The light did nothing, it vanished against the darkness of the being's cloak as if it had never existed. But its rage was palpable. "Impudent!" it growled. Its skeletal hand moved with unnatural speed, clawing at the air toward Kael. He felt a sharp sting in his chest, as if his own heart had been seized and squeezed.
A wave of painful memories flooded him: the blurry images of Elara struggling, his own impotence, the crushing weight of failure. The dark being was attempting to destroy what remained of his dream, to finish the job.
Kael fell to his knees, clutching his chest, his breath dying in his throat. It was over. His adventure in this place had lasted less than a breath...
He woke up with a void in his chest, as if someone had taken a piece of his heart.
The same nightmare.
Again.
He squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated: his surroundings blurred, and an arid expanse began to appear, with dry shrubs here and there, and the grassy paths of the past turned to dust.
He stopped concentrating: his Dream Garden vanished while his surroundings reappeared in all their solidity.
He was eighteen years old when it happened.
Once, that inner landscape was a lush grove, steeped in the bittersweet scent of memories of his younger sister, Elara.
She wasn't dead, not physically.
A shadow had stretched over her, a silent illness that had stolen her smile and, finally, her consciousness, leaving her in a deep sleep from which the healers found no way to wake her.
Kael had always held tight to the memory of her crystal-clear laughter, her curious eyes, and the tiny hands that clung to him.
They were his strength, his light in a world that had never been kind. She had a vitality beyond the ordinary, even compared to children her own age.
But then, one day, the garden became arid after a slow drying process.
"I don't even remember her laughter anymore..."
The months turned into a year.
He had stopped counting.
In his mind, only a vague, indistinct tinkling remained, as if the part of him that loved her had been cut away.
The moment had arrived.
Kael crossed the threshold of the small room housing his sister; the smell of lavender and disinfectant tightened his throat.
Elara lay motionless in the bed. Beside her, intent on changing the wet cloth on the girl's forehead, was Sister Miriam, a woman in her fifties, her face marked by fatigue but illuminated by kind eyes.
He stood there, rigid, his fists clenched. It was the first time he had returned in nearly a month.
"It's been weeks. How is she?" Kael asked in a low voice.
"Just as you left her, Kael. Stable. She still breathes with the same rhythm," she replied in a calm voice.
Kael took a step closer but stopped again, unable to look directly at Elara's face.
His eyes fixed on the rhythmic movement of her chest.
"Miriam, the truth is she isn't living. She's just breathing. It's torture! Her heart beats, but her mind is ash. It's just a mechanical function."
Sister Miriam straightened up, looking at Kael with a mix of compassion and firmness. "Kael, please. You come less and less. But you know the saying: 'As long as there's life, there's hope'..."
A bitter laugh escaped his lips, "Don't talk to me about hope. I only see a shell. And I can't stand looking at a warm corpse anymore. It's easier to believe she's simply dead." Sister Miriam approached and placed a gentle hand on his forearm.
Kael pulled away involuntarily.
"Perhaps the problem is that she is still here, and you cannot run away from this, Kael. Come visit her, even if it hurts. No words are needed, your presence is enough."
Kael stared at her.
The void in his chest was now a painful sting. He turned toward the door, unable to handle the pressure any longer.
"I'm leaving. I have work. I'll get you the money for the care you're providing."
Sister Miriam followed him with her gaze, "Come back soon, Kael. She doesn't keep track of the days, but I do."
He didn't answer.
He left the room in a hurry, leaving the stifling peace of Elara's chamber for the hurried and indifferent reality of the street. He knew Miriam's words would haunt him until his next, inevitable, and increasingly delayed visit.
By nineteen, Kael had become a shadow of himself.
As he walked, his shoulders were tense, his pace rapid and decisive. He continued to work in his uncle's hardware store, lifting crates and organizing tools with mechanical efficiency. His uncle, a robust and taciturn man named Borin, had been watching him for weeks.
"Uncle, I'm going to deliver the tools today. I was supposed to do it yesterday. And I'm also tired of being cooped up in the shop today, besides..." His uncle nodded: "Alright, take a walk, Kael."
In the afternoon, which was particularly sweltering, Kael was delivering tools in a more affluent suburb, an area where people's dream gardens were once, for the most part, lush and vibrant with color.
He passed a small square adorned with a splashing fountain.
