The evening air was thick with anticipation as George and Emily huddled close together, flipping through the aged, brittle pages of the man's journal. The leather-bound diary creaked softly under Emily's hands, revealing a new entry that felt different, heavier, as if its contents weighted both ink and spirit. They had stumbled across a record of a dream—one that the man described as a "reality-shattering revelation." Neither of them knew exactly what they were in for, but both felt compelled to read on.
Emily's eyes skimmed the heading:
"Dream of the World Beyond"
She glanced at George, who raised an eyebrow. "This guy sounds like he took one too many detours into the Twilight Zone."
"Maybe. But I think he saw something… something that could explain why this diary is so cursed," Emily replied, a flicker of fascination in her gaze. She turned the page and began to read aloud.
---
The entry began with the man recounting how he had fallen asleep unexpectedly, as though pulled into a slumber he hadn't intended. The moment his eyes closed, he found himself standing in a boundless, empty space—an expanse of darkness lit only by flickering, formless lights that seemed both infinitely close and impossibly far. There was no ground beneath him, yet he felt anchored as if the very air had woven itself around him to hold him in place.
The man wrote that the silence in this dream was unlike any silence he had known. It wasn't the absence of sound; it was a presence—a loud, ringing emptiness that seemed to vibrate in the bones of his skull. And then, just as he felt he might be swallowed by the silence, a single, deafening *crack* splintered the void, and a towering figure appeared before him.
George leaned closer, his eyes widening as Emily read the description.
"It was a being made of light and shadow," Emily read, "its face hidden behind a veil of stars, and its hands stretched out toward me. It was as if the fabric of reality was alive within this figure—shifting, shimmering, impossible to look away from. I felt small, and I felt seen, more seen than I'd ever been."
The Watcher observed them both from afar, mildly entertained by their fascination with a story that bore so little relevance to their own fate. *"Such a fragile species, seeking answers in the delusions of others,"* he mused with a faint smile. *"As if knowing more could protect them from their own limits."*
Emily's voice softened as she continued to read. "The figure spoke to me, but not with words. It poured meaning into my mind—a tidal wave of understanding that I was helpless to resist."
George rolled his eyes. "Nothing like some good old cosmic enlightenment. Must be nice getting your mind scrambled by an all-knowing god."
Emily shot him a look, but she couldn't help the small smile tugging at her lips. "Wait till you hear what he learned. It's… a little unnerving."
She continued:
*"The being showed me a world I had never known—a realm where time and space folded into each other like water pulled through a drain. I could see every moment that had ever been and every moment that would ever be, stretching out around me like strands of golden light."*
George frowned, glancing over at her. "Is he… is he saying he saw the whole universe?"
Emily nodded, a chill racing down her spine. "I think he's saying he saw the entire order of reality… but it didn't stay that way."
Her finger traced the line where the man's tone seemed to darken. The words on the page took on a rushed, panicked energy, as though the writer had struggled to get them down before forgetting them.
*"And then, I saw it fracture. I watched the universe crack, splintering like glass under pressure. Each shard held a different reality, a different possibility, and as I stared into the shards, I felt myself splitting apart with them, my consciousness fracturing into countless pieces. I was everyone and no one. I lived every life, and felt every death. The horror of it tore through me—a maddening web of faces, of lives lost and unlived, of worlds that could have been and worlds that had been forgotten. I saw myself in each one, and I couldn't tell which was the real me."*
Emily and George exchanged a glance, their earlier humour evaporating. The vividness of the man's words left them feeling as if they, too, had glimpsed that endless, shattering void.
"I guess… that's what he meant by 'reality-shattering,'" George said, a forced grin barely covering his discomfort. "Not exactly your average bad dream."
Emily bit her lip. "But what if… what if it was real? Maybe he saw something we're not supposed to see. Something that… breaks you."
George hesitated, then shrugged. "Or maybe he was just losing his mind."
But deep down, Emily sensed that the man's vision had shown him a glimpse of something beyond what their minds were meant to understand. Something powerful, terrifying, and unspeakably ancient.
She turned back to the journal, reading the final entry with trepidation:
*"I woke up screaming, my mind shattered by the weight of it all. But the vision did not fade. Every time I close my eyes, I feel myself falling back into that empty, infinite void, with its silent, staring lights and its fractured, fragile pieces of reality. I know now that we are all but fragments, flickers of light in boundless darkness, each of us clinging to our own fragile reality while a thousand others spiral around us. And I know that we are not alone. The being watches, waiting for the moment when the last shard will break, and we will all fall into the void."*
Emily closed the journal, her hands trembling. The dream felt like a warning, a glimpse of something looming just beyond the veil of her reality.
George ran a hand through his hair, a rare frown on his face. "So… we're all just flickers in the dark, huh?"
Emily looked at him, the weight of the words settling over her like a shadow. "I don't know, George. Maybe he was just imagining it, or maybe… maybe he was right."
The Watcher, ever an invisible observer, felt a glimmer of amusement as he watched them wrestle with their doubts. Their belief in a fixed reality was endearing in its naivety, but he felt no desire to correct them. If they wanted to chase shadows, he would let them.
*"In the end, it doesn't matter what they believe,"* he thought, watching as they stared into the darkness of the lake, each lost in their own reflections. *"The truth will find them, whether they're ready or not."*
Emily and George sat in silence, the journal resting between them like a forbidden object, a reminder of the dream they both wished they hadn't read. But as the stars began to blink into existence above the lake, Emily couldn't help but wonder if they, too, were just fragments—little flickers of light in the vast, unknowable dark.