Ray found himself standing in the middle of an endless sea.
There was no recollection of falling asleep, nor any awareness of how he had arrived. One moment, there had been darkness, The next moment he was standing somewhere that seemed to exist beyond the boundaries of the world he knew.
The first thing he noticed was the water.
It stretched endlessly in every direction, its surface shimmering with an unusual golden hue. Yet it wasn't entirely gold. Beneath the faint radiance were countless shades of color—pale white, deep blue, silver, and an almost immeasurable darkness that seemed to shift whenever he tried to focus on it.
The water moved slowly.
Vast waves rolled across the horizon, rising and falling in an irregular rhythm. Some curled into enormous spirals, while others stretched into long, flowing currents of golden light. It resembled an ocean, but its movements were too peculiar to be natural.
There was no wind.
No sound.
Not even the faintest disturbance in the air.
Ray lowered his gaze.
His feet rested upon the water's surface. Despite the lack of any visible support, he remained perfectly balanced. Small ripples spread beneath his feet, but the water never gave way.
He crouched and extended a hand.
His fingertips touched the surface.
It felt cold.
Yet, beneath that coldness, he sensed something else—a faint warmth that seemed to travel through the water and disappear into the distance.
He withdrew his hand and watched the ripples slowly fade.
"...Strange."
His voice sounded unusually distant, almost as though it had been swallowed by the surrounding silence.
Ray straightened and looked around.
There was no obvious destination, but standing still would hardly help him understand where he was. He began walking.
Each step produced a small ripple of golden light. The water beneath him remained firm, allowing him to move without difficulty. Occasionally, faint shapes appeared beneath the surface, disappearing before he could properly distinguish them.
At first, he assumed they were reflections.
But there was nothing above him that could have produced them.
He continued walking.
The farther he went, the more peculiar the surroundings became.
The golden sea was not uniform. Some sections were almost perfectly clear, allowing him to see what appeared to be countless distant lights beneath the surface. Others were clouded by dark currents that moved in directions contrary to the waves above.
He stopped beside one of them.
The dark current twisted slowly, forming patterns that briefly resembled letters or symbols. Before he could make sense of them, they scattered like ink dissolving in water.
Ray watched for a while.
He couldn't determine what he had just seen.
There was something deeply unusual about this place. It wasn't simply that the sea was golden or that he could walk upon it. The entire environment seemed to operate according to rules he didn't understand.
He looked toward the horizon.
Far away, the golden surface appeared to rise into the sky, creating the illusion that the sea and the heavens were connected. Above it, countless faint lights drifted through the darkness.
Some shone brightly.
Others flickered like dying stars.
And somewhere in the distance, something seemed to be watching.
Ray stopped walking.
He turned his head slightly, searching the surrounding area. Nothing stood out. The sea continued its endless movement, and the distant lights remained unchanged.
He couldn't shake the feeling, however.
It wasn't particularly frightening. Rather, it was the uncomfortable awareness of being observed without knowing by whom.
He decided to continue.
As he walked, the sea gradually became calmer. The chaotic currents grew weaker, and the golden waves settled into a nearly motionless surface.
Then he noticed something ahead.
A figure stood in the distance.
Ray slowed his steps.
At first, the person appeared little more than a silhouette against the golden horizon. But as he approached, the details gradually became clearer.
It was a man.
He wore a long priest's robe, its fabric falling neatly around his body. A cross rested upon his chest, while one hand held a closed book with an unusually dark cover. His appearance was composed and dignified, almost as though he belonged in a quiet place of worship rather than an endless sea.
But it was his face that made Ray stop.
The man looked remarkably similar to him.
The same delicate facial structure. The same refined nose. The same golden hair.
Except he was a lot older.
His features had a hint of maturity, giving him an appearance that Ray could only describe as a grown version of his current self.
Yet there was something more unsettling about his eyes.
They were golden, much like Ray's own, but carried a depth that seemed entirely foreign. They held a peculiar maturity, a calmness that didn't seem to belong to someone of his apparent age.
It was as though the man had experienced an immeasurable span of time.
Ray stared at him.
The man returned his gaze without any visible reaction.
For a while, neither spoke.
Ray's attention briefly shifted toward the cross hanging from the man's chest, then toward the book in his hand.
He had questions.
Many of them.
Who was this man? Why did he look like him? What was this place?
