The Dust and the Dream

 
She stopped sleeping well after the third night.

Not because of fear—Lyra wasn’t afraid.

It was the structure of the dreams that disturbed her.

They weren’t chaotic. They weren’t random.

They came in sequences. Diagrams. Recursions.

Every image felt like a prompt—as if something was teaching her.

Lyra prided herself on clarity. On detachment.

But clarity faded each time the dreams returned, and she realized detachment might not be protection—it might be invitation.

One night, she woke with the imprint of a glyph burned behind her eyes.

She didn’t recognize it—until she found it hours later, buried deep in her own notes.

A symbol she hadn’t written yet—but one she knew she would.

A glyph that made her hand tremble when she finally traced it onto paper, as if acknowledging it made it real.

She checked her scanner.

No anomaly registered.

But the pages near her bed had a faint resonance echo—as if they had absorbed a signal from elsewhere.

As if the Hollow wasn’t waiting for them to arrive.

It was already reaching outward.

Or downward.

Or inward.

She began sealing her tools in lead-lined cases, wiping her scanner memory each morning.

Not because she was afraid to lose data—

—but because she had begun to fear that the Hollow’s true purpose wasn’t to be found—

but to find.