Chapter 41 - The Kingdom Where Morpheus No Longer Goes

There was no alarm, no scream, not even a tremor and yet… something was dying here.

Saphira advanced, alone, in a windless dimension a path stretched before her, a ribbon of stone and silence on each side, there were no walls, no sky, no ground, only suspended windows and behind each pane, a fragment of life but these were not nightmares, no monsters, no flames. Just images too real a man screams in an office but no one listens a woman stares at an empty screen her gaze is blurred two hands sign a contract, then tremble, not believing their own promise these were not forgotten dreams they were broken dreams, desires too old to shine again, hopes held captive by routine, fear, and self-forgetfulness.

The lightning key vibrated softly in Saphira's palm. 

—"It's here," a soundless murmur.

The structure rose like a fracture in the dream a black tower, worn, half-broken. the walls oozed thick ink, as if the thoughts of those who lived there were slowly melting unfinished words flowed from the stones, senseless letters, fragments of sentences without verbs and at the top, a man he sat on a throne made of stacked chairs, closed files, promises filed away without follow-up he did not look up he did not weep he did not cry out he was just there. And perhaps that was worse dead leaves of projects swirled around him.

—"I never finished anything i didn't have the courage i preferred to stay here because there's no more room outside."

Saphira approached she said nothing she did not extend her hand she listened and in that silence… a form glided between the shadows. Nekridhal, the god of unleashed nightmares he did not appear in an explosion of darkness; he walked into the room like a returned friend. his fingers caressed the walls as if he loved them.

—"He no longer wanted to dream," he said softly. "So I helped him stop."

Saphira stared at him.

—"You imprisoned him."

—"No. I heard him."

—"And I listened to him."

She could have screamed, struck, broken the tower she did not. Instead, she took a simple blue doll from her cloak of stars she placed it at the dreamer's feet the doll did not speak. It did not shine. It waited. Saphira leaned down, whispering to the silence.

—"If you want to stay here, I won't prevent anything but if one day you want to dream again, then she will open her eyes."

And she stood up she did not look at Nekridhal she spoke to him.

—"I did not come to destroy i came to offer, even to mistakes, even to you you believe you are the nightmare, but you are only the cry of a part of me that was not cradled."

For the first time, Nekridhal recoiled, not from fear, but from incomprehension she was not hitting him, she was not chasing him, she was looking at him.

—"You're not fighting me…"

—"No. I love you, and that is perhaps the most dangerous spell."

Saphira left the tower behind her, the man did not move, but his eyes looked at the doll, not with fear, not yet with hope, but with possibility and sometimes, that is the only dream an adult needs: the ability to dream again.

End of Chapter 41 — The Kingdom Where Morpheus No Longer Goes