Page 69

D arkness.

It's endless, swallowing thought, swallowing time. There's no pain, no weight—only the slow, drifting pull of nothingness.

And then, a shift.

A ripple of something distant. A voice—muffled, warped, blurred at the edges like ink bleeding into water. It curls around the edges of my mind, barely there, barely real.

My body feels heavy.

No, not heavy— wrong.

Cold seeps into my limbs, curling beneath my skin and pressing into my bones. It's a deep, unnatural chill, like frost creeping across glass, slow and silent. It doesn't sting. It doesn't burn.

It just is.

I try to move, but I don't know if I succeed.

The weight inside me is suffocating, sinking into my ribs, my chest. Everywhere.

The voices come again, louder now.

Urgent. Frantic.

I can't make out the words, but I feel them. Feel the concern, the tension, the heavy coil of something pressing down on them.

I try to focus, to hold on to the sound, to let it drag me upward, back to awareness. But the moment I do, the cold deepens, pulling me back, dragging me down, swallowing me whole.

I'm losing, but I don't know what.

Something's off. Something is missing.

The cold inside me lingers, stretching through my limbs and coiling around my ribs. But beyond it, there's something else.

Heat.

Soft, steady, unshakeable.

It seeps through the cold, slipping past the emptiness, and coiling around me like a tether to something distant—something known.

It pulses, deep and slow, a rhythm that doesn't belong to me but somehow feels like mine. It's a familiar vibration, low and resonant, not just pressing against my skin but sinking inside, threading through my ribs, wrapping around my heart.

I feel it before I am anything else. Before I'm awake. Before I'm aware.

Something connects.

Something calls me back.

I let it.

My fingers twitch, my chest rises, my body remembers.

A slow breath pulls through my lungs, heavy and deep, as my lashes flick against the weight of something unfamiliar. My body is aching, slow and foreign, as though I have not been inside it for a long, long time.

And then—light.

Blurry at first. Soft at the edges.

And deep, crimson eyes meet mine.

Heat.

Not just from his presence, but from him . From the very space between us, from the way his body hums with warmth, from the way his very existence reaches out to mine, curling through me, into me, like it belongs there.

The vibration in his chest flows through me, steady, strong. Like gravity itself, something deep and anchoring. Something whole.

He is beautiful. Too beautiful.

His breath is uneven, exhaled with something heavy, something that knows me in a way I can't yet understand.

Then, he speaks my name.

"Dream."

It should mean something.

It should ground me further.

But the word barely touches me. Barely registers at all.

I should know it. I should feel it, should recognise it.

But instead—

"Who's Dream?"

The warmth around me falters.

The deep, familiar rhythm I had clung to just moments before stutters, pulling back like a tether suddenly cut loose.

His crimson eyes widen—just slightly.

The heat that holds me together, the steady presence keeping me whole—it flickers, dims, breaks.

He says, his words low, barely a whisper, "Haze."

I slowly peel my hand from his, the warmth lingering against my skin, fading as I pull away.

Something in his expression shifts, something I don't quite understand, something that tightens his jaw, that stills the breath in his chest.

I swallow, the weight of his crimson gaze pressing into me—expectant, desperate, waiting for something I can't seem to give him.

I meet his eyes.

And with quiet certainty, I say, "No. My name… It's Emory. Emory Adams."