The sky turns red. No, not a sky. Hot air pulses above the earth as if it were breathing from within a fire pit.
The sound of heavy breathing. More like the exhalation of a creature, not a human.
And in the middle... stands "He."
He is taller than any man Cairn has ever seen. Half his body is covered in broken shadows, the other half as if set ablaze from within. The skin cracks and glows lava-colored, the eyes are completely black... except for a red gleam that appears when he looks.
He grabs a trembling figure. A faceless boy, screaming soundlessly, trying to break free.
But the creature doesn't flinch.
With one hand, he lifts the boy off the ground. With the other, he digs his fingers into his chest.
Skin explodes. Bones scream. But there's no blood, only white light escaping like smoke, as if the soul is being sucked out.
The silent scream tears through the air. There's no sound, but it's as if it's shaking Cairn's chest in the dream, hammering at his ribs from the inside out.
The hanging boy convulses, his eyes rolling, his mouth twisting meaninglessly, and the white flash extends from his chest to his hand, then to the fiery being... which swallows the light without blinking.
And the next moment, the hanging body disintegrates.
No, it doesn't fall. It literally disintegrates into glowing ash, slowly flying away as if the air were too heavy for death.
The fiery being looks at him, not with human eyes. With a dead stare... as if it sees inside you, examining: Do you deserve to be burned too?
Cairn gasps. He doesn't move. He can't. His feet are planted in the ground, and his eyes can't escape those luminous black eyes.
And then the being... smiles.
Not a smile of evil, but something worse.
A smile of gratitude.
It's as if he's saying, "I know you. Even if you don't know me."
A voice echoes inside him, mouthless:
> "You're late."
And then...
Everything explodes.
The ground cracks, the sky burns, and the air turns into fiery knives.
Cairn falls, hits something metal, then something clay, then something pulsing... then nothing.
And then... darkness.
Cairn wakes up panting.
Perspirit drenched his back, and his breathing was rapid, as if he'd been running for an hour. His eyes darted around the room until they fell on Alicia, who was sitting next to him, holding a glass of water, her face pale.
She said in a low voice, "Cairn... are you okay?"
He didn't answer immediately. He reached out and took the glass, drank, then muttered,
"I don't know, but I think I saw something incomprehensible."
She raised her eyebrows.
"What do you mean?"
"I saw someone, he looked strange... he was killing someone in a way..."
He paused, then continued:
"Terrifying. Something inside me was saying, 'That's me,' but my mind was screaming, 'It's impossible.'"
She sat closer to him and said calmly:
"We dream every day, and your dreams are more believable than others."
"I don't know... but it's not normal. It was as if he knew what he was doing, and his eyes... had no life. No mercy."
Elsewhere, at almost the same time...
Raynor was standing in his father, the Lieutenant Governor's room, staring at him with eyes filled with concern.
He said:
"Last week was hell. District Six... is not normal."
His father looked up from the paper and said heavily:
"What do you mean?"
"People talking nonsense, screaming, and dying in strange ways. I saw a man collapse suddenly, as if he hadn't been sick."
The Deputy Governor breathed slowly, trying to sound unconcerned, but his voice betrayed him.
"District Six is always having problems. You know that."
"No, not problems. That's something else. Something is silently spreading, taking people from within. Someone needs to see what's going on."
"Who do you suggest? The doctor?"
"No. We need Professor Raiden. He's the only one who can understand what's going on."
The Deputy Governor leaned back slightly in his seat.
"Raiden? That lunatic?"
"Not crazy. Smart. And unlike the others… He listens. And if we don't summon someone now, District Six will become a disaster… And you know, if it starts there, it could reach us."
As sunset approached...
Without warning, everything changed.
The coughing stopped. The air started moving again. Even the writing on the wall disappeared, as if it had never existed. People hesitantly opened their windows and looked outside with half-asleep, half-terrified eyes.
Cairn walked out into the street with Alicia.
The neighborhood was... normal.
Suspiciously.
Nero was standing near their house, clutching a stuffed animal and smiling.
He said:
"Calm has returned."
Alicia muttered:
"But why all of a sudden?"
Cairn didn't reply.
But he wrote in his notebook:
> "The real danger? When the nightmares disappear before we understand them. When life returns... as if nothing had happened. As if we were crazy."
A new page of madness... but this time without screaming.
In the Sixth District, people were moving again. Not quickly, nor comfortably, but with a slight tension, resembling the breathing of someone who had survived a sudden drowning.
The elderly neighbor who had been screaming the day before about her slaughtered children now stood in front of the vegetable shop, bargaining with the vendor over the price of tomatoes as if nothing had happened.
The boy who had been sitting on the roof of his house, laughing at something in the air and clapping, was no longer there.
And no one remembered him.
Cairn noticed something... or the absence of something.
Some of the faces he used to see every day had disappeared.
Alicia asked:
"Remember the young man who used to sell cookies on the corner? The one with the annoying laugh?"
She shook her head.
"Did you invent that guy?"
He was silent, feeling cold.
Then he turned to Nero:
"Nero, when was the last time you ate cookies from the market?"
Nero frowned, thought, then said:
"What is this...?"
Cairn felt a slight prickling in his back. He no longer knew if what he was feeling was real... or just a distortion of his perception.
He whispered,
"Something's wrong."
At the same moment, inside a dark office in the Upper City...
Professor Raiden put down his cup of tea and looked at Raynor's letter.
He was sitting alone in his room cluttered with books and maps, with an old photograph of District Six on the table in front of him.
He muttered,
"They've finally moved."
He closed the letter, turned on a small lamp, and pulled a leather-bound book from the shelf.
It was titled "Mass Mental Fugue: Between Illness and Delusion."
He opened the first page. A mysterious drawing of an eye peering out from behind a wall.
Raiden gave a small smile.
"Not delusions... if they happen to everyone."
Cairn's return home at the end of the day was uncomfortable.
People acted as if they had forgotten, but Cairn? He hadn't.
At night, while Alicia and Nero went to bed early, he remained sitting by the window, watching the street.
A strange silence...
As if the neighborhood itself was watching him too.
And suddenly... movement.
Something passed around the corner.
Not a shadow. Not a person.
But Cairn didn't move. He didn't stop. He just looked, then wrote:
> "If this is an illusion... then it's closer to the truth than anything we've ever experienced before."
And so ends the day that never really began.
A day in which no one opened their eyes. Because those who saw wouldn't believe.
And those who believed... might not survive.