On the edge of the fountain, a girl of perhaps seven years old, dressed in modest and dirty clothes, was sobbing quietly, clutching something transparent in her hands that Kael initially mistook for a handful of withered petals, so much indistinct it was.
It wasn't unusual to see "broken" or damaged dreams around the city. Sometimes, small family arguments or daily disappointments could cause slight dents or discolorations in dreams, which would then heal on their own over time.
But what the girl held was different.
He narrowed his eyes: reality began to blur and what Kael was able to see of the girl's Dream Garden was all in her tiny hands: they were fragments, opaque shards.
There wasn't a glimmer of light, only a dull paleness. They were the residues of a completely destroyed dream.
Kael was not the type to meddle in others' business, especially not after his own loss. But the sight of those fragments caused an unexpected sting, an echo of the pain he thought he had buried.
He stopped.
The girl, with messy hair and swollen eyes, continued to sob, clutching the fragments as if they were the most precious thing in the world.
"Hey," Kael said, "What... what do you have there?"
The girl looked up, eyes full of tears reflecting her fears. "My... my Blooming Garden. Mommy said it would grow as big as a tree..." she sobbed. "But... but it fell. It's all broken."
Kael felt a pang in his heart. The "Blooming Garden" was a common dream among children, the innocent expectation of growing up and achieving something beautiful in life. The sight of her despair, so pure and disarming, shook him from his lethargy. Instinctively, he reached out.
"Can I... can I see?" he asked, almost without realizing it.
The girl hesitated, then with a trembling gesture, handed him the fragments. Kael took them gently in the palm of his hand.
They were cold, inert, devoid of any vibration.
They were the tangible proof of a loss, an innocence stolen. As he observed them, a spark, a minute glow, burst from his index finger and spread to the fragments. It wasn't a strong light, but an ephemeral flicker, brief, almost an illusion.
Suddenly, Kael's head was flooded by a surge of sensations. They weren't his: they were the girl's! A deep disappointment filled his heart, which began to beat faster, he felt adrenaline rise with a shiver down his spine, followed by the impulse to run, but his legs felt weak and he couldn't move.
Then he saw a small sprout poking out of the ground, wrapped in light: his heartbeat slowed, he felt a warmth flood his arms, chest, and legs, a sense of well-being throughout his body.
It lasted only an instant, a fraction of a second. He was confused, disoriented. Then, everything vanished, leaving him with a slight headache and the dream fragments still inert in his hand.
The girl, however, had stopped crying. Her eyes were wide, fixed on the fragments in Kael's palm. "Did you... did you see?" she whispered. "For a second, I smelled the flowers!"
Kael looked at her, incredulous. Had she felt it too? Or had she simply projected her hope onto that faint glow? He shook his head, the fragments still between his fingers. The spark had been so weak, the vision so rapid.
His heart began to beat quickly.
He didn't know how to respond, so he told her the first thing that came to mind, gripped by panic: "W..what?!", Kael murmured, returning the fragments to her, "No... it's not possible... It makes no sense..." he told her with a dizzy sensation in his stomach.
'What the hell happened?! What was that light that came out of my finger?' he thought, his breath quicker, his brow furrowed, 'And everything else?...'
The girl stared at him for a moment, then her lower lip began to tremble again. "No! I... I felt it!" She tugged his sleeve. "Do it again! Please!"
Kael gave a start, looked around trying to see if anyone was watching them, he felt his forehead prickle, sweat starting to form on his face.
Something had happened, only he didn't know what yet....
"No I... I have nothing to do with it! No... no..." he told her, forcing himself to stay calm. The girl's watery eyes widened, she sobbed, her lips trembling. "You're mean!"
She ran away, the fragments clutched to her chest.
Kael stood motionless beside the fountain, watching her with his mouth open as she ran off: that last phrase had hit him like a punch to the stomach. The palm of his hand was still itching faintly.
The vision had been so vivid, albeit brief. A sprout, a hope. The scent of flowers.
He looked at his hand again, his brow furrowed, shaking his head slightly. He looked up, but the girl was gone.
Had it been a suggestion? Or did that small, non-existent spark mean something? He was bewildered.
For the first time in months, Kael felt something other than the void.
It was a spark of confusion, certainly, but also a tiny, unexpected prickle of curiosity. His pragmatism screamed at him that it was a coincidence, a projection of the mind.
But his sensitive heart, the one he thought he had lost, wondered:
'What if it wasn't?'