The first thing Elias Mercer noticed when he awoke was the silence.
Not the sterile quiet of a hospital room—though it was that too—but a deeper, cosmic silence, like the universe itself had paused to see if he would breathe again.
He blinked. The fluorescent lights above him flickered like old film reels, casting dim halos across the pale ceiling. His mouth was dry. His muscles ached as if they'd been unused for centuries. A nurse burst into the room, followed by gasps, shouts, and urgent phone calls. Someone cried. A woman—his sister? mother? wife?—touched his hand and wept into his palm.
Two months, they told him.
Two months he'd been asleep.
But Elias knew—somehow—that he hadn't just been asleep. He'd been elsewhere. Dreaming, yes, but also…watching. He remembered mountains of glass, rivers of stars, and thrones made from the bones of forgotten gods. And in the deepest part of his mind, something else stirred—a voice like velvet and thunder that whispered:
"The dreams are yours now, Elias Mercer. Take care of them, or lose everything."
Three days later, a man in a tattered trench coat appeared in Elias's hospital room. He didn't blink. He didn't breathe. His eyes were filled with fire.
"I am Theron," the man said, "god of Time."
Elias, still tethered to IVs and monitors, stared at him. "Okay."
"You should not exist," said Theron.
And just like that, the lights dimmed, the walls cracked, and Elias fell—not physically, but into a place behind his eyelids. Into dream.