Episode 4: The Man from My Dreams Has a Name
It started with the ring.
Again.
Only this time, I didn't fall asleep.
I was wide awake when the vision hit me.
The room around me melted into stardust. Walls vanished. The sky opened above—a canvas of swirling galaxies and violet storms.
I was standing on marble. Barefoot. Dressed in silver silk that shimmered like water. My hair was longer. Braided with crystal threads.
And he was there.
Not Kael.
Him.
The man I saw only in nightmares.
Tall. Cloaked in shadows. Eyes like black fire.
"You thought you could escape me," he hissed. "But I have followed your soul through every lifetime."
I tried to scream. But no sound came.
He lifted his hand—and my chest burned.
Like someone was clawing at my very soul.
And then—
"Lyra!"
A voice. A real voice.
Kael.
I snapped back to my room, gasping, heart pounding, drenched in sweat.
Kael was at my window, breathless, his eyes wide with fear.
"You saw him, didn't you?"
We sat on the floor together, both shaking.
I told him everything—the dream, the voice, the pain.
He didn't look surprised.
"That man," he said, "was once called Maerion. In our past life, he was the High Inquisitor. A sorcerer born of darkness, twisted by hatred."
"Why is he still here?" I whispered.
"Because he bound his soul to the cycle. He swore that if he couldn't have you in that life, no one else would in any life."
My blood ran cold.
"Then what does he want now?"
Kael's jaw tightened. "You. Dead. Or his."
Silence stretched between us.
I looked down at my hand—the ring glowing faintly.
"How do we stop him?"
"You don't have to," Kael said. "I will protect you."
"But I'm not the same girl I was then," I said quietly. "I don't have her power. Her memories."
"You will," he replied. "And when you do… you'll be stronger than ever before."
The next day, I started seeing shadows where there shouldn't be any.
Reflections in mirrors that didn't match. Whispers when no one was speaking.
And worse… people were starting to notice me.
Not in the normal way. Not school gossip.
I mean strangers. People on the street who stared too long. One woman grabbed my wrist and muttered in a language I didn't understand before bursting into tears.
And once, in the middle of a store, a man looked right at me and said:
"The priestess walks again. The stars have begun to burn."
I told Kael everything.
He didn't flinch.
"The world remembers you," he said. "Even if you don't remember yourself."
"But why now?" I asked. "Why not before?"
"Because this is the lifetime where the prophecy completes," he answered. "This is the one where everything ends—or begins again."
That night, I dreamed not of the temple.
But of the night I died.
Blood. Screams. Fire. My voice calling his name—Kael—as Maerion raised the blade.
And then—
Darkness.
I woke up crying, the taste of iron in my mouth.
And one thought repeating in my head like a curse:
If I don't remember soon… I'll die again.
[To Be Continued…]