Elias had barely slept since that last dream. His mind felt like a battlefield, torn between the reality he lived in and the fragmented visions that haunted his sleep. Seven days had passed, each filled with a growing sense of unease. He had tried to ignore it, to convince himself that it was just an overworked mind playing tricks on him. But the creeping déjà vu, the whispers of familiarity in places he had never been before, told him otherwise.
Tonight was no different. He sat at his desk, staring at the empty document on his laptop. Words refused to form, his thoughts too scattered to focus. With a heavy sigh, he leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples.
"Am I going crazy?"
The question had become a constant in his mind. Every little coincidence, every strange familiarity in conversations, made him question if he had already lived these moments before. He hadn't told anyone about it—not yet. Even if he did, who would believe him?
His fingers hovered over the keyboard, but exhaustion weighed on him. The quiet hum of the night wrapped around him like a heavy blanket, pulling his eyelids down. He didn't fight it.
And just like that, he drifted into another dream.
***
The first thing he noticed was the silence. Not the comforting kind, but an eerie, hollow silence that pressed against his ears. His surroundings were blurred, like an unfinished painting, and standing in the center of it all was her.
The girl.
She stood a few feet away, her figure bathed in a soft, unnatural glow. Just like before, her face was obscured—her features indistinct, shifting between familiarity and strangeness. But this time, something was different. The air around her flickered, as if struggling to keep her form intact.
Elias tried to speak, but his voice refused to come out. His throat burned, his words caught in an invisible grip.
The girl, however, spoke. Or at least, tried to.
"…lia— …sten…"
Her voice was broken, fragmented, as if spoken through a cracked radio. Some words were clear, others lost in the distortion.
"…not …much …time…"
Elias strained to understand. His body felt frozen, trapped in place. He wanted to ask who she was, what this was, but no matter how much he willed himself to speak, he remained silent.
"…they …closer …stop …before…"
The flickering around her intensified. It was as if she was being erased, her presence slipping away.
"…find …key…"
A sharp ringing noise filled his ears, drowning out her last words. The world around him collapsed into a swirl of shadows, pulling him down—
***
Elias woke up with a gasp.
His throat was unbearably dry, his heart pounding against his ribs. The dream clung to him, refusing to fade like most dreams do upon waking. He stumbled out of his chair, nearly knocking over his desk lamp as he reached for the glass of water nearby. He drank in large gulps, trying to calm his breathing.
He set the glass down with a shaking hand. His body felt like it had run a marathon, and yet, he had only been asleep for—
He glanced at the clock. Three minutes.
A dream that had felt like an eternity had lasted less than five minutes in the real world.
Elias ran a hand through his hair, his mind racing. The girl had tried to say something. She had been warning him. About what? Who was "they"? And what did she mean by "find the key"?
He exhaled slowly. This wasn't just a dream. He knew it wasn't.
And the worst part?
This time, he didn't feel like he had woken up. He felt like he had missed something—like a crucial piece of himself had been left behind in that dream.
And that terrified him.
---