The night tore open like a wound. From that rip in the fabric of nothing, a soft hand reached out, pale, delicate, shimmering with the dust of slumber. The hand did not seize Metatron. It invited him.
And like a fool who trusted the warmth of silence, he accepted.
Metatron's consciousness fell, not into darkness, but into comfort. A comfort so deep it felt unnatural. He stood in a meadow that glowed blue, grass humming lullabies, the air thick with stars that drifted down like snow. For a moment, it was peace. But peace is a lie told by dreams before they eat you.
"Welcome to my home, wanderer."
The voice was soft, not a whisper, not a shout. It was the air itself. Metatron turned, eyes narrowing. "Hypnos."
"Ah," Hypnos chuckled, floating sideways, his body coiled in mist and shadow. "He remembers my name. That's flattering, coming from something not meant to sleep."
"Release me," Metatron commanded. "Your realm holds no dominion over celestials."
"Oh?" Hypnos smiled, stretching his arms. "You're in my dominion. Here, power bends with breath, and breath bends with whim. You don't breathe, do you? Then you don't belong."
The dream changed.
The meadow melted into an ocean of eyes. Millions. Blinking, rolling, laughing silently. The stars above turned into teeth, each one grinning with celestial hunger. The sky itself exhaled, and Metatron felt his essence scatter like dust.
He tried to fly, wings of light unfurled, but the sky laughed. His wings bent backward, folding in like broken glass. He screamed, but even his voice was devoured by the echo of Hypnos' amusement.
"You see," Hypnos murmured, "dreams are the last refuge of gods and mortals alike. You've never slept before, have you? Never rested? Let me show you what it feels like to finally close your eyes."
The dream reshaped.
Now Metatron was standing before himself, thousands of himself. Each one broken in a different way. One burned by Leviathan's fire. One crushed beneath Raphael's healing light. One crawling with Azazel's shadow. Each screamed his name. Each begged for release.
He tried to move, but the ground clung to him. Literally. Grass turned to hands, gripping his ankles. The soil pulsed like a heartbeat. Every grain of dirt whispered his name.
"Running won't help," Hypnos said, reclining mid-air like a lazy god on a couch of fog. "You're inside your own subconscious. I've just… stretched it a little."
Metatron ripped free and started to run anyway.
The world warped with every step.
He ran through forests that spoke in riddles. Through cities built from his memories. Through faces he'd forgotten, all reaching for him, all asking him to stay. He ran until the ground flipped upside down and gravity laughed.
Then came the first nightmare.
A dragon, larger than mountains, crawled from the horizon. Its scales were clocks, each one ticking backward. Every roar reversed time by one second. Metatron tried to blast it apart. Light burned from his palms, but the fire curved back and struck himself.
"Ohhh," Hypnos yawned. "Feedback loop. Classic first-timer mistake."
Metatron fell into a crater of his own making. He got up. The crater spoke. The hole itself whispered, "Why do you struggle, dreamer?" And from that hole rose a thousand spiders, each one wearing the faces of fictional characters humanity had written about angels.
They laughed. They mocked. They quoted verses, movies, memes, every joke ever made about divine beings. "Look, he thinks he's invincible!" "Yo Metatron, where's your Netflix deal?" "Pray harder, big guy!"
He destroyed them in rage, beams of light, explosions of holy fire, but the more he killed, the more they multiplied. And every time he blinked, their voices came from inside his own head.
He ran again.
This time through a desert made of his own feathers. They fell endlessly, carpeting dunes of gold. Every step sunk deeper into himself. He tried to fly again, but the sky refused him. Lightning formed words:
"FLIGHT REQUIRES FREEDOM. YOU HAVE NONE."
"You see?" Hypnos floated beside him, sipping from a cup made of mist. "Dreams are mirrors. Yours are just… unkind."
Metatron snarled. "You are wasting your time."
"Am I? Or am I educating you?" Hypnos smiled lazily. "I told Azazel I'd kill you from within. But I'm starting to like you. You're funny when you panic."
"Funny?"
"Yes. Like watching a storm try to punch a cloud."
Metatron lunged. His fist connected with Hypnos' head, and the god exploded into glittering sand.
The sand reformed instantly, yawning.
"Ow. You hit like insomnia."
The dream changed again.
