"Even light casts a shadow… and sometimes the shadow remembers first."
---
The sky was tearing itself apart.
Lightning split the heavens in jagged veins of white, carving through clouds so dark they seemed almost solid. Each thunderclap rolled across the land like the roar of a wounded god. Wind screamed through the shattered valley, dragging ash and dust across the ruined battlefield until the air itself tasted like iron and smoke.
Above the devastation, a lone figure floated above in the storm.
Their black robes twisted violently in the wind, their edges snapping like torn banners. Around the figure, shimmered a circle of strange sigils burned in the air, symbols older than language itself. It flickered in unstable pulses, casting sickly violet light across the clouds.
The magic was alive.
Hungry.
Below it, the battlefield had become a graveyard.
Broken weapons lay scattered across cracked stone like abandoned relics of a forgotten war. The ground was a patchwork of scorched earth and broken steel, a graveyard of shattered blades and fallen warriors. Armor plates were split open, shields shattered, banners burned to black threads.
Bodies of fallen warriors rested where they had collapsed– silent witnesses to a battle already lost.
The ground was soaked with the crimson blood.
Steam curled upward where it touched the cold night air.
At the center of the carnage, one warrior remained standing.
No… not standing.
Kneeling.
Kneeling between the shattered remains.
Their armor was fractured, cloak torn by countless strikes, but they refused to let go of the body they held. In their arms rested a young girl, her head tilted lifelessly against their shoulder.
Her skin was pale, almost luminous beneath the storm.
Black strands of hair clung to her face, streaked with ash and dark crimson. A thin trail of blood slid slowly from the corner of her lips, falling in soft drops onto the shattered earth below.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
The sound was impossibly quiet– yet in that moment, it seemed louder than the thunder above.
The kneeling warrior trembled.
Not from fear.
From grief.
High above them, the cloaked figure slowly raised a hand.
The sigils surrounding them ignited brighter.
A surge of dark energy exploded outward, bending the storm itself. Black lightning cracked across the sky, branching like monstrous roots spreading through the heavens.
The air itself had become heavy, thick with a suffocating pressure that crushed the lungs and slowed the heartbeat. Even the wind seemed afraid to move.
But.
For a brief moment, the storm went silent.
And then–
Darkness swallowed everything.
Total.
Endless.
Unforgiving.
---
Fumiko jolted upright in her bed.
Air rushed violently into her lungs as if she had been drowning. Cold sweat soaked the collar of her nightshirt, dampening the strands of hair plastered to her neck. Her chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven breaths, and her heart hammered so loudly she could hear it echoing inside her ears.
For several seconds she can not move from her place.
The nightmare clings to her mind like smoke.
The battlefield.
The storm.
The shattered remains.
The girl.
Her fingers tightened around the bedsheets as if expecting them to be cold stone instead of soft cotton. A thin sheen of sweat covers her skin, chilling quickly in the cool air of the room.
Rain taps gently against the window of her room.
The quiet, ordinary sound felt almost unreal after the chaos of the dream.
Her eyes darted around the room.
The familiar shapes slowly grounded her: the wooden desk stacked with schoolbooks, the small lamp glowing faintly beside her bed, the faded poster pinned crookedly to the wall.
Her phone screen lit up on the nightstand.
4:27 AM.
Yokohama.
Present day.
Not a battlefield.
Not a ruined world.
Just her room.
Fumiko pressed trembling fingers against her temples and exhaled slowly.
"It was just a dream…only...a dream... nothing more"
She told herself, but the words has no weight, it feels weak even as she says them.
Because the truth is… it hadn't felt like a dream at all.
Dreams fades from mind when you woke up.
This one didn't.
The battlefield was too vivid: the acrid taste of smoke, the icy bite of the wind, the sorrow that hollowed her chest.
The metallic scent of blood still seemed to linger in her nose. Her ears still rang with distant thunder. Somewhere deep in her chest, the echo of that grief– the kneeling warrior holding the girl, still hurt like a fresh wound.
And the strangest part?
She felt like she knew them.
Not their names.
Not their faces.
But something inside her whispered that she had been there.
Fumiko drew her knees close to her chest and rested her forehead against them.
"This is getting worse… worse than I thought"
For months now, the dreams had returned again and again. At first they were vague fragments, blurred images, distant voices, flashes of light.
But each night they became clearer.
Sharper.
Closer.
Like memories slowly forcing their way back into the light.
Sometimes she saw a boy's face hidden in shadow.
Sometimes she saw a boy standing beside her in the storm.
Sometimes she saw the glow of a crescent-shaped weapon.
But the ending never changed.
The girl.
Dying.
Every single time.
Always that girl lying lifeless in someone's arms.
And the world drowning in darkness.
A faint breeze slips through the slightly open window, carrying the distant scent of rain-washed asphalt and early morning air.
Fumiko forces herself to breathe steadily.
Focus on reality.
Focus on the small, normal things.
The slow hum of the ceiling fan.
Her room smelled faintly of detergent and the lingering sweetness of yesterday's incense. She focused on that– on the small, mundane proof of her ordinary life.
The ticking of the clock.
The quiet rhythm of the city still asleep beyond her window.
But even as calm returned to the room, a strange unease remained coiled inside her chest.
Because deep down, she knows something that frightened her more than the dream itself.
It felt familiar.
Too familiar.
As if somewhere in the forgotten corners of her soul…
She had already lived it once before.