The next morning, Fiab woke before the alarm and did not move for several minutes. He remained on his back, looking at the crack in the ceiling, with the feeling that the room had become too small to contain everything he now knew. The apartment was quiet, the city outside was beginning to wake, and a thin gray light lay across the walls; yet his thoughts were still inside the old woman's dining room, moving from the dark table to the blue flowers on the teapot, from the copper utensils on the wall to her curved back and sharp eyes.
Dreamwalker. Dynasties. Thor, Nafthia, Borghesi. The words should have sounded ridiculous in daylight, but they did not. They had become part of the city around him, as if the streets, banks, schools and apartment blocks had always been hiding older names beneath their modern surfaces. He was afraid of that, but fear was no longer alone. Under it there was fascination, quiet and stubborn, and that frightened him more because he caught himself wanting to understand the machinery instead of simply escaping it.
The alarm rang at seven. Fiab turned it off, and a moment later his mother knocked once before opening the door. She was already dressed for work, her hair tied back, her face held in that careful expression she used when she was worried but did not want worry to become a scene. "How did you sleep?" she asked.
"Better," he said, sitting up. It was not exactly a lie. He had not woken shouting, but he had sat at a table in a house he had never entered and listened to an old woman explain that some families had learned to steer the world from behind its polite rooms. There was no useful way to bring that to breakfast, so he added, "Better than yesterday."
His mother watched him long enough to make clear that she knew the answer was incomplete. Then she only said, "Come eat. You'll be late."
Breakfast was the same as always: warm milk, dry biscuits, a slice of bread, the television speaking low in the background. A minister appeared on the screen, answering questions about municipal funding in a voice that sounded firm precisely because it said nothing. Fiab found himself wondering who had helped place him there, who had lent the money, which family had suggested which favor, and whether ordinary people noticed how easily the city explained itself while revealing almost nothing. His mother noticed him staring and reminded him of the time.
At the door, he almost turned back. The sentence formed in him with painful simplicity: I think something is happening to me. He imagined saying it, imagined his mother's face changing, imagined doctors, questions, disbelief, or worse, belief. If she believed him, she would become part of it; and if she became part of it, the danger would no longer be only his. The old woman's warning returned with the sound of a key turning in a lock. Do not tell your mother. So Fiab lowered his eyes and said only that he would be back after school.
The city was wet from the previous day's rain. Puddles lay along the curbs, reflecting broken pieces of morning, and the clouds pressed low over the roofs with a weight that made the upper windows look blind. Shops were opening, shutters groaning upward, lights flickering on inside bars and bakeries. Everything continued with obscene normality: newspapers sold, buses arrived late, men in coats stepped around puddles, and no one seemed aware that under the surface of things there might be houses, traces, dynasties and doors inside sleep.
As he walked, Fiab thought about Marco. Marco was the obvious person to tell because he sat beside him, because he noticed more than Fiab wanted him to, and because he was normal in a way that had once been irritating and now seemed almost precious. But Marco would try to turn the truth into a story he could manage. He would make a nervous joke, ask questions in the wrong place, maybe repeat a detail without understanding that secrets could have weight. Fiab did not want to exclude him, and that was exactly why he could not involve him.
The school entrance was crowded when he arrived. The ground was still damp beneath the covered area, and students clustered together to avoid drops falling from the roof. The expensive cars waited near the curb as always, their engines quiet, their paint too clean for the street. Gianni Rosha stood near the entrance with two other boys, one hand in his coat pocket, the other holding a cigarette he did not smoke. He looked perfectly rested, as if sleep, rain and uncertainty were things that happened to lesser people. Elena was a few steps away, speaking to a girl Fiab did not know, her dark hair tied back and her face unreadable.
Fiab lowered his head and entered the building. Marco was already in class, which was unusual, and he stopped tapping his pencil against the desk as soon as Fiab sat down. "You look less dead today," he said, then leaned closer with a seriousness that did not quite fit him. "Are you going to tell me what happened?"
Fiab opened his notebook before the lesson had even started. "There is nothing to tell. I had a bad dream, that's all."
"You said you saw yourself sleeping," Marco replied quietly. "You also said it did not feel like a normal dream. Did it happen again?"
The question remained between them, and Fiab's silence answered too much. Marco's expression changed; not dramatically, but enough. Fiab hated that. He wanted to explain that he was not keeping Marco out because he did not trust him. He was keeping him out because silence was the only safe shape the truth could take. Instead he said, "Leave it," and the words sounded colder than he meant them to.
Marco leaned back. "Fine," he said, though nothing in his voice accepted it. The professor entered before the conversation could become worse, and the room was forced back into order: books opening, chairs straightening, voices dying under the familiar authority of a lesson that mattered only because it was scheduled.
The morning passed with the slow cruelty of ordinary time. Fiab wrote when required, answered when called, and tried to anchor himself in small real things: chalk dust, damp jackets near the radiators, the scratched desk, Marco's pencil rolling once and stopping against his book. But the ordinary world would not hold for long. Between one lesson and the next, during the short break, he left the classroom and went to the drinking fountain near the bathroom.
The corridor was crowded. Students moved in both directions with books pressed against their chests, voices overlapping, wet shoes squeaking on the floor. Fiab bent to drink from the fountain, and the cold water grounded him for a second so completely that he almost felt normal. Then someone collided with him from the side. It was not a violent collision, only enough for a few books to slip from a girl's arms and scatter across the floor.
"Sorry," she said quickly, already crouching to gather them.
