The Dreamscape trembled.
Not in rage, nor in despair—but in uncertainty.
Elias had barely taken a step after the shades vanished when a piercing sound split the silence—a high-pitched resonance, like crystal fracturing beneath immense pressure. He staggered, clutching his head as a surge of unfamiliar memories assaulted his mind.
But these weren't his.
He was seeing through the eyes of someone else.
A child, standing alone in a golden field.
A woman crying under a red moon.
A blade drenched in light and sorrow.
A door—black, jagged, ancient—creaking open with a groan that echoed across lifetimes.
He gasped and dropped to one knee. The vision snapped back to the present like a taut string cut loose. Sweat trickled down his brow.
"What—what was that?" Elias whispered.
From behind him, a voice answered, hushed and shaken. "A memory that was never yours to witness."
He turned sharply.
A woman stood there. Draped in veils of translucent twilight, her eyes shimmered with the weight of impossible knowledge. She was neither shade nor dreamer—something older. Something bound to the very root of the Dreamscape.
"I am Elarein," she said. "The Keeper of the Forbidden Threads."
Elias narrowed his gaze. "You showed me that memory."
"No," she said softly. "You unlocked it. Your presence here has begun to unravel paths sealed long before your soul ever touched the Dreamscape."
He felt it now—the ripple he had created. Each step forward wasn't just moving through space—it was pulling at the delicate seams of forgotten histories, drawing truths into the open like moths to flame.
Elarein approached, and the air around her shimmered with echoes. "You must choose carefully, Elias. Every truth revealed brings a weight—and not all memories should be remembered."
He felt the ache in his heart intensify. He thought of Lyra, of the fractured guardians, of the cost already paid. And now… there were truths still hidden—perhaps for good reason.
But he couldn't stop. Not now.
"Then show me the next thread," he said, voice steady. "I'll carry what others couldn't."
Elarein studied him for a long moment… and then, with a slow motion of her hand, a path of starlight unfolded beneath their feet—leading into a chasm darker than any dream he'd known.
"Then walk," she said. "And may your soul endure what it remembers."
The path of starlight pulsed gently beneath his feet, casting soft glows onto the sheer walls of the Dreamscape's abyss. As Elias walked beside Elarein, silence stretched between them—not awkward, but reverent. This was a descent not just into another realm but into the essence of memory itself.
The deeper they went, the more the air thickened, as if time were folding inward. Fragmented voices began to whisper—some familiar, others alien.
"He should never have opened the gate." "It was his choice to forget." "We were once whole. Once real."
Elias clutched his pendant, the one Lyra had given him long ago. It pulsed in response, not just with warmth, but with something stranger: a faint resistance, as though it recognized where they were heading.
"Elarein," Elias said, breaking the silence. "What exactly is the Forbidden Thread?"
She didn't answer immediately. Her gaze remained forward. "A memory not born from experience, but from possibility. A path that never was… but almost came to be. When dreamers tamper too deeply, the Dreamscape stores these echoes. They should remain untouched."
"But I touched them," Elias said.
"You didn't just touch them," she replied. "You are unraveling them."
A deep rumble passed beneath their feet. The chasm quaked. Shapes moved within the shadows along the cliff face—forms that resembled half-remembered nightmares, melting and reforming, watching him.
"Are those memories too?" he asked.
"No," she said grimly. "They are consequences."
At last, they reached the base of the chasm. Before them stood a massive monolith etched with glowing runes. It pulsed with an eerie heartbeat. A veil of translucent threads hovered around it, each one vibrating to an unseen rhythm.
Elias stepped closer. The moment his fingers brushed one of the threads, the world changed.
He was no longer in the chasm.
He stood in a realm of pure white—an infinite void where memories floated like constellations. Before him stood a version of himself—taller, older, eyes sharp with understanding and sorrow.
"I am what you could become," the echo said. "Or what you already were."
Elias shook his head. "I don't understand."
"Because you have not yet remembered. But now… you must."
The void erupted in visions:
A war in a world of shattered suns.
Lyra's face, fading in a storm of light.
Elias standing before the same monolith, long ago, sealing something behind it.
He staggered back.
"I… sealed myself?"
The echo nodded. "To forget. To begin again. Because the truth broke you once. It might again."
"But if I don't remember—"
"The world breaks anyway."
Back in the chasm, Elias collapsed to his knees, breathing heavily. Elarein knelt beside him.
"You saw it," she said.
"I… I was something else. Before. I chose to forget."
She nodded. "And now the Dreamscape remembers you. What you do next will echo beyond dreams."
He looked up at her, fire kindling behind his eyes. "Then I'll finish what I began. No more forgetting."
Above them, the threads trembled as the Dreamscape stirred, awakening ancient truths from their long slumber.