It happened during breakfast.
One moment I was staring at the steam curling off a bowl of rice.
The next, I wasn't there at all.
I was in the hallway of our house.
The lights were off. A flickering shadow pulsed across the wall like a candle swaying underwater.
My mother stood at the kitchen sink. But something was wrong.
She wasn't moving.
She was frozen — one hand gripped around a glass that had already shattered.
Blood dripped from her fingers.
And behind her, the silhouette of my father loomed.
Not moving.
Just watching.
His mouth was open. And I couldn't hear what he was saying.
But I saw it.
A single word, over and over:
"Why?"
Then, like a rewound tape, the hallway snapped back.
And I was back at the table, staring at my rice.
Still warm.
Still real.
But my hands… they were shaking.
What was that?
A memory? A dream? A lie?
No.
It hadn't happened yet.
But it was going to.
I could feel it — the same way you know a glass is about to fall, or a balloon is about to pop.
It wasn't imagination.
It was inevitability.
That afternoon, I went to the drawer where my mother kept her glasses.
There were six of them.
All intact.
I picked the smallest one. Turned it in my hands.
Smooth. Clear. No cracks.
"Don't trust them."
The words from the dream echoed again.
But this time… I wasn't sure if it referred to people.
Or moments.
Or me.
That night, the dream was different.
It didn't come slowly.
It dragged me in.
I stood in front of a board — pinned with photographs I didn't remember taking.
Snippets of the real world:
My hand reaching for a doorknob.
My mother's bruised wrist.
The back of a man's head, sitting in a bus.
Each had a string tied to it.
Each string led back to me.
And in the center of the board was one sentence, etched in light:
"You will understand only after it breaks."
A clock ticked.
I turned around.
And there he was.
The man who didn't blink.
This time, he stood closer. His face clearer — but not any more human.
He placed something into my palm.
A shard of mirror.
"Find the question," he said. "The answer has already chosen you."
Then everything shattered again.
I woke up with a scream caught in my throat.
The room was still.
The air too heavy.
I threw off the blanket.
And there — on the floor beside the bed — was a piece of glass.
Tiny. Clean.
Just like the one in the drawer.
I picked it up.
It was warm.
Like it had been held recently.
By something not me.
This wasn't a dream anymore.
This was real.
And whatever had started… wasn't waiting for me to be ready.
It had already begun.