Kael rubbed his eyes, pressing the palms of his hands against his eyelids as he wrestled with the thought gnawing at him: "Is this a dream?"
The suppressed exhaustion, combined with the haze in his mind, made his grip on reality feel increasingly unsteady.
When he removed his hands from his eyes and squinted ahead, he found himself in the middle of a garden, a clearing where different shades of green danced together.
The field stretched out in front of him, reminiscent of the landscaped greens of a university campus.
Flowers dotted the grass...
Some were in full bloom, others still in bud.
It was as if someone had meticulously designed this place.
But even that meticulousness couldn't soothe the turmoil within Kael.
He began walking, counting his steps.
With each step, the silhouette of the building ahead grew clearer.
One step... two... three... five... seven... nine...
He walked in an irregular rhythm, following an instinct rather than logic.
Ten... fifteen... twenty... thirty... thirty-five...
As he approached the building, the pressure in his chest intensified.
What he saw wasn't familiar, but it felt somehow... known.
Like a scent, a memory, or a feeling seeping through the dusty shelves of his mind.
"That cigarette I smoked... was it really a cigarette?"
He muttered to himself.
Kael had never experienced such sharpness in a dream before.
Everything felt overwhelmingly real.
The wind brushing his skin, the scent of the grass, the uneven hardness of stones beneath his shoes...
When he finally stood before the building, there was no surprise or excitement, as he might have expected.
Instead...
His eyes filled with a strange sadness.
A longing—indescribable, yet deeply familiar—clouded his gaze.
His pupils quivered.
"What's happening here?"
The question escaped his lips not as a shout, but as a breath.
And then...
He took a few more steps toward the door.
But right before him, at the tips of his feet, something lay.
A small, round basket with delicate, woven handles.
Its color had faded with time; the edges were frayed.
He barely noticed these details at first... because his eyes locked onto the basket.
A baby basket.
Kael's body tensed reflexively.
His shoulders lifted slightly, hands spread to his sides, breathing grew shallow.
He took a step back—but his feet felt rooted to the ground.
Still breathless...
Kael squinted at the basket again.
"Why... is there a baby basket here?"
The question kept circling in his mind.
He looked around, narrowing his eyes.
No doorbell... no voices...
No crying... no note... no trace...
Only that silence.
As if the world had held its breath, watching to see how Kael would react.
Slowly, Kael bent down.
Perhaps unwillingly, perhaps driven by a buried impulse…
As if there was no other option but to look.
His hand trembled as it reached for the edge of the basket.
Cold chills climbed from his wrists.
He touched the fabric.
Soft. Clean... but the moment he touched it, an uneasy feeling crept into him.
As if the cloth whispered something from his past.
He slowly parted the fabric...
And in that moment, his eyes widened.
They grew large.
His breath caught in his throat.
His chest grew heavy, like a stone had been placed on it.
Inside the basket was a baby.
Immaculate, smooth-skinned...
Only a few hours old, it seemed—lying there with an unreal purity.
But the real shock was the face.
That face…
Kael swallowed.
But no sound came.
His throat tightened.
It was as if his lungs stopped functioning.
His pupils trembled.
"This..."
His lips parted, but no words emerged.
He was staring.
At his own childhood face.
The same face he had seen hundreds of times in mirrors, in old photos.
He pulled back.
One step.
Then another.
Then one more.
His foot caught on a protruding piece of stone.
He lost his balance.
His shoulders flailed, arms stretched out to the sides.
He tried to stay upright, but his knees buckled.
He wobbled, nearly collapsing.
His face was pale.
His eyes welled up, but no tears fell.
He was like a child—too shocked to cry.
"This... this is impossible..."
"No... this can't be me..."
His voice was cracked.
His mind, shattered.
His thoughts were chaotic, muffled, like internal screams—but only whispers slipped out.
At the same time, he was remembering and denying.
This had to be a mistake.
A trick.
An illusion.
Maybe he was still on that bench, still asleep, dreaming.
But this feeling...
This touch...
This sight...
It was real.
