Chapter One
Talons like steel daggers dug their coldness into his shoulders, his body swaying in an infinite void.
Beneath his exhausted eyes, a canvas stretched out that no human brush had painted; green forests breathing like a living being, and towering trees reaching for the clouds, their silence pierced by a river flowing with the color of glowing "lapis lazuli."
The world there was whispering... a mellow voice, distant as if coming from an ancient time, calling his name, its echo vibrating in his spinal cord.
Suddenly, the talons released.
Ryan fell.
His stomach churned and air was sucked from his lungs in a free fall that lasted only a second, before his body jerked violently atop his bed.
He woke up with panting tearing through his chest, and drops of cold sweat racing down his forehead.
He subconsciously felt his shoulders, searching for the trace of those talons whose sharpness he had felt moments ago.
It was the same dream, repeating like a curse printed behind his eyelids. He rose with heavy steps, dressed in a hurry while adrenaline still stung his fingertips.
The silence of the room was broken by the sudden ringing of his phone. The table shook, and with it, Ryan's heart shook. He stared at the screen;
"Dad."
"Yes, Dad?" His voice came out hoarse, affected by the remnants of the dream.
On the other end, his father Ethan's voice was not as usual.
There was the sound of rapid breaths, and a strange disturbance like the rustling of torn paper.
"Where are you, my son?"
Ryan's back stiffened, and he gripped the edge of the desk with his other hand until his knuckles turned white.
"I'm at home.. what's the matter?"
"Stay there.. do not leave your place.. I am coming to you now!"
The reply came charged with a tone Ryan had never known before, the tone of a man fleeing from a fire.
The line cut abruptly. Ryan remained standing in the middle of the room, staring at the black screen, while his pulse betrayed his anxiety. His father, the man whom storms do not shake, was trembling in voice.
Only a few minutes passed before the ringing of the doorbell pierced the silence of the hallway; they were successive, sharp strikes, like a plea for help.
As soon as Ryan pulled the bolt, Ethan rushed inside like a cyclone, sending a sharp creak through the door hinges as he slammed it shut behind him with a force that shook the apartment walls.
Ethan stood panting, a man in his fifties, but his usual dignity was collapsing.
His sharp features, which his son had inherited, looked as if they were carved from anxiety; his blue eyes, which resembled a stormy sky, were roaming the corners of the room in terror, and the strands of his blonde hair mixed with gray looked disheveled, as if he had been running against time.
The father's gaze fixed on his son, and he asked in a stifled voice:
"Did it visit you.. did that dream return again?"
Ryan froze in his place, and felt a coldness creeping through his spine. He had told his father the details of that bird and the mountains only once, fleetingly like any daily conversation, but to see his father this distracted over a "nightmare" was something that aroused suspicion.
Ryan swallowed his saliva and nodded slowly:
"Yes.. it's the same one."
"Come on, we don't have time. We move now!"
Ethan did not wait for an answer, but rather gripped Ryan's wrist with a force that made the latter feel his father's accelerating pulse transferring to him.
"Where to, Dad?"
Ryan inquired, trying to resist the pull, but Ethan had already crossed the threshold.
"You will know everything in time, just follow me!"
Ryan complied with his father's heavy silence and got into the car, which took off with the screech of tires that tore through the quiet of the street.
Ethan was pressing on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, his eyes fixed on the road while the speedometers exceeded safe limits insanely.
Ryan turned toward his father and watched the sweat pouring from his temples despite the cold weather, so he said in a low voice trying to break the intensity of the situation:
"Dad.. tell me the truth, what's wrong? Your hands are shaking"..
Ethan cast a quick and fleeting glance toward the adjacent seat, where Ryan sat with his tall stature that clearly exceeded his father's height, his features were a confusing mix; his pitch-black hair, which he inherited from his mother, fell in rebellion, and his blue eyes, which he borrowed from his father, were now staring with apprehension.
Ethan returned his gaze to the road and gripped his fingers on the wheel until they sank into its leather, as if drawing strength from it to utter words that weigh as much as mountains.
He said in a wavering voice:
"There is a matter, my son.. it is time to know it."
He went silent for a second, then pressed his knuckles onto the wheel with greater force, and added:
"Something that lies beyond the limits of logic, resembling the legends told to children.. but it is the bitter truth we run from."
Ryan felt a sudden coldness invading his limbs, and his jaw muscles tightened as he watched his father veer the car sharply toward a rugged dirt road plunging into the heart of the dense forest.
"What do you mean? I don't understand anything!"
His features questioned before his tongue, while he shook with the impact of the car tires against the stones.
"Where are we going? And what is this nonsense you are talking about?"
Ethan did not look at him this time, but remained staring with his sight toward the intertwined trees that began to block the daylight.
"You must enter the 'Web Novel Kingdom', Ryan.. the story you see in your dreams is dying, and you must save it from death."
Ryan let out a dry laugh, which was closer to a cry of denunciation, and turned his entire body toward his father.
"Enough joking, Dad! Is this a hidden camera? Or is it a ridiculous prank?"
But his laugh vanished completely when he saw his father's face; Ethan was pale as the dead, his neck veins protruding clearly, and his eyes shining with a terrifying seriousness in which there was no room for joking.
"It is the truth, my son.. the truth that will change every atom of your being."