Commander Incarceratus woke slowly, as though surfacing from a depth he did not remember descending into.
For a long moment, he did not move. He simply stared at the ceiling above him—white, unfamiliar, too clean to belong to any room he recognized. The steady hum of machines filled the air around him, quiet but constant, like a distant tide that refused to recede.
His eyes felt heavy, weighed down by something he could not name. Even so, he forced them open wider, blinking against the sterile light that pressed against his vision.
The world felt wrong.
Not dangerous. Not hostile. Just… displaced. As if he had been set down somewhere between memory and reality, expected to accept it without question.
He inhaled slowly. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and cold fabric. A Hospital.
He pushed himself up, every movement deliberate, cautious. Muscles protested with a dull ache, not sharp enough to alarm him, but present enough to remind him that something had happened. Something significant.
"What is going on…?" he muttered hoarsely to no one in particular. His voice sounded rough, as if it had not been used for a long time. "Why am I in the hospital?"
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a moment, letting the sensation of gravity settle back into his body. His hands rested on his thighs. He stared down at them.
They looked the same. Strong. Steady.
But they didn't feel the same.
He turned them over slowly, studying the faint tremor running through his fingers. A ghost of something. Fear? Weakness? Or simply the aftershock of waking from a place he could not fully remember?
He searched his mind.
Fragments surfaced. Broken images. Noise without context. Then he remembered.
The nightmare.
The memory did not come back gently. It struck him in a rush, vivid and overwhelming, dragging him under before he could prepare himself.
He was in water.
Cold, violent water that rose and fell in merciless waves. It surged around him, heavy and endless, swallowing every attempt he made to stay above the surface. He thrashed, arms flailing, legs kicking desperately, but the ocean did not care. It never cared.
Every time he forced his head above the surface to gasp for air, a wave crashed down onto him again, shoving him back beneath the surface. Salt water flooded his mouth and nose. He coughed, choked, inhaled—and only more water filled his lungs.
He could feel the pressure building in his chest, a suffocating weight that spread through his body. His movements became slower, heavier, as if the ocean itself was pressing down on him, insisting he stop struggling.
Then something tightened around his ankle.
He froze in panic.
He kicked violently, trying to free himself from whatever had wrapped around his leg, but it only pulled harder, dragging him downward. The surface of the water seemed suddenly impossibly far away, the light above him distorted and unreachable.
He tried to dive down, to see what held him, but another wave crashed over his head, forcing him completely beneath the surface. His eyes flew open in terror as darkness closed around him.
He gasped instinctively.
Water rushed in.
His lungs burned. He coughed violently, but each cough only forced more water inside. His chest convulsed, desperate for air that would not come.
He clawed upward, fighting, straining, but his body felt unbearably heavy. The pull on his leg tightened further, anchoring him to the depths as if something below had already claimed him.
His movements slowed.
The light above him dimmed.
His vision began to darken at the edges, shrinking inward until all that remained was a narrow tunnel of fading brightness.
He thought, dimly, that this was how it would end.
Then—
Light.
Not the weak, distorted light of the surface, but something far brighter. It pierced through the dark water, illuminating everything around him in a warm, almost blinding glow. For a moment he wondered if his mind was simply giving up, conjuring false hope before the end.
But the light did not fade.
It grew stronger.
And within it, a hand reached down toward him.
Clear. Steady. Offered without hesitation.
He did not question it. He did not wonder who it belonged to or what it meant. At that moment, none of that mattered.
Without a second thought, he reached out and grasped it.
The grip was firm.
Unyielding.
And suddenly he was being pulled upward, faster than he could comprehend. The crushing weight vanished. The water fell away. Air rushed back into his lungs in a violent, desperate gasp.
He coughed, retched, forcing water out of his chest while dragging in breath after breath of fresh air. Each inhale burned, but it was life. Real, undeniable life.
He collapsed onto solid ground, shaking, overwhelmed by the simple act of breathing.
After a long moment, the panic receded. His heartbeat slowed. His body loosened, the tension finally draining away.
He opened his eyes.
The ocean was gone.