He brought his hands to his face.
Pressed his palms tightly against his eyes.
Again...
And again...
When he opened his trembling eyelids...
The baby was still there.
Same basket.
Same fabric.
Same face.
"No... no..."
"This is nonsense! It can't be!"
Kael's voice didn't rise, but a scream erupted inside him.
Only an echo in his mind...
"I have to wake up... This is a dream... it has to be just a dream..."
But it didn't feel like a dream.
He could still smell the earth.
The grass beneath his feet was still damp.
The wind brushed his cheek, real as ever.
And his heartbeat...
The tightness in his throat...
They were too vivid.
Kael looked at the baby again.
He didn't know why he was reacting so violently.
Was it the shock of seeing a face so identical to his own?
Or was it the stirrings of a much deeper, suppressed fear?
He didn't know.
All he knew was that something inside him had shattered...
And those shattered pieces weren't unfamiliar.
Still kneeling, trembling on his knees, Kael couldn't look away from the tiny face in the basket.
At the same time, a voice echoed within:
"Am I this weak? Is a mere image reducing me to this? Or is it... something deeper?"
And in that moment…
Everything changed in the blink of an eye.
As if the world had shed its skin.
The air around him shifted instantly.
The scent of grass gave way to the dust of concrete, the dampness of old walls.
The whispering wind vanished, replaced by faint children's voices...
Far away, as if from the past…
Perhaps they were only memories.
Kael lifted his head.
His pupils dilated.
The building before him was no longer the nameless structure…
But a place he had once left behind, glancing over his shoulder.
Faded, broken, defeated by time…
Above its door, on a rusty sign, were the words:
"HOPE ORPHANAGE"
Kael's lips parted, but no words came out.
His vocal cords froze, struck by the force of the past.
His breathing quickened.
But it wasn't air he was inhaling—it was memories.
This building…
With that sign, those grey walls, that scent…
It reached the deepest, darkest part of Kael's heart.
Because this was the only place in his life where he had ever, perhaps, felt "happy."
And after?
Only darkness.
Forgetfulness.
Loss…
Kael raised his hand.
As if reaching through the years, his fingers tried to touch the sign.
But time lay in between.
Between him and his shattered childhood… and his silenced past…
His knees gave out.
He collapsed to the ground.
He clenched his fists.
Pressed them into the earth.
He no longer noticed anything around him.
New buildings... changing colors…
They faded like a washed-out painting.
Then…
Click.
A sound reached his ears. Small. Harmless. But something inside him knew something bigger was coming.
CRACK!
A violent shattering sound echoed behind him, as if the very seams of heaven and earth had split apart. The sound didn't come from one place—it echoed across all layers of reality, as if the universe itself had cracked.
Kael turned reflexively.
And at that moment... his breath caught. His eyes widened. His mind couldn't comprehend what he saw.
"What the hell is that..." he muttered. But even his voice sounded foreign. Muffled, shaky, barely a whisper.
What stood before him was the sky itself.
But... it was breaking apart.
A rupture... no, a rending. A massive crack had opened across the sky. A lightless, bottomless darkness seeped out. And that darkness... it wasn't just darkness. It was a presence. A will. It approached not slowly, but inevitably. As if the essence of night had set out to devour the day.
Kael's heart raced. His pulse pounded in his ears.
"What is this? What's happening?!"
His thoughts scrambled. Logic gave way to panic. His brain sought escape, but his feet were nailed to the ground.
His shoulders shook.
His pupils darted in every direction. "An exit... a way out... something... what do I do?"
There were things he couldn't even admit to himself. He wanted to scream. Maybe to curse. But his throat was knotted. Words died before being born.
His body trembled.
And in that moment—he saw something to his right.
A light.
Bright. Sharp. Blinding.
When he turned, his breath caught again.
There, in the middle of nothingness... stood a door.
About three meters tall.
Brilliant white.
But not ordinary white... it was like the essence of light itself. Blinding, yet impossible to look away from. Gold engravings lined the edges, and at its center, a vortex of infinite light...
It called to him.