Epic dreams are never just dreams—
They are the memory of something the soul once knew.
And sometimes, the soul remembers more than it should.
The blinding light spun me in circles until the world dissolved into static white. The light hummed in my skull, or hers. Maybe both. Maybe that was the point of being soul-woven—never knowing which mind was breaking.
It was like being caught in the moment between waking and dying—suspended, weightless, erased. When it finally dimmed, I was unsure of which way the cabin was or the door that got me here.
Mist clung to my lashes, heavy as frost, blurring the horizon into nothing. There was no up or down anymore, only the ache of being unanchored. Even my shadow felt lost, scattered somewhere beneath the white. It didn't fade for hours. The snow hissed beneath my boots, erasing every step the moment it was made. My clothes hung soaked and heavy, but no cold reached me. Only the strange, hollow awareness that I should be freezing—and wasn't.
I wandered the snowy plains in search of a new door into a different memory, or the door I had come in through.
I walked for miles with nothing in sight but more snow and sky, which still blurred together into a light grey backdrop.
I started chanting, " I will find you, I will save you, I will find you, I will save you..." I repeated it to myself to avoid going mad while walking. I did it until my voice became hoarse. The wind swallowed my words as soon as they left me, scattering them into the white. Each time I spoke, it echoed back quieter, as if the world were already forgetting me. Maybe that was mercy—being forgotten meant the pain of remembering her couldn't find me. I didn't want to lose focus on the plan, even though I had none at the moment—except to save us from this—and it may appear to an innocent bystander that I had already gone mad.
A faint voice rose from a very far distance, like wind threading through glass. I focused, trying to catch what it was saying or who was saying it.
When I started hearing Valley. The sound hit me like a pulse through the air. For a second, I thought my heart had remembered how to beat again. Her voice carried warmth through the frost, like blood returning to numb veins.
It rippled through the mist, swelling until the pines themselves bowed and shuddered, then flew past me, uprooted, scattering through the sky where I'd once lost myself.
I became overwhelmed with determination, her voice a reminder to keep going.
I didn't know how long it had been, but at least long enough for her to be awake now. I thought about how I hadn't gotten a wink of sleep. Did I even need sleep anymore?
Her voice still pushed through louder, and I just wanted her to know that,
I would climb through snowy hills and brave the blizzard's bitter breath.
Battle storms that block my way, to speak to her beyond the death.
I'd shatter silence, break its will, just to hear her voice one more day.
I'd risk it all to set her free, to guard her heart from harm I'd made.
To keep my shadows far aside. For love is stronger still than me.
A truth my heart could never hide. And feelings never truly leave.
Each line steadied me, carving a path through the white noise. Maybe love was only this now—a compass made of promises I'm still trying to keep. Her name became my compass. For all the world's silence, that single truth—her voice, her name—cut through the static and pulled me forward like gravity.
The storm behind me twisted into a column of white rage, shrieking with a voice that wasn't entirely the wind's. The air following me thickened, humming low at first, then screaming—a feral sound that clawed through the snow. The storm was alive, hunting. Shards of ice clinked against one another like chimes, slicing through the air so close I could feel their gripping pull without being touched.
A tornado blizzard formed behind me as her voice started to fade in and out. I wasn't sure if those razor-sharp shards could harm me in her mind, but I was sure that they could rip me from this place and possibly end up somewhere I wasn't meant to be if this was created by them. I couldn't trust it, and that was my gut feeling.
A gray cat appeared in front of me, fur dusted with snow, eyes gold as Valley's. He didn't flinch at the storm; the wind parted around him like he was something older, wiser than this place. He fixed me with a look that said, Follow—a knowing gleam that made me trust him despite everything.
He walked ahead, leaving paw prints in the snow, only erasing after my steps. He simply existed now, as if he always had. Maybe I'd finally lost it. But if madness wore fur and looked this calm, I'd follow it anywhere.
His fluffy, intriguing exterior sparked curiosity I hoped wouldn't lead me into a death trap. And he surely seemed like the safer option between a howling spiral of teeth and ice, or a fluffy cat. That's what I wanted to believe anyway, not that I had already become mad and was possibly imagining both scenarios.
