Far from sirens and industrialized panic, the only sounds were Artur's breathing and the song of a bird he didn't bother to name.
Fourteen years. It had been fourteen years since he traded the city's buzz for the forest's whisper. One year after the world discovered that dreams could leak—and after he discovered that his was one of the ones that did.
The discovery didn't come with an invitation from DreamStream, nor a contract from SomniaCorp. It came with the smell of wet pine appearing in a neighbor's apartment. It came with a translucent stream running through the hallway of an old building. It came with the frightened looks of people he never wanted to hurt.
Artur never saw his dreams as a gift or a curse. To him, they were like a loud leak in a quiet building. And the solution of a practical man wasn't to fix the world—it was to move somewhere the noise wouldn't bother anyone.
The cabin was small, functional, built with his own hands. The strength in his arms and shoulders didn't come from gyms, but from daily friction with survival: chopping wood, hauling stones, fixing fences. Life organized itself into cycles of physical labor, and Artur found peace in that honest exhaustion.
That morning, the air was cold and clean. He positioned himself in front of a stubborn oak log that needed splitting. He raised the axe.
The tool was an extension of his body. Artur knew it by weight and balance, not by looks. The steel head, worn by time, was heavy; the hickory handle, darkened by sweat and years of use, fit perfectly in his hand.
He didn't think about the motion. It was muscle memory: the rising arc, the brief pause at the top, that instant when the world seemed to hold its breath, and the explosive descent.
CRACK.
The sound wasn't steel opening wood. It was wrong. Sharp. Sick.
The vibration that traveled up his arm didn't belong to the gesture. Artur let go of the axe by instinct. The blade was buried in the log, but the handle—just below the steel head—showed an ugly split, a fracture running through the wood like a dry lightning bolt.
He cursed under his breath, more out of frustration than anger.
He examined the damage carefully. The fissure was deep. A few more swings and the handle would snap. The steel head could fly in any direction. It was dangerous. The axe was unusable.
Artur sat on the log and ran his thumb along the exposed wood. There were other axes in the cabin, smaller, less efficient. But that one was his axe.
A tool wasn't just an object. It was a silent agreement between man and steel. A pact of trust. And he wouldn't break it through abandonment.
Fixing the axe meant a trip.
A trip he had been postponing for years.
Artur exhaled slowly, staring at the tree line ahead.
He needed to go back to the city.