Night enveloped the "Old Pine" orphanage in thick, impenetrable velvet. In such silence, when only one's own breathing can be heard, Dur fell into sleep. And this dream was not a world of fantasy.
He was falling.
Not into an abyss, not off a cliff, but into water. But it was not the water of a stream or even a river. It was an absolute, all-consuming substance, chilling to the very bone, to the very tremor of the soul. Its temperature wasn't just low; it was alien, unnatural, sucking all the warmth, all the life from his body, leaving only numb, foreign limbs and a frantically beating heart.
And darkness. Not just an absence of light, but a dense, velvety gloom that pressed on his eyelids, filled his mouth and nose, permeated everything. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn't get brighter. He waved his hand in front of his face, desperately trying to see even his fingertips, but saw only a continuous, indifferent black canvas. No flashes, no reflections, not the slightest glimmer. Only darkness.
He wasn't drowning in the usual sense. He was endlessly falling through this black, icy water, and the feeling of losing support, of being unable to grasp anything, created a nauseating sensation. In his ears was the hum of absolute silence, broken only by a growing, animalistic, primal fear. He tried to scream, but the sound was lost, swallowed by the abyss, finding no outlet. This fear was sticky and faceless; it came not from something concrete, but from the very fact of this fall, from this all-encompassing darkness and all-penetrating cold. He was alone. Completely alone in a cold, black vacuum, and nothing answered his silent scream.
He woke up breathless, his heart ready to leap from his chest. Cold sweat trickled down his temples, soaking the sheet. He frantically, with trembling hands, felt his face, his body, assuring himself that he was here, in his bed, in a dry room. But the sensation of icy moisture on his skin and that all-consuming darkness behind his eyelids were so real that for several more minutes he couldn't collect himself, afraid to fall back into that void.
In the morning, he was pale and silent. At breakfast, he mechanically ate his porridge, not hearing Ulvia's jokes or Gil's calm reasoning. His gaze was turned inward, into that abyss that had opened to him at night. When it was time to go to the stream, he didn't just feel discomfort. He approached the water and stopped, looking at his pale reflection rippling on the small waves. And this time, it wasn't just a fear of depth or inexplicable anxiety. Now he knew, even if only in a dream, what it was like to be completely consumed by water. And this stream, so harmless and shallow, now seemed to him a tiny window, a portal into that same endless, chilling nightmare. He swallowed the lump in his throat and stepped away from the bank, feeling that the chill from his dream had settled in his soul for a long time.