Leon POV

For the first time in days, real sleep claimed me, dragging me into a heavy, dream-filled slumber. The past few days were worrying about whether we'd pull the escape off and whether we'd even make it this far...so a dream wasn't necessarily a bad thing to experience...But this dream was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. It wasn't the usual mess of thoughts or memories twisted together by exhaustion.

This was…different. Clear. Vivid.

I found myself in a warm, dimly lit room, and the scent of something sweet hung in the air, and I could hear voices. Someone was feeding me. I didn't know who as I couldn't even make out their face, but I felt it...the careful way the food was brought to my mouth, the gentle touch of a hand on my skin. There was a soft hum in the background, a melody I didn't recognize but felt strangely comforted by. It was soothing, familiar in a way that didn't make sense.

"He's walking now," a soft, motherly voice said, "It took a bit, but he's getting the hang of it."

"I told you he'd be fine," another female voice replied, "He's strong. Just like his mother."

More voices chimed in, all talking about me. Things like how I was crawling, how I had started laughing, the joy I brought into the room...details I couldn't remember, but they felt real, too real to ignore. It was like they were describing moments I should have remembered, but didn't. Moments from a life I never knew I'd lived. The warmth, the tenderness of their words...it all felt so right, so deeply personal. But I knew I had never experienced anything like this in my conscious life. There was no way I could remember my first year as a baby. No one can.

And yet, the more I listened, the more I believed this wasn't just some dream conjured by exhaustion or stress. It felt real...like I was peeking into a memory that had been locked away, buried deep where I couldn't access it. The sounds, the sensations, even the way the air moved in the room...it all resonated with something deep inside me. A motherly figure, unseen but undeniably present, continued to talk about me with such affection, such familiarity. Who was she? Was this my mother? My real mother? The thought lingered, tugging at something inside me.

But I couldn't hold onto the dream. As much as I wanted to stay there, wrapped in that strange comfort, I could feel it slipping away. The warmth faded, the voices grew distant, and before I knew it, I was waking up. However...before I could, I felt something pulling me back.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The dream shifted, and suddenly, I could move, but I still was in a dream. I stood in a house. My house. At least, it looked like my house, but something about it felt...off. Like an imitation, close but not quite right. The walls were the same, but the decorations were different and older. Paintings I didn't recognize hung on the walls, and the furniture was arranged in a way I'd never seen before. Curiosity got the best of me, but as I stepped forward, I saw my translucent body.

"Can I phase through walls?" I muttered to myself, half-expecting nothing to happen.

But as I reached out, my hand passed effortlessly through the nearest wall. I stared in amazement for a moment, then stepped through it, finding myself in the next room. But if I could phase through walls, why couldn't I phase through the ground? I looked down again, confused, but decided not to dwell on it. I kept walking, moving through the house, taking in every strange detail. The calendar caught my eye though, it was years in the past.

How was that possible? I hadn't even been here then. The dates didn't make sense as I wouldn't know what any of this looked like.

I moved through the rooms, trying to piece together what was going on. As I wandered further, I heard something that made me stop, it was a doorbell ringing from the front of the house. Cautiously, I made my way to the front door and peeked through it, not sure what to expect. What I saw chilled me to my core. There, on the porch, was a baby cradle. A small bundle lay inside, wrapped tightly in a blanket. No one was around. No signs of life beyond the quiet street outside. I stepped closer, drawn to the cradle, and peered inside.

The baby stared back at me. And in that moment, I knew...it was me. But something was wrong. I remembered arriving at this house differently. I wasn't left on a doorstep like this, I was wandering. So why was this happening?

I turned back, questions swirling in my mind when I saw it. A black figure stood at the end of the hallway, its eyes glowing a sinister red. It was featureless, a shadow with no form except for those piercing eyes that seemed to burn straight through me.

I froze, my heart pounding in my chest, but the figure didn't give me time to react. It lunged at me, moving faster than anything I'd ever seen. And then I woke up gasping for air, I bolted upright in bed, drenched in sweat. My heart was still racing, my mind struggling to catch up with reality.

What kind of generic protagonist dream was that? A lunging black demon...? Why was I scared?"

"Yo, you alright?" Viper asked.

"Why are you sleeping on my bed?"

"I can't get a private bed here, John also has to sleep outside, since they don't have a centaur's bed."

"...I just noticed, but how do centaurs sleep?"

"They sleep by lying on their sides, anyway, get back to sleep, it's still 2 am, we need some rest."

"A nightmare...that's weird." The already-awoken Diana chimed in.

"Do you not sleep?"

"I do sleep for a refresher every now and then, but I don't need to."

"So, what's weird?"

"I would know if anyone is having a dream nearby, Gods like Hypnos and other dream deities managed to weaponize it a lot a few centuries ago, so we made ourselves aware and alert if there was someone with a dream nearby, of course, a dream is a natural process, but...a nightmare...how did that get past me?"