Mist curled over the valley like breath from an unseen mouth. The world held its silence—a silence so deep it felt as though the air itself was waiting.
From somewhere within that hush, a hand reached for me.
Not in sight, but in feeling—brushing the edge of my sleep.
A voice followed. Low. Unhurried.
Not my father's.
Not my mother's.
Not any mortal voice at all.
It said:
Your time has come… you can no longer hide.
And suddenly I was standing in the heart of a nightmare.
Soil and smoke thickened the air. Something unseen pressed down on my shoulders—heavier than any weight I had ever carried. I could move neither forward nor back. Even the wind seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
That whisper tore through the thin veil between the girl I thought I was… and the truth beneath.
Sometimes I think that if someone wished to know me, they should begin with my dreams.
Not with the past, nor with the events already unfolded—
but with that single moment in sleep, when a hand called out to me, softly yet with certainty.
The same voice.
The same sentence.
Your time has come… you can no longer hide.
The nightmare's world was steeped in darkness.
A place I could not name, where I did not know if I was dreaming or awake—
and yet I knew it was a beginning.
The ground beneath my feet felt like ash pressed into soil.
The sky above was neither day nor night, only a colorless void.
All around me stretched a land emptied of life, as if something had taken everything it wanted and left only silence behind.
A darkness that had dwelled in the shadows for years, unseen—
not because it hid itself,
but because people, out of comfort or cowardice, had chosen to close their eyes.
In a world where truth was believed to be nothing more than what people woke up to each morning, the existence of beings they called legend had long been locked away in the farthest corners of imagination.
Until the day the legend could no longer keep silent.
A wind rose, carrying the smell of burnt earth. Mist slid between the ruined shapes of trees, clinging to their dead branches like ghosts.
That was the day the Night Roots began to stir once more.
The day of awakening.
The day when the world of Drya, for a fleeting moment, saw itself in the mirror of forgetting.
I walked—if it could be called walking—through that empty land.
Every step felt uncertain, as though I might fall through the ground at any moment.
Willows without leaves bowed over water that did not move.
The sky hung too low.
My own breath sounded like an intruder.
Then I saw it.
A shadow, standing unnaturally clear amidst the mist.
It shifted, as though something hid behind the trunk of a willow tree. Uncertainty and fear twisted in my chest. I did not know whether to approach… or whether the greater terror would be finding no one there at all.
The sound of my heartbeat seemed to leave my mouth with every breath.
I reached out a hand—slow, hesitant—toward the shadow.
It vanished without warning.
Then appeared again in another place.
It was playing with me.
With my fears.
With my solitude.
The air grew heavier, closing in around me like a spider's web.
Time itself seemed to slow, each second stretching longer than it should.
The shadow, at last, stood still.
Then a voice… not from outside, but resounding deep within my mind:
Sibefer…
O daughter of Mythandri…
Ah… is this your land?
A cursed land, eastern, among horizons long lost…
A land that breeds traitors.
My throat tightened.
And once again, you are the one left alone…
Waiting for someone to come.
But what do you see?
Darkness. Silence. Solitude.
Is this your eternal dream… or your nightmare?
The words fell like drops of black ink into water.
Remember that old fancy of yours—
that if you never crossed the line, if you were good, if you stayed still,
in the end, you would find a way to paradise.
But look…
this is your future.
Terror clawed through me.
The voice I'd heard could not have come from any ordinary shadow.
Shadows don't speak.
Then who was it?
With effort, I whispered, my voice barely more than breath:
"Who… who are you? What do you want from me? Where is this place?"
The shadow shivered.
Then a deep, resonant voice rolled through the air, as though it rose from the heart of the earth itself:
Sooner or later, you will know.
This is the land of the Forgotten…
Drya, as it was when it turned from the light and surrendered to the dark.
You will not forget me—
for I… am the beginning of your fall.
The wind halted for a heartbeat.
A murmur, like the weight of millennia, passed through the silent trees.
I did not yet know that this was the first awakening of my Night Root.
The shadow laughed—a dry, drawn-out sound tangled with the growl of the sky.
I have spoken to you from the moment you still believed all this was a dream.
When you still held your hopes tightly in your hands, not yet realizing that the age of such waiting has ended…
There will be no paradise left to shelter the solace of the pure-hearted.
No—this is a land where dreams turn to nightmares, and you… will remain only a witness.
The wind fell, then rose again.
The voice darkened.
A single small wave is enough to overturn everything you believe in—your paradise, your hell, even yourself.
All of it will be upended in an instant, and you will not understand how it happened.
It paused.
Little Myth… do you think you have understood as much as the world itself?
You stand only at the threshold of something whose name you do not even know.
What regrets coil in your air… what betrayals are on their way—
betrayals from those closest to you, without your knowing.
My breath came shallow and sharp.
You have always tried to keep the mask of innocence upon your face.
But you are like the partridge that buries its head in the snow and believes it cannot be seen.
The laughter ceased.
A sudden, sharp wind swept through.
Willow leaves trembled and fell with a muffled rustle. Through its branches came a long, unbroken whistle, slicing the still air.
The same voice, now quiet and heavy, whispered:
Remember this… a name that will one day shake your silent world—
Fodiser.
One whose nature is not shaped by the wind, for he was born in the very breath of darkness.
The name burned into me like a brand.
In an instant, the shadow was gone.
Only I remained—
in the heart of mist and rain,
with a fear rising not from outside… but from within.
My legs refused to move.
Laughter—faint and distant—echoed now and then in my ears, like a whisper carried from Drya itself.
For what felt like hours, I wandered in that place without time;
rain and tears mingling on my cheeks,
my lips trembling.
At last, I cried out:
"Is there no one?!"
My voice was swallowed by the darkness.
I screamed again, louder—
with every shred of strength I had left.
And it was that cry which tore me from sleep—
startled, breathless, soaked in sweat.
I opened my eyes.
Dim light wavered across the ceiling.
My mother and father stood over me, worry etched into their faces.
I was gasping for air, repeating only:
"Just a nightmare… just a cursed nightmare…"
But somewhere deep inside, I knew—
it was more than that.
Something had awakened.
And it would not go back to sleep.