One night, I went to sleep.
But the world did not darken.
Instead, it folded inward,
peeling away like a page burned at the edges.

I woke up in a dream—
or something older, deeper,
where breath had no sound,
where even the wind did not dare move.

I stood in a garden,
but the soil was black, thick as ink.
Roses swayed, their petals too red,
as if they had been drinking from veins instead of roots.
Crows perched on twisted branches,
silent, watching, never blinking.

I froze.
Not from fear,
but because something in me whispered—
"This is not the first time."

And then I saw it.

A figure standing between the roses and the void,
wrapped in a cloak that swallowed the light.
It did not move, did not breathe,
but I knew it was waiting.

I walked forward.
Not because I had to.
Not because I was called.
But because hesitation was no longer mine to hold.

The closer I came, the more I forgot—
the taste of my name,
the weight of my body,
the way time used to move in straight lines.

Then, with hands made of silence,
it lifted the cloak.

And beneath—
not bone, not void, not emptiness—
but a woman.

Or something shaped like one.

Her form was shadow stitched into curves,
her face a suggestion of features,
shifting, unreadable, yet undeniably there.

"Do you know me?" she asked,
though her lips...