I fall, no - descend - through the soft seam of consciousness into the dream. A vision blooms from the void like ink spreading through water. It begins as all beginnings do - darkness first, the eternal womb of memory. In this place, remembering is a kind of forgetting, and the mind dissolves before it reforms. The first emotion that greets the strange is a tender awe, a startled wonder - because here, I am almost myself, but not entirely. Identity rises not from thought but from temperament, from the shape of the soul rather than the recollection of a name. The room forms around me in shades of dusk. The air is stale, thick with dust and something older - like the scent of abandoned prayers clinging to rotten wood. In the corner, something waits. A child, or something wearing the ghost of a child's silhouette. Small. Silent. Wrong. One glimpse is enough - voices tear through my hearing, shrill whispers overlapping like broken violin strings. I know this creature is no child. It wishes me to be prey, and its presence presses that script upon me. But I refuse the role. It lunges, shadow sliding into shadow, quick as a thought that doesn't want to be caught. It bares its vampiric illusion, tries to impress me with fear - and at first it succeeds. Cold fingers brush the edges of my being. But then I remember. I speak aloud - I am not afraid. And as the words take shape, the dream rearranges itself around the truth. Fear collapses like a mirage. Power returns to my hands like something I had misplaced but never lost. Every journey into the strange has the same mission: to remember. I walk the hidden realms. My mask does not break. My cloak is woven from remembrance, my robe from surrender. The unseen recognize me, they part like reeds before a silent river. I pass through places gnawed by darkness, yet remain unharmed - not by my strength, but by the strength that moves through me. I am the one of many faces. I carry every path like a key. A guardian slithers near my ear - something half-serpent, half-language. It chants in a tongue without vowels, hungry to frighten. I answer again - calmly, firmly - I do not fear you. It tastes my resolve, feels the field around me like heat off iron. My aura is a mirror, a hypnotic, kaleidoscopic shield. In my remembering - I am power itself, impervious to all. I am the observer, the inevitable witness, walking to where I am permitted by divine decree. The scene breaks open like a shell. I step out into daylight - a village, sun-washed, idyllic, almost Italian but worn thin like a memory copied too many times. Low houses, pale stucco, a single narrow road. To the right, a serpentine monstrosity approaches; to the left, another horror, vampiric and heavy with death-light. Their presence hums like static, but I remain untouched even as they proceed towards me. It is not that fear is unreal - it is that illusion gives birth to fear. Remove the illusion, and nothing remains to tremble at. The child-shadow fades, powerless. I walk forward - not toward terror but past it, refusing engagement. The wise do not wrestle nightmares - they starve them of attention. I ascend the street and enter a home. Inside, a wedding is underway. A humble feast, the warmth of fire breathing from a hearth I cannot see. I take the seat at the far end of the first table, across me sits the head of the family - no introductions, no questions. Acceptance sits like an invisible crown. The family eats, drinks, toasts. The bride is somewhere among the cluster of fifteen or twenty faces. Yet those nearest to me are uneasy, smiling too thinly, their eyes flicking like moths to lamplight. The air is thick with unease, an awkwardness hangs in the hall. The second table - further back - does not belong to the living in the same way. The people there are peculiar, ancient. Their faces are carved in stone - bone-thick, expressionless, male and female alike, as though sculpted from the same one ancestor. No joy. No sorrow. Merely presence, more ancient than any human. One among them is older than the rest - three, maybe four centuries old. His back faces me, and from the base of his spine rise twin rods of burnished copper or something similar, bronze, gold-tarnished. They climb the vertebrae like a second skeleton and curve behind the skull, diverging at the top into an elongated U-shape. Along the spine, where glowing centers of life might sit, I see instead circular locks, one after another, except at the crown where the twins split - the top-most energetic center is not locked into, it is above the head. Another pair of rods pierce the skull from front to back, joining the arc behind the head. They vanish beneath the occipital ridge, secured in sockets like keys turned home. His augmentation is exposed, displayed like a relic. Not hidden - shown. Tartarian technology, designed to enhance lifespan - with its many obvious drawbacks. They are here by right - not invitation. The family does not know them, yet they belong more than anyone. This is lineage made flesh. Legacy wearing copper bones. Their eyes meet mine. Mine meet theirs. We acknowledge one another with the quiet recognition reserved for souls who remember. There is no malice. No hunger. Only the gravity of bloodlines stretched across centuries. Emotion has been bled from them through the long years, yet something softer remains - a duty to witness the marriage of their descendants. They have traded passion for endless time, but not purpose. We know who they are. They know we see them, their many secrets revealed only to those who cross thresholds unafraid. The ancient ones watch, blank as moonstone, yet bound by familial loyalty so old it has eroded every other feeling. Their wealth, their legacy, their blood - preserved across ages through machinery and will. They live still, somewhere in these same hills, in homes unchanged since the very first stone was laid. Kept as respected remnants of a power once fully realized, now turned to motionless stone. Their presence is a testament: Everything was given so lineage could continue. There is a sadness to this notion. Not theirs - mine. To them - emotions mean very little. They are terrifyingly neutral, unbothered - a sorrowed existence, regardless of its power. And so they sit - silent guardians at a wedding no one remembers inviting - because they must watch their offspring pledge life to life once more. They have imagined the ordeal important, their presence necessary, and the momentary vulnerability a worthwhile compromise. All because they commanded to be present for the continuation of their bloodline. The dream dissolves, the vision ends, the truth is shown: At the highest peak of power - only emptiness exists. ![[6EAB2C6A-33C5-4414-AF05-412D16C19EDB.gif]]