It started with silence.
Not peaceful empty.
Like something had eaten all the sound out of the world.
Lumir floated.
Not in water. Not in air.
Just… somewhere.
Weightless. Thoughtless.
Like he hadn't been born yet.
Then, a hum.
Low. Soft. Like someone whispering through metal.He opened his eyes.
He was standing in a field that had no color.
Not black. Not white. Just... absence.
The sky bent in a slow, wrong way. Like glass melting.
Far away, a woman stood in the haze.
Not close enough to see her face.
She looked at him.
He couldn't see her eyes, but he felt them.
A voice, not hers, drifted past him like a breeze through bones.
"You are late."
Lumir tried to speak. His mouth moved, but no sound came.
The field cracked under his feet.
A line of light split the ground golden, bright, too pure.
It pulsed once.
Then again.
Then the woman lifted her hand.
Not a threat. Not a wave.
Just… reaching.
And something inside Lumir burned.
It wasn't pain.
It was weight.
A pressure behind his ribs.
Like something old inside him just woke up and didn't like what it saw.
He stumbled back.
Then the sky split.
Not a storm. Not fire.
A hole.
Wide. Slow. Quiet.
And from it… came a figure.
Enormous. Crooked. Wrong.
It didn't walk, it folded forward, dragging the sky with it.
No face.
No voice.
Only shape.
Its arms stretched too long.
Its body made of folds and shadows.
Like it had worn too many people at once and never took them off.
The ground wilted under its feet.
The light bent away from it.
The woman didn't move.
She just kept her hand out.
The thing raised its head.
And though it had no mouth, no eyes,
Lumir felt something look at him.
Not just his body.
His whole self.
Like it was flipping through his bones.
Reading what hadn't been written yet.
His heart screamed.
Not from fear.
From recognition.
It stepped forward.
Not fast.
But enough.
The golden line on the ground hissed ,then shattered.
And the field turned to ash.
The woman blurred ,like she was being pulled into a different page.
The sky folded again.
And Lumir.He was running.
Where?
Didn't matter.
He didn't remember when his legs started.
Only that if he stopped, he'd never wake up again.
The figure didn't chase.
It didn't need to.
It was already behind his thoughts.
He fell.
Into light.
It wasn't warm.
It wasn't cold.
It was everything.
And in that moment ,one voice broke through all of it.
Not loud. Not angry.
Just… human.
Familiar.
"Wake up."