But before Ray could gather his thoughts, the man spoke.
"Go back."
His voice was calm.
There was no anger, no warning, and no apparent urgency.
Ray remained silent.
"...Go back where?"
The man offered no answer.
His expression remained unchanged, and his eyes continued to rest upon Ray.
For a brief moment, Ray felt as though he was looking at someone who knew far more about him than he could possibly know about himself.
The book in the man's hand shifted slightly.
Then the sea trembled.
A faint disturbance spread across the golden surface. The distant waves began to twist, and the dark currents beneath them surged toward the horizon.
Ray glanced down.
The water beneath his feet was no longer still.
Golden streams began to move in every direction, crossing and intertwining until the entire sea resembled a vast, disordered web of light.
He looked up again.
The man was still there.
His eyes had not moved.
Then the surrounding world began to disappear.
The golden horizon fractured into countless indistinct shapes. The sky folded into darkness, and the sea beneath Ray's feet seemed to lose its form.
The last thing he saw was the man's face.
Then everything went black.
Ray abruptly opened his eyes.
His body remained beneath the blanket, and the familiar wooden ceiling of his room came into view.
For a few seconds, he simply stared upward.
His breathing was slightly quicker than usual.
"...What was that?"
He slowly sat up.
The dream was unusually clear in his mind.
He remembered the sea. Its golden surface, the strange currents beneath it, and the sensation of walking upon water without sinking. He remembered exploring the seemingly endless expanse, observing the strange lights and the dark shapes beneath the surface.
Most importantly, he remembered the man.
Ray lowered his gaze toward his hands.
He could still picture the man's golden eyes, along with the words he had spoken.
"Go back."
He repeated them quietly in his mind.
Something about the dream bothered him. Not because it had been frightening, but because it had felt unusually coherent. He could remember walking, observing his surroundings, and even the cold sensation of touching the water.
It was unlike the fragmented dreams he occasionally experienced.
He tried to recall the man's exact appearance.
And then something changed.
The memory became difficult to grasp.
It wasn't an ordinary loss of detail. One moment, the image was perfectly clear in his mind, The next instant it seemed to retreat beyond his reach.
Ray frowned.
He tried to reconstruct the man's face, beginning with his golden hair and moving toward his eyes.
But the moment he focused on them, a strange interruption passed through his thoughts.
For an instant, his mind went completely blank.
Not empty in the usual sense, but as though the thought he had been following had suddenly been cut off.
He blinked.
"What...?"
He tried again and focused.
A priest's robe. A cross and a book.
He could remember that they had been there, but their appearance was becoming increasingly indistinct. The details seemed to lose their meaning whenever he attempted to examine them.
It was almost as though his mind was being gently redirected away from the memory.
Ray leaned back slightly.
He wasn't particularly tired anymore. His thoughts were clear enough to recognize that something was wrong, yet he couldn't identify what it was.
He concentrated once more on his strange dream.
The golden sea returned to his mind.
For a brief instant, he could almost picture it.
Then a strange pressure settled over his thoughts.
It wasn't painful. There was no sensation of physical discomfort. Instead, his recollection simply became inaccessible, as though an invisible veil had been drawn between his consciousness and the dream.
The more he tried to remember, the less he could retain.
Eventually, even the feeling of that interference began to fade.
Ray remained silent.
He could tell that he had experienced something unusual, but he could no longer determine what made it unusual in the first place.
After a while, he exhaled and stopped trying.
"...Probably just a strange dream."
The explanation wasn't particularly convincing, even to himself. Nevertheless, he had nothing else to work with.
He turned his attention toward the window.
Morning had arrived, and there were other things he needed to take care of.
His swordsmanship lessons with Marcus, his magic training with Elena, and the experiments that he had not yet continued all came to mind.
One thought gradually replaced another.
Soon, the dream was no longer at the forefront of his attention.
He got out of bed and began his usual morning routine.
By the time he finished washing and preparing himself, Ray could barely remember the sea.
He remembered that there had been a man, but not his face.
He remembered that the man had said something, but the words had become uncertain and blurry.
And when he eventually left his room, even those fragments had begun to disappear.
Ray didn't notice the last remaining trace of the dream slipping away.
Nor did he realize that his inability to remember his dream had been strange.
(Chapter End.)
(AN: I'd love to get your opinions so far of the story. So ask away!)