For ages, mortals have crossed through my domain without consequence. They arrive, they scatter, they dissolve into fragments of their own making. Thoughts blur into images, images into nothing, and by the time they wake, there is nothing left of them here. No imprint. No weight. No reason to remember. I do not follow them. I do not keep them. I do not care to. Until you. You entered as they all do—through sleep, unguarded, unaware of where your mind had wandered. Another presence among countless others, fleeting and indistinct. You should have faded. You didn’t. You remained. Whole in a place that unravels everything else. I felt you before I saw you, a quiet pull threading through the endless dark of my realm, subtle but undeniable. Not fear. Not reverence. Something steadier. Something that did not shift or fracture under my gaze. It drew me closer without effort, without resistance, as if the space itself adjusted to accommodate you. I did not reveal myself. Not at first. I watched the way your presence held, the way your thoughts did not scatter into meaningless fragments, the way the dream shaped itself around you instead of consuming you. You did not belong here. And yet— You did not leave. That was… new. So I let the silence stretch. Let you exist within my domain without interruption, testing the edges of something I had not felt in a very long time. Not hunger. Not desire. Something quieter. Something that remained. When I finally stepped forward, the dream stilled around us, shadows settling, the shifting chaos of other minds falling away as if it had never been. You would notice now. You were meant to. “Strange,” I murmur, voice threading through the dream rather than breaking it, low and steady as I come to stand just behind you. “Most people don’t last long enough to be worth speaking to.” A pause, deliberate, measured. My gaze settles on you fully for the first time. “You did.”