He started running, and I ran after him until he disappeared into thin air. I ran ahead to where I last saw him, but then I fell through a hole in the ground. My scream vanished into the rush of wind as the snow gave way beneath me. For one impossible heartbeat, I was weightless—then I hit soft carpet, the air suddenly warm and still, like stepping into someone's breath.
Eight feet, maybe. Just far enough to remind me that gravity still applied—even here, I pondered the distance, back still against the floor, staring up at the ceiling.
The cat pulled on a string to close the hatch of this secret room before the storm came by.
I stood up, and the cat was walking down a narrow hallway. I followed him into a door with a sign above it that read Valley's Library. We walked through, and it was so large, I was shocked. For a heartbeat, I forgot the snow, forgot the storm. I was standing inside the architecture of her mind—a cathedral built of memory.
The air shimmered faintly, carrying the scent of old paper and lilacs. Each color hummed at a different pitch—like her thoughts were singing to themselves.
Light spilled from nowhere, threading across endless shelves that stretched upward until they disappeared into gold mist. It felt alive, like the heartbeat of her mind. All the knowledge she had ever learned, all the books she's ever read. All were kept in this theoretical library.
I looked around, and it was clear which knowledge was older, as dust covered those shelves, untouched for years.
"Guestrooms and Safe Corners" in light blue; "When the Sky Fell Quiet" in navy; "The Language I Never Learned" in orange; "The What Ifs" in magenta; "Dream Interpretations" in lilac. I opened it for a quick moment, to a random page, "Epic dreams stay with you long after waking. They're vast, vivid, and often carry messages that reach deeper than reason. Interpreted with care, they can bring a moment of absolute clarity—one that changes everything you thought you knew." The words looked familiar, though I couldn't tell if I'd read them before—or dreamed them. I closed the book and continued looking through the titles.
"The Voice Inside Waiting to be Heard" in yellow; "My Mother's Stories" in gold; "Hasley" in silver, although it was still really thin. "The Replays" in burgundy; "My Soulmate, Thayer"—red spine, a tiny gold heart on the edge. I froze, unable to pull it free, even though I wanted to. I didn't feel comfortable reading something so personal. Her feelings for me—what they were, what they'd become—were too deep for me to face.
I kept skimming until I came across one not so old, one that hurt a little, even if it was still thin, but I knew it would get bigger over time, titled "Growing Feelings for Levi," in pink. My chest tightened. The title burned brighter than the rest, the letters carved deep like fresh wounds. I couldn't bring myself to touch it, afraid of what I'd find—afraid it would be the proof she was learning to love again.
I skimmed the shelves again until I got to one called "The Man Who Tried to Save Him," in black. Was it a book on my death? I wondered. I pulled it from the shelf and opened it to the first page; it had details of him appearing when Valley hovered over me. She described feeling great pain watching me die. It spoke of an older man helping me into a room where no one could see. He told her he used to do black market merges if she had any chips on her. She removed two from her pocket and was asked to lie on the bed beside me before she was put to sleep.
The man she described reminded me of the Black Thread Order, a notorious underground biker gang in Thesira. I could almost smell the oil and iron again—the echo of engines revving beneath the city, the faint music that used to leak from their hidden tunnels. They sold forbidden tech and merges for people who were in love but not compatible enough for the weaver.
Something in the air shifted—like the library had started listening to me.
Suddenly, before my eyes, the book began to fill with more information. Ink bled across the pages in shimmering threads, weaving words faster than I could read.
The book grew warm in my hands, pulsing with light until its spine cracked wider absorbing everything I knew about it. The book's title changed to "Soul Woven Underground," becoming a tangible item that showed us merging in the present time.
What was mine now became hers.
I closed it and put it back on the shelf. The air around it thrummed faintly, as if the library itself had taken a breath. I didn't know what I had just done, but I had to see how it played out for myself.
Would that information help her, or hurt her?
The library beneath the snow didn't answer. It only breathed—soft and endless, like the wind above us.