Fracture

Minato often woke up drenched in sweat. It seemed that today was no exception. Gasping for air, he sat upright, clutching his chest as if a cold blade had been thrust through his heart. The heaving silhouette of his shadow shuddered, cast lazily by pale moonlight. 

His companion Yue mumbled incoherently and rolled over before resuming his obnoxiously loud snoring. Sometimes Minato wondered if snoring trumped night terrors on his list of dislikes. 

It's just a dream, get ahold of yourself.

Minato's inner voice whispered again like a deflated remanent of who he had once been. Clutching the grip of his V-Katana eventually grounded the Ronin sufficiently enough to get his ragged breathing under control. Once his heart stopped pounding even the air seemed still; there was no wind in this land. It was dead silent (other than Yue snoring).

Trees stood as if petrified. Their looming figurines composed the foreground of a stunningly beautiful night sky. Overhead sprawled a glittering mosaic of stars that stretched out far as the eye could see. Below, the forest slowly gave way to rolling green hills etched with a jagged stream of clear water. 

Is this what it means to be free? No past or future, just the eternal now...

Minato put a hand on the back of his neck. The familiar dull ache seemed to emanate from his chest and migrate upwards to his head, settling at the throat/neck region. He massaged the area for a second before giving up and standing to walk it off. If he was being perfectly honest, what Minato was doing was more like anxious pacing. What had the dream meant? 

At first it had been cloudy, reminiscent of having sleep in one's eyes, or a lens struggling to focus. Then the scene had suddenly become clear as day. Sharpened in a surreal, unnerving sense. 

He had been in a white oval shaped room with six thin glass tubes positioned perpendicular to the floor. They were filled with a purple, viscous substance which bubbled and flowed upwards through tiny holes in a curved ceiling. Spotless, Minato realized; the entire room seemed to have nothing out of place.

"The tests are almost complete my boy! Soon we will have the backing to move into Phase II. Be grateful I chose you of all people to assist in collection. After the success of this project you will finally have accrued enough wealth to enter the Inner Circle. Or at the very least you will possess a sufficient amount to leave poverty behind for good." 

The man had laughed maniacally and begun typing rapidly on a strange floating device with many screens overrun with code. Minato had tried to turn his head in hopes of maybe catching a glimpse of the speaker. Squinting as if looking towards the Sun, his eyes gradually rested upon a distorted face with bright golden-yellow eyes. Fear struck a deep chord in his heart. The accompanying adrenaline engulfed his body like a white hot flame. 

A Wolf... this man is the apex predator.

At this point the dream-space had already begun to deteriorate. Millions of pixels flashed in and out of existence at insane velocities. It was impossible to comprehend. 

Akin to most of his night terror endings an alarm sounded off, followed quickly by the shuffling of feet and finally a lone high pitched scream. This panicked shriek had awoken him on this night, a piercing tone of pure dismay and terror. Who was the one screaming, was it himself?

"Minato, don't stray too far from camp," Yue had finally risen and casually emitted a wide yawn, "It's been quiet these past weeks but I can still remember parts of the incident." 

"You can remember that far back?" Minato was somewhat shocked; Yue was known for possessing the memory of a goldfish. "The incident", as the two had coined it, was the one event both of them could still recall from their travels. Or at least partially recall. 

"Well, it's not easy and makes my brain hurt, but I can definitely remember scrambling away from something cloaked in darkness with bright eyes."

"What do you mean?"

"It brought on this feeling, like an aura of evil condensed into a person or machine which could somehow see beyond our world," Yue frowned, "I don't know man that's where it gets confusing."

Minato gripped his V-Katana once more and narrowed his eyes. This whole ordeal was disturbing, it felt like they were getting nowhere. Nothing made sense anymore.

Damn it, what are we wrapped up in?

"Go back to sleep Yue I'll be alright, just had one of those dreams again. I'm starting to wonder if..." Minato's voice trailed off. 

Yue had begun snoring. 

If only it were so easy. 

Minato almost smiled, but the notion quickly dissipated. One of the stars had begun blinking. 

Squinting, Minato jogged over to the edge of the tree-line and swiftly lay prone. His gaze was trained on the strange foreign object which seemed to invade the unmoving sky. It's not a star. The colour changed now and then from yellow to red in what Minato guessed was an ordered pattern. 

Was it some sort of message? 

He quickly pulled out a small translucent device and begun recording his thoughts. Words danced across the screen as Minato attempted to capture the event in as much detail as possible. Yet quickly as it had begun the blinking stopped. The foreign object melted back into the star-scape like it had never existed. 

Searing pain shot up from his chest so with such immensity he almost passed out. 

"Sometimes the mind can deceive itself. This is called a delusion; a reality which lies outside the commonly accepted reality of the group. If you are alone in your perceptions, it is likely others will notice this discord. Thus they will fear you. For their reality becomes threatened by the mere possibility of another existing. Now I ask you this: what makes one reality true and another false?"

Echoes. Ripples of time which rolled onto the shore of his mind, stemming from some distant point in a lost history. 

"Minato, you have to let go!"

Rain fell gently like tears shed by a thousand souls. All Minato knew was that he must follow the stream North. This gut feeling composed a single certainty inside his dense cloud of confusion. 

He glanced down at his palms as if checking to see if they were his own. There was a single mark on one of his fingers, some kind of symbol whose meaning lay outside the bounds of his conscious awareness. It looked like a spiral galaxy with two arms; one reaching up and the other down. Tracing it softly with a trembling finger, he felt the cool sensation of water running down his cheeks. 

It's just rain. This is likely a tattoo from when I was younger, more naive. 

This subtle lie disguised distant tragedy which lay dormant, hidden behind many walls deep within his subconscious. Some pain was better left forgotten. 

The man's heterochromatic eyes became blank, unseeing. His soul was somewhere else. 

Far away over the rolling hills and beyond the mountains a wolf howled. They had seen no animals in this place.