I had one dream that didn't feel like a dream.
I was back in the villa's garden, but everything was submerged. The statues, the walls, even the trees—they all floated in a dense, silent ocean. And I was floating too, standing upright, as if the water didn't obey gravity.
The sky above me wasn't sky. It was stone. Black. Sealed shut.
She was beneath me, not swimming, but standing, barefoot, on the bottom of that dark ocean. Her hair floated around her like ink. I couldn't see her face, but her presence felt more focused than ever.
Then, without moving her lips, she spoke directly into my head.
"Where they drowned my name, you will raise it."
I gasped awake.
But the strange thing? My body was soaked. My shirt clung to me. My pillow was damp, my hair dripping like I'd just emerged from water.
Yet the room was dry. The windows were closed. The ceiling fan spun lazily, mocking any attempt to explain.
That morning, I didn't go to work. I didn't write a blog post. I didn't make coffee.
I booked a one-way ticket back to Bali.
I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever had begun months ago—whatever presence had haunted me through mirrors and dreams—was now expecting me to finish something.
And I owed her that.
---
The moment I stepped out of the airport in Denpasar, it was as if the island exhaled. The air hit me in the chest. Thick. Familiar. Heavy with meaning.
Pak Wayan greeted me at the villa. He said nothing at first. Just looked me in the eyes and nodded slowly.
"You feel her stronger now," he said.
I didn't reply.
We both knew the answer.
---
The villa was the same, but the shadows weren't.
They clung tighter to the corners, as if watching.
I walked the garden path without knowing where I was going. Past the offering trays. Past the guardian statue—now worn, moss-covered, its face seeming to turn subtly toward me.
And then I saw it.
The old well.
I'd never noticed it before.
But now I couldn't unsee it.
It wasn't decorative. It was ancient. Its stones weren't like the rest of the villa—they were darker, older, almost volcanic.
I stood over the edge and peered down.
No reflection.
No water.
Just a pit of silence so dense, it seemed to pull my breath inward.
I dropped a coin.
No sound.
Not even a whisper.
---
That night I didn't sleep on the bed.
I laid near the well. I placed the small obsidian stone beside me—the one I found months ago inside that folded offering. It felt warm in my hand.
I closed my eyes.
And again, I entered the dream.
But this time, I wasn't underwater.
I was inside a mirror.
Everything was backward—the trees, the sky, the stars. Even my heartbeat felt reversed.
There were people here.
But they weren't... people.
They were *echoes*—moving forms made of thought and memory. They glided, they whispered, but made no sound.
And in the center of this world stood *her*.
Only now, she had eyes.
Dark. Familiar. Deep with sorrow.
She reached for my hand.
I took it.
---
We walked through that mirrored world.
I saw glimpses of people staring into mirrors across the world. A woman in Morocco brushing her hair and whispering to her reflection. A boy in Thailand staring at a mirror that blinked back.
Then I saw an old man with fire-blackened hands drawing a symbol onto a silver plate.
The same twelve-handed circle I kept seeing in dreams.
"That was me," she said softly beside me. "I saw what others feared. I warned them."
"What did you warn them of?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she placed something into my palm.
A mirror shard.
But it pulsed like a heartbeat.
"Finish what they tried to bury," she said. "You have my reflection. You hold what they stole."
---
I woke with a sharp pain in my hand.
When I opened my palm, it was bleeding slightly. A thin, clean cut, shaped like a crescent.
I stared at it in disbelief.
I had brought something back from the dream.
---
At dawn, I returned to the well.
This time, I brought a mirror.
I held it over the opening.
And then—I saw her reflection. Not mine.
Just her.
She stood behind me in the glass. Eyes open. Hair gently moving, as if underwater.
Behind her, twelve women.
All watching.
All silent.
All waiting.
"Say it," she whispered.
"Say my name."
But I didn't know it.
So I whispered, "Show me."
And the mirror cracked—not shattered—just cracked, like a shell giving way.
Then I heard it.
A song.
Low.
Melancholy.
Not in any language I knew, but one I remembered.
Somehow.
I began to hum.
And as I did, the women in the mirror began to move their lips.
One by one.
A chorus without words.
A mourning song passed through time.
Then silence.
And her voice again:
> "Now they'll remember."
I don't know what I unlocked.
A memory?
A door?
A ritual?
But I know this: she was never a ghost. She was a witness. A guardian. A seer buried alive in silence.
And now… her voice is echoing again.
✅ *If this chapter moved something in you, follow the nove
l, leave a comment, and add it to your collection. Chapter 16 waits where silence turns to song.