Sleep had become a battlefield.
Not the kind fought with guns and screams, but the slow, suffocating war waged between a man's collapsing body and the ghosts he refused to release. Adrian Vale Harrington—chairman, owner, ruler of a conglomerate vast enough to eclipse entire nations—could order armies of executives with one clipped command, could outthink economists who had shaped markets for decades, could memorise thirty-page legal documents in a night, and could calculate logistical pipelines in his head faster than most analysts could with software.
But he could not sleep.
Not truly.Not deeply.Not without consequence.
Each night, after the final email was sent, after the last message was answered, after the building had emptied and the skyscraper lights dimmed, he returned to his mansion like a commander retiring from the battlefield only to discover the enemy had followed him home.
The mansion waited in silence.It always did.
The staff retreated to their quarters; the corridors dimmed; the hallways stretched endlessly with quiet, polished floors reflecting his every step like a mirror reflecting someone he no longer recognized.
He changed into a plain shirt and joggers—an outfit so simple it would have horrified his former self—and walked into the bedroom he kept untouched, unchanged, a place he treated more like a shrine than a space for rest. The bed was neatly made. The curtains half drawn. The air cold enough to sting his skin.
Every night, he tried to sleep.
Every night, something broke before he reached the edge of dreams.
It always began with the moment he closed his eyes.
At first, there was only darkness—empty, blank, the canvas of rest. But slowly, inevitably, shapes began to crawl out of the nothingness: outlines, hints of movement, the soft distortion of shadows trying to remember human forms.
His breath would hitch.His fingers would curl.His mind, despite all his discipline, would betray him.
And then he would see them.
Not as ghosts.Not as spirits.Not as supernatural apparitions.
But as memory hallucinations—vivid, slicing intrusions of moments that had been burned too deeply into his psyche to remain buried.
His father appeared first.
Atlas Harrington did not appear the way he looked in photographs. Not the charismatic trillionaire in tailored suits. Not the titan of industry with sharp eyes and a commanding voice. No—the hallucination always showed Atlas exactly as Adrian remembered him last:
Standing in the doorway of Adrian's old bedroom, tired, frustrated, disappointed.
"Grow up, Adrian."
Those words whispered like oxygen sucked from the air.
The hallucination always placed Atlas where he used to stand during those arguments from years ago—against the doorframe, arms crossed, stern expression carved with a father's weary hope.
Except this version wasn't alive.This version flickered like a broken projection.This version stared with an unblinking intensity that drowned Adrian in dread.
Adrian would force his eyes open, drag in a slow breath, and remind himself:
He's not here. He's gone. This is a hallucination. It's just trauma.
But denial didn't dissolve the figure.
Because the moment he blinked, his mother joined it.
Lysandra Harrington appeared on the opposite side of the room, near the window where she used to lecture him about his grades, his drinking, his lack of seriousness. Her hallucinated form wasn't angry—not exactly. It was disappointed in the quiet, bone-deep way she used to express when she was too tired to scold.
Her eyes always carried a question.Why didn't you listen?Why weren't you better?Why weren't you worth the sacrifice we made?
He knew these questions weren't real.He knew hallucinations didn't speak truth.But they felt like truth.
Some nights he tried to sit up, forcing logic to anchor him.Some nights he tried walking into the bathroom, splashing cold water onto his face.Some nights he went for a midnight workout until his muscles tore from exhaustion.
But it didn't matter.
The moment he lay down again, they returned.
Sometimes the hallucinations were faint—mere silhouettes, outlines that disappeared when he turned his head too sharply. Other nights they were painfully detailed: his father's tie slightly askew, his mother's hair pinned back the way she always wore it when dealing with business matters, their expressions so real he felt the old shame flood through him like venom.
Tonight was one of the severe nights.
He lay in bed, breathing slowly, eyes half closed. He told himself he would sleep. He needed to. He had a seven-hour economic briefing in the morning, followed by strategic negotiations with a European consortium and then a remote conference with the AI division.
His body begged for rest.His mind refused it.
When he blinked, the shadows at the end of the room thickened, stretched, and took shape.
His parents.Already waiting.
Atlas stood tall, arms folded, eyes narrowed.Lysandra leaned against the window, face pale in the moonlight.
His chest tightened.
He wasn't afraid.Not in the traditional sense.
Fear required a belief that something could harm him.
But these hallucinations didn't hurt him.They judged him.
They reminded him.
They forced him to relive every moment of foolishness—the drunken nights, the wasted years, the arrogance, the laziness, the way he had treated responsibility like a joke because he believed the empire would last forever without him needing to lift a finger.
He whispered into the dark, voice barely audible:
"…I know."
It was the closest he ever came to apology.
The hallucinations didn't respond.They never did.They simply stared.
And yet that silence was worse than shouting. Worse than scolding. Worse than anger.
Because silence meant finality.
Silence meant they were gone.
Silence meant the only thing left was what he chose to become.
He turned his head away from them, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to will them into nothingness. The ceiling above him wavered. For a moment, he saw the inside of the kidnapping cell—just a flash—but he shoved it down with force.
He forced himself to breathe.Slow inhale. Slow exhale.Control, not panic.
His therapist—one of the best trauma specialists in the world—had told him hallucination episodes were normal after extreme trauma. That they would subside as he processed his grief.
But Adrian didn't want them to subside.
The hallucinations were pain.But pain was clarity.Pain was discipline.Pain was reminder.
He needed reminders.
He needed to remember what he had squandered.He needed to remember who he had been.He needed to remember why he was now working himself to the bone.
He needed to remember that the company was all he had left.
So he did not fight the hallucinations.
He lay still, breathing in the suffocation of memory, letting their shapes loom in the periphery of his vision until exhaustion finally dragged him into shallow, fragile sleep.
Tonight, as he drifted, their silhouettes softened.Not in forgiveness.Never in forgiveness.Only in distance.
Like a reminder that grief was not done with him.Like a promise that he still had far to go.
And when the morning light finally crept across his room, revealing empty corners where shadows once stood, he rose with the same disciplined calm that defined his days.
The hallucinations had left.
But the memory of them lingered.
And that, he decided, was enough.