The Threshold That Remembers You

He stepped through the golden door.

There was no sound. No flash. Just silence—so complete it rang in his bones.

Veren—no longer Lucen—opened his eyes slowly.

The world beyond the door was not a world at all. It was a memory that had never belonged to him.

Skyless. Groundless. Infinite. This place shimmered with things forgotten by time itself. Shapes drifted past like thoughts: a boy chasing fireflies through a collapsing library; a woman made of starlight whispering to a cracked mirror; a thousand floating pages, ink bleeding off their edges, the words falling like tears into the void.

Veren hovered, though he didn’t fall. His feet touched nothing, yet he moved forward. He no longer needed gravity. The Veil knew him now.

The silver veins in his arms pulsed. The symbols had multiplied, climbing to his shoulders like a language unfolding—markings etched in ancient light. Each one was a word he didn’t remember learning, but they felt familiar. Like lullabies sung to him before he was born.

A voice stirred—not spoken aloud, but inside him.

“You are not a visitor here. You are a return.”

He turned. No one was there. Only the memory of someone who might have once stood beside him.

Was he becoming a memory too?

Ahead, the haze shifted. A path formed—not physical, but emotional. It led him not forward, but inward. As he stepped, the drifting memories around him grew more intimate. A broken swing in a field. A hallway painted with sunlight. A hand reaching toward him, vanishing just before it touched his.

He knew these. Not from dreams. From deep beneath them.

“Do you remember now?” the voice asked again.

“I don’t know,” Veren said. His own voice sounded distant, as if echoing through someone else's skull. “I think I’ve always remembered. I just didn’t know what to call it.”

The path led to a door. Smaller, darker, carved not of gold but of obsidian wood. Words were etched across its surface—not in any tongue, but in sensation. Regret. Hope. A promise broken long ago.

Veren reached out. His fingers didn’t touch the door, they dissolved into it. The symbols on his arms flared.

He passed through.

And found himself in a room that did not exist.

Books lined the walls—millions of them, stacked to impossible heights, floating in columns of dim violet light. Some were open, their pages flipping as if caught in a breeze that did not blow. Others whispered to themselves, voices made of parchment and ink.

The Archive.

He had seen it in fragments, felt its breath behind the curtains of other dreams. But now it welcomed him like a long-lost part of itself.

“You came back,” a voice said.

He turned. The silver-haired girl was there—Elara. She looked older here, not by age, but by memory. Her eyes carried the weight of someone who had waited centuries.

“I wasn’t sure I could,” Veren said. “Or that I should.”

Elara smiled faintly. “That choice is never simple. The Veil doesn't let go easily. But you crossed the Threshold. That means something.”

Veren stepped closer. “Where are we?”

“In the heart of the Veil,” she replied. “The place where stories go when no one remembers them. Where forgotten names sleep. This is where dreamwalkers were born—and where most were lost.”

As if in answer, the books around them pulsed, murmuring forgotten languages. One fluttered open on its own. Veren stepped toward it. The name on the page shimmered.

> Lucen Halren.

His breath caught. “That’s me.”

Elara nodded. “The version of you that lived in silence. That dreamed without knowing he was dreaming.”

“Is he gone?”

“No. He’s part of you now. But the Veil doesn’t allow dual names. To become Veren… you had to bury Lucen.”

Veren touched the page. It burned, not painfully—but like warmth returning to frostbitten fingers.

Memories surfaced.

His mother humming by a window. The chill of the first dream. A forgotten birthday. The moment he first saw Elara beneath the silver tree.

All of it… returning.

“I don’t want to forget him,” he whispered.

“You won’t,” she said. “But the world will.”

He turned to her. “Why? Why all of this? Why me?”

Elara stepped closer. “Because the Veil is breaking. Something has begun to unravel it from within—something ancient. You were chosen not because you’re special… but because you heard the silence.”

“The silence?”

“The space between dreams and waking. Most pass through it without noticing. But you… you listened. You stayed.”

Veren looked up. Far above, the ceiling shimmered like water. He could see… stars. No, not stars—eyes. Watching. Waiting.

“The One Who Waits,” he said. The name left a shadow in his mouth.

Elara tensed. “You’ve seen him?”

“He left an echo in the origin chamber. He said I was too early.”

“He always says that.” Her voice trembled. “But he’s never wrong.”

Veren clenched his fists. The markings on his arms shimmered.

“I need to know what he is. And why he’s watching me.”

Elara reached out and placed her hand over his. “Then come with me. There’s something you need to see.”

She led him through the Archive.

They passed countless books. Some vibrated with sorrow. Others pulsed with laughter. A few were completely black—sealed, unreadable. Elara stopped at one carved into stone.

“This,” she said, “is the first memory.”

Veren stared. It was written not in ink, but in silver fire. The pages moved without turning. He could feel the age of it, the gravity.

“This is the memory of the world before the Veil,” Elara said. “Before dreaming and waking were separate.”

“Before we forgot?”

She nodded. “Before forgetting became law.”

Veren touched it—and for a moment, he saw it all:

A world where thoughts built cities. Where people walked between lives like pages in a book. Where memory was magic—and remembering was power.

And then… the sundering.

A crack in the dream. A falling. A name forgotten, a veil drawn.

The One Who Waits had not created the Veil.

He had survived its shattering. Veren stumbled back. His pulse thundered in his ears. “I saw it,” he said. “I saw the end.” “And the beginning,” Elara whispered. “Because what ends must echo.” Behind them, something groaned. A book was opening—a black one. “No one summoned that,” Elara breathed.

From its pages, darkness spilled like smoke. And then—a figure. Tall. Shadow-crowned. Not the One Who Waits, but something that carried his scent.It turned to Veren.

"You remember too much.”

Veren took a step back. But the Archive around him did not. 

It changed.

Books burst into flame, and the violet light flickered. The Archive rejected the intruder. Elara reached for him—But the world inverted.

And Veren fell.

———

This chapter marks a major turning point in Dreambound: The Veil Between Worlds. Lucen, now calling himself Veren, has crossed into the deepest part of the dream realm—the Archive at the Veil’s core—and finally glimpses the truth behind the origin of dreams, memories, and the One Who Waits. The next chapter will begin in the aftermath of this “fall” and set the stage for the deeper magic, revelations, and sacrifices to come.

Let me know what you felt reading this chapter. Your support means the world:)