Prologue: The Dream That Shouldn't Be
Gamma-Class Dreamseer Log #77-Omega
Subject: Nyssara Virelle
Facility: Vault-33, VIGIL Central Dream Anomaly Chamber
Access: Omega-Clearance Only
She did not scream. Not at first.
Nyssara Virelle, Gamma-tier Seer-pale-skinned, silver-haired, eyes like fogged glass-floated three inches above the cot in her sealed containment cell. Though barely twenty, she carried an ancient weight in her gaze, the kind that made even Omega-Cleared operatives hesitate. Respected. Revered. Feared, just enough to keep the door locked when it mattered most.
Her eyes rolled back, her breath shallow. The biometric alarms had triggered three times in a minute. No one dared enter.
She was dreaming again. And when she dreamed, things listened.
Inside the dream, the sky cracked like porcelain under black fire. The oceans lifted-not with tides, but with forgetting. Entire cities curled like paper, ink bleeding upward into the stars. Language became shape. Reality warped into meaninglessness.
--- PAGE 2 ---
Above it all: a presence.
Not seen. Not heard.
Felt.
"The veil thins... The Unknown remembers..."
The words weren't spoken. They imprinted themselves in her bones. And somewhere in the fractured horizon, a figure stood. Small. Still. Drenched in shadow. Its eyes reflected nothing. Its existence unwrote the dream itself.
Around it, the Unknown wept and burned. Behind it, something much older began to stir.
Nyssara felt her mind shatter-not from fear, but from recognition. This wasn't her vision. It was a memory.
"He is awake."
The dream ended.
She dropped to the bed. Machines overloaded. Lights shorted. The surveillance feed turned to static. When the emergency team entered, Nyssara was sitting upright, eyes glazed, muttering in a dialect that hadn't existed for a thousand years.
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She reached out. Her fingers traced a single word into the frost on the glass wall of her containment unit:
"He's awake." No one spoke. No one moved.
The only sound was the quiet hiss of containment seals re-engaging-as if the world was trying, in vain, to keep the truth locked away. End of Prologue