—no sound returning, no change in the space—made the act feel futile, as though even noise had been stripped of consequence.
He stumbled.
Caught himself.
Kept going.
The guilt pressed harder now, not sharp, not overwhelming, but relentless. It did not demand acknowledgment. It did not require explanation.
It simply was.
Images flickered at the edges of his awareness—not scenes, not memories, but impressions. The weight of expectation. The insistence of truth. The sense of having spoken when silence might have spared someone else the cost.
His chest tightened painfully.
He tried to shake the thoughts away.
They clung.
The pressure shifted again.
The space ahead of him blurred, the pale surface darkening as shadow pooled without source. The vastness narrowed, not closing in with walls or barriers, but losing its openness, the horizon drawing closer until it felt oppressive in its nearness.
Soren slowed despite himself.
His legs trembled under him, the effort of movement becoming unsustainable. He dragged one foot forward, then the other, each step smaller than the last.
He could feel his body failing him.
Not collapsing.
Withdrawing.
The realization brought a surge of fear sharp enough to cut through the fog pressing at his thoughts. He tried to force himself onward, to push through the resistance with sheer will.
His knees buckled.
He caught himself again, hands pressing against the pale surface, the contact sending a dull vibration up his arms. The ground felt solid—too solid now, as though it had decided to assert itself fully at last.
Soren panted, shoulders heaving.
Behind him, the pressure intensified.
Not crushing.
Guiding.
He became acutely aware of the space above him.
The realization came slowly, settling into place with unsettling inevitability. The weight pressing through him shifted direction, easing its grip on his legs while strengthening elsewhere.
His chest lifted.
Just slightly.
He froze.
The sensation was subtle at first—a faint lightness beneath his ribs, a loosening of the weight that had anchored him to the ground. His breath evened out without his intending it, lungs filling more fully, more easily.
Confusion flickered through him.
He straightened cautiously.
The pressure did not return.
Instead, it lifted.
Not all at once.
Incrementally.
The pale ground beneath his feet receded a fraction, the contact less firm than before. His legs no longer dragged, though he did not move them. The resistance faded, replaced by an unfamiliar sensation of suspension.
Soren's pulse slowed.
The guilt remained.
But it no longer pressed him downward.
He looked back.
His mother stood where she had been before.
Unchanged.
Still distant.
Still silent.
She did not watch him rise.
Her gaze remained unfocused, directed somewhere beyond him, beyond the space they occupied together. She did not reach out. Did not step forward.
She did not stop him.
Soren felt himself lifting.
The movement was gentle, almost imperceptible, his body drifting upward without effort or strain. The pressure that had dominated the space softened into something lighter, less insistent.
His breathing stabilized.
In.
Out.
Even.
The pale surface fell away beneath him, distance growing without vertigo or fear. He felt suspended, held in a state that was neither waking nor sleep, neither escape nor entrapment.
The dread peaked.
Then ebbed.
Not gone.
Contained.
The space dimmed.
Not darkened.
Simplified.
Edges softened, shadows dissolving until only light remained—diffuse, gentle, without source. The pressure lingered faintly, a reminder rather than a force.
Soren drifted upward.
Not toward anything.
Not away from anything.
Just up.
And the dream loosened its hold.
_________________________