Metatron stood before a door. It had his name carved into it, "METATRON, CELESTIAL SCRIBE." He hesitated. Something in him whispered not to open it.
But the door opened itself.
Inside was a library that stretched beyond reality, infinite shelves spiraling into nothing. Every book was a dream he'd never had. And one by one, they started opening.
Pages tore themselves out, spinning around him like locusts. Each page whispered failure. Every line screamed weakness. And then the shelves themselves fell, like dominoes collapsing through eternity.
He was buried under knowledge that wasn't his.
And Hypnos appeared above him, wearing a crown of broken clocks.
"You see, the mind is a dangerous playground. Even gods drown in their own thoughts."
Metatron tried to rise. He couldn't. The weight of thought, his own mind, held him down.
He roared, summoning fire again, this time from the deepest core of his being. The library ignited, books burned, shelves melted, and Hypnos clapped.
"Beautiful. You're burning your own memories. Very poetic. Very self-destructive."
He tried again, running through the ashes. The realm folded, then unfolded. Now he was walking on air, beneath him an infinite mirror reflecting infinite versions of himself, each one screaming in different languages. Angelic. Human. Unknown.
Every reflection began to bleed. Their wounds formed rivers. Rivers became oceans. The ocean rose.
And from it, Leviathan's shadow surfaced again.
Metatron froze. "No. Not here."
"Oh yes," Hypnos said. "Everything that ever frightened you lives here rent-free."
The ocean's waves became hands. Each wave dragged him under. He felt the fire of Leviathan again, burning in reverse, freezing his essence solid.
He screamed through water, his voice bubbling out as glowing glyphs that drifted away like jellyfish.
"You can't wake up," Hypnos whispered from above the surface, his voice echoing through every bubble. "Not until I say so."
Metatron's eyes snapped open. He was now standing, somehow, inside a loop. A corridor made of circles, each one leading into itself. Every time he walked forward, he came back from behind.
He tried to break it. Energy blasts, light spears, divine chants, nothing worked. The loop was alive. It mocked him, copying his voice in real time.
"I am Metatron, Voice of God!" "I am Metatron, Voice of God!" "I am Metatron, Voice of God!"
"STOP!"
"Stop!" the loop said back, laughing. "Stop! Stop! Stop!"
He fell to his knees. His form flickered, celestial light dimming. He couldn't tell how long he'd been here. Minutes? Centuries? Dreams have no clocks. Only patience.
And Hypnos, lounging somewhere in the folds of the void, grinned.
"You've lasted longer than I thought. Most minds break after the second paradox."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because sleep," Hypnos whispered, appearing behind him, "is mercy. And I want you to understand mercy by suffering through it."
Metatron reached for his blade and found it gone. His hand was the blade. His arm turned into metal, then smoke, then words, then nothing.
He screamed as he disintegrated into language itself, sentences breaking apart mid-thought, then reassembling as laughter.
"Oh look," Hypnos said, reading him like a scroll, "you're finally coherent. 'Help me.' 'Wake me.' 'Please.' Adorable."
He dropped the scroll.
It turned into a snake and slithered away, hissing fragments of prayer.
Time didn't exist anymore.
Metatron crawled through dreamscapes that mocked physics. One moment he was falling upward. The next he was drowning in sunlight. Then he was running across clouds made of his regrets, chased by phantom versions of angels he'd condemned. Even atoms turned against him, vibrating faster when he tried to move, slower when he tried to think.
He whispered, "End this."
And Hypnos answered from every direction.
"You can't die here. You can't wake up. You just… exist. Isn't that what eternity feels like?"
Metatron's light dimmed further. His wings were gone. His essence flickered like a candle fighting against the wind.
"You wanted to understand humanity, didn't you?" Hypnos murmured. "This is humanity, trapped in dreams they can't escape."
Metatron fell forward, collapsing into the abyss.
And at the very bottom, a voice not his own whispered faintly:
"Metatron… wake up."
He blinked. For a moment, he thought it was Raphael. But when he looked up, there was only Hypnos, smiling, eyes glowing with infinite calm.
"There's no waking here. Not yet. You're not done dreaming."
The dream folded again, endless, merciless. And Hypnos drifted away, whispering one last line as Metatron screamed into the void of his own mind:
"Sleep well, Celestial. The nightmare's just begun."