CHAPTER FIVE — ECHOES IN THE WAKING WORLD

Nora’s Point of View

I woke with my heart pounding.

Not from a nightmare or fear yanking me upright, but from the strange heaviness that followed me out of sleep like a second shadow.

The dream replayed behind my eyes. The room that wasn’t my room. The blue moonlight. The cloaked figure who shouldn’t exist. That impossible voice speaking my name.

I tried to tell myself it was nothing. Stress. Exhaustion. Too much caffeine. The kind of dream people had when their life suddenly felt off-balance.

But the Death card on my pillow said otherwise.

I didn’t touch it at first. I pushed myself upright, rubbing both hands over my face, trying to smooth the trembling out of my breath. My fingers were cold. My whole body was cold.

“Get a grip,” I whispered.

My voice felt small in the quiet room.

I reached for the card, bracing for it to feel warm or icy or somehow wrong. But it felt normal. Ordinary. As if it had not changed in my hands the night before. As if it had not shown my name. As if I had not heard a voice behind it.

I turned it over.

Still my name. Still wrong. Still undeniable.

I set the card down and pulled my knees to my chest, hugging them. I stayed like that for a long moment, fighting the urge to unravel.

I should have been terrified. Calling someone. Running. Doing anything but sitting there.

But I wasn’t terrified. Not the way I should have been.

The dream had been frightening. His presence had chilled me deeper than any winter wind. But something about it felt controlled. Not safe, exactly, but deliberate. Focused. Like a storm that chose not to sweep me away.

I didn’t know why that mattered. I didn’t know why I cared.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “It wasn’t just a dream.”

The room stayed silent.

I stood slowly and stretched out my stiff muscles. My reflection caught my eye from across the room, and I stepped closer.

My face looked the same.

But my eyes looked different.

I leaned in. I looked tired, yes, but also different. A little clearer. A little older. As if I knew something I wasn’t ready to admit out loud.

My pulse jumped.

“What is happening to me?”

The mirror didn’t answer.

I turned away abruptly, needing motion. I made coffee. I sat at the tiny kitchen table. I watched the steam rise and pretended this was just another morning.

But the moment I lifted the mug to my lips, I froze.

A voice flickered through my mind.

“Dreams are doors, Nora.”

The sound wasn’t in the room. It pressed through my thoughts, cold and certain.

I set the mug down too hard. It clattered against the table, and I flinched.

“No. You’re not doing this,” I muttered. “You are not hearing him.”

But I was.

Not clearly. Not like the dream. More like a memory refusing to fade. I rubbed both palms over my eyes.

“I couldn’t just let him die,” I whispered.

This time the words didn’t echo in my mind, but they still felt like a reply.

Fear tugged at me. Curiosity pressed harder.

I wanted to know what he was. Why he came to me. Why I could hear him. Why he cared that I changed something.

I should have been terrified of wanting answers.

I wasn’t.

And that frightened me more than the dream ever had.

I pushed back from the table, needing distance from my thoughts. I stepped toward the hallway, but the overhead lights flickered.

Once. Twice.

A slow dimming, as if something vast passed between me and the world.

I froze. My breath fogged.

A whisper brushed my ear, close enough to raise every hair on my arms.

“Nora.”

Not imagined. Not remembered. A voice in my mind again, but sharper this time.

I spun around, heart slamming so hard it hurt.

Nothing.

Just the empty kitchen.Just the hum of the refrigerator. Just the Death card lying face-up on the table.

Except it wasn’t the same.

A second word had begun to form beneath my name, the ink spreading across the surface as if alive.

Coming.

My pulse stopped, then kicked painfully.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”

Another word bled into shape, curling beneath the first.

For you.

The kitchen lights snapped off. Darkness rushed in.

And somewhere behind that darkness, something ancient exhaled and stepped closer.