Fiab bent to help. She was not from his class, though he had seen her before in passing: on the stairs, near the notice board, once outside the library. She had short brown hair curling slightly at the ends, a pale face, and eyes that moved faster than her hands. Her uniform was the same as everyone else's but worn less carefully, as if she had dressed while thinking about something else. A book had slid near Fiab's shoe, and when he picked it up and handed it to her, she reached for it at the same time.
Their fingers touched.
It should have been nothing. A simple accident, skin against skin for a moment too long. Instead the sensation came immediately: a pressure inside him, not pain and not fear, but recognition. It was similar to what he had felt with the old woman, though younger, sharper and less controlled, like a door opening in a corridor full of wind. For more than a second their hands remained together on the book, while the corridor moved around them as if nothing had happened.
Then Fiab saw something that was not there: pale tiles, a metal railing, a narrow courtyard seen from above, and a half-open door with darkness behind it. The image vanished almost as soon as it appeared. The girl pulled her hand back too quickly, and when she looked at him again her face had closed in a way that told him she had felt something too.
"Sorry," she repeated, but her voice was different.
"What's your name?" Fiab asked before he could stop himself.
The question made her wary. She gathered the last of her papers without touching him again and said, "Livia." When he told her his own name, her eyes changed for half a second, not with recognition exactly, but with caution. "You should watch where you're going," she said, though she had been the one to bump into him, and then she left before he could answer.
Fiab remained beside the fountain with his hand half raised. Livia. The name stayed with him even after a group of students passed between them and she disappeared around the corner. There was no mark on his fingers, no proof of anything, only the memory of the pressure and that impossible flash of tiles, railing, courtyard and door.
When he returned to class, Marco noticed immediately that something had changed. "Bathroom swallowed you?" he asked.
"No," Fiab said, sitting down. After a moment he added, too quietly, "Who is Livia?"
Marco's interest sharpened at once. "Which Livia?"
"Short brown hair. Not in our class. She dropped some books in the corridor."
"Livia Serra," Marco said. "Different section, second year too, I think. Quiet. Good marks. Doesn't really stay with one group. Sometimes she's around the rich ones, sometimes not. Not with them like Gianni and Elena, more... near them. You know how some people orbit them without being one of them?"
Fiab did know, and the word orbit bothered him. It made Livia feel caught by something invisible, neither inside nor outside. When Marco asked why he wanted to know, Fiab said there was no reason, and Marco smiled in the wrong way until the next professor entered and rescued him from explaining.
By the time school ended, the sky had cleared only slightly. Students poured out of the building, loud and relieved, while Fiab stayed near the entrance longer than necessary. He told himself he was waiting for Marco, but he was watching. Gianni came down the steps speaking to another boy with the same controlled smile as always. Elena followed with her dark book pressed against her chest. She passed close enough for Fiab to catch a faint trace of clean, bitter perfume, then looked past him toward the corridor.
Fiab turned. Livia stood near the notice board, adjusting the strap of her bag. She was not looking at Elena. She was looking at him. Only for a moment, but long enough. Then she lowered her eyes and left through the side exit. Elena watched her go, and the lack of expression on her face felt more deliberate than any reaction could have.
Marco appeared beside him. "Are you coming?" They walked down the steps together, and for a while neither spoke. Outside, cars waited near the curb, engines idling softly, doors opening for students whose shoes never had to touch puddles. After a block, Marco said, "You know you can tell me if something is wrong."
Fiab kept walking. "I know."
"No, you don't," Marco said. "You act like you're the only person in the world allowed to have a problem."
That stopped him more effectively than anger would have. Fiab looked at Marco and almost told him the truth, not the whole truth, but enough to make the distance between them smaller. I think there are doors inside people. The sentence was so strange and so accurate that he felt it press against his teeth. Instead he said, "I don't know how to explain it yet."
Marco caught the word. "Yet?"
Fiab realized the mistake too late. "Yes," he said, because lying again felt worse. "I'm hiding something. I just don't know if it's bad."
For once Marco did not joke. He nodded slowly, clearly hating the answer but understanding that pushing harder would only close the door completely. "Fine," he said. "But when you do know, tell me."
Fiab promised only that he would try. They separated near the bus stop, and Fiab walked home alone through an afternoon that made the city look unfinished, as if the rain had washed away part of its certainty. He passed the street where the old woman lived and slowed down. In daylight, the door was ordinary again: dark wood, brass handle, intercom names too small to read. No color, no warmth, no border. Nothing to suggest that, in another layer of the city, it could open into a house with a black table, blue flowers on a teapot and secrets older than countries.
At home, he ate the lunch his mother had left for him and then went to his room without studying. He opened a notebook and wrote the three names on the corner of a page: Thor, Nafthia, Borghesi. He stared until they stopped looking like words. Then, almost without deciding to, he wrote another name beneath them: Livia Serra.
He did not know why that name belonged with the others. Maybe it did not. Maybe the contact had meant only that she was like the old woman in some small way; maybe the flash had been exhaustion, fear and imagination arranging themselves into a false pattern. But he did not believe that. Paper was real beneath his fingers, ink stayed where he placed it, and still the names seemed to open into places he could not reach while awake.
Near evening, the room darkened. Fiab lay on the bed without undressing, one arm across his eyes, telling himself he would not sleep until he had decided what to do. But his body had begun to understand the path before he did. His thoughts loosened, the city beyond the window became distant, and the last thing he thought before sleep took him was not the old woman's warning. It was Livia's hand pulling away from his, and the strange certainty that somewhere in Lanomt another door was now waiting.