Instead, he lay in the middle of gentle grassy hills that stretched endlessly in every direction. The sky above was wide and clear, bathed in warm sunlight that washed over everything with a calm, steady glow. A soft breeze moved through the grass, carrying with it the scent of something clean and alive.
It was peaceful.
He pushed himself up slowly, looking around. There was no shoreline. No wreckage. No sign that the ocean had ever existed.
Only rolling hills, endless sky, and the quiet whisper of wind through the grass.
No birds sang.
No insects buzzed.
No distant sounds of life echoed across the landscape.
It was not silence born of emptiness, but silence that felt… intentional. Complete. As though the world itself was holding its breath.
He stood unsteadily, the grass brushing softly against his legs. The warmth of the sun touched his skin, gentle and reassuring, easing the lingering chill that the water had left behind.
A strange calm settled over him.
Not the calm of exhaustion, nor the numbness that followed fear. This was different. Deeper. As if the turmoil inside him had been temporarily set aside, replaced with a quiet he had never truly known before.
He stretched his arms out slowly, letting the breeze move around him. For the first time since the nightmare began, he did not feel the urge to fight or resist.
He simply existed.
After a while, the heaviness returned—not oppressive, but gentle, like the pull of sleep after a long day. His eyelids grew heavy. The grass beneath him looked soft, inviting.
Without thinking too much about it, he lay down.
The sky above him stretched wide and endless. He watched the light shift across the clouds, the breeze whispering quietly around him. His breathing slowed. His body relaxed fully.
His eyelids slipped shut.
And when they opened again, he was in the hospital.
The memory ended there.
Commander Incarceratus exhaled slowly, grounding himself in the present. The room around him returned to focus: the machines, the sheets, the faint echo of footsteps somewhere beyond the closed door.
He stood up from the bed carefully and walked toward the window, each step deliberate as he reacquainted himself with his own weight.
Below him, the city was alive.
Cars moved along the streets in steady lines. People hurried across sidewalks, their voices blending into a distant murmur that rose and fell like another kind of tide. Buildings stretched high into the sky, windows reflecting sunlight in countless fractured glimmers.
It was all so ordinary.
So normal.
His eyes swept slowly over the crowds, searching without knowing exactly what he was searching for.
Then he saw him.
In a narrow alleyway across the street, partially hidden from the main road, an old man sat hunched against the wall. His clothes were worn, faded by time and weather. One hand was extended weakly toward passing pedestrians, though few spared him more than a brief glance.
Recognition struck immediately.
It was the same beggar he had encountered long ago.
The memory of that meeting was faint but persistent, like an echo that refused to fade. He remembered the old man's eyes most clearly—tired, yet strangely aware, as if he had seen far more than he ever spoke aloud.
The Commander leaned slightly closer to the glass, focusing.
Something glinted faintly in the old man's hand. A reflection of light, small and brief, like metal catching the sun. He couldn't quite make out what it was from this distance.
Curiosity stirred within him, quiet but insistent.
It felt… important.
A small smile tugged at his lips. Familiarity, even in the form of a beggar in an alley, felt grounding after the disorienting fog of the nightmare. Something real. Tangible.
He turned away from the balcony, intent on leaving his room.
But just as he reached the door, a sudden unease crept up his spine.
The sensation was subtle, yet unmistakable.
He was being watched.
He paused.
Slowly, he turned back toward the balcony, scanning the street below once more. His eyes searched the alley where the old man had been sitting only seconds ago.
The alley was empty.
No figure. No movement. No sign that anyone had been there at all.
Only a stray piece of paper drifted lazily across the ground before being caught by the wind and carried away.
Commander Incarceratus remained still for a long moment, staring at the empty space.
The faint smile on his face faded.
For reasons he could not explain, the memory of the outstretched hand in the water returned to him—bright, steady, impossible to ignore.
He placed a hand lightly against the glass of the balcony door, feeling the cool surface beneath his palm.
Something had happened to him.
Something more than a simple injury.
And though he could not yet see the full shape of it, he sensed—deep down—that the nightmare and the light were not separate events.
They were connected.
He just didn't know how.