CHAPTER FOUR — THE FIRST FRACTURE

His Point of View

I do not dream.

Dreams belong to the living. Unruly. Fragile. Flickering in and out of existence without purpose. They have never concerned me.

Yet when Nora fell asleep, her mind opened a space I could enter.

A door.

I had not meant to step through it. I intended only to observe her thread from a distance. But the closer I drew toward her subconscious, the more the dream took shape around me, pulling me inside as if it recognized me.

As if it remembered me.

Impossible.

Mortals often reshape their surroundings when they sleep, but Nora’s dream held an unsettling clarity. The realm accepted my presence without resistance, adjusting itself to accommodate me. That alone defied the laws of consciousness.

I waited for her to wake screaming. Most mortals did when they sensed me.

Instead, she sat up slowly, her breath misting in the chill of her own dream as she realized something was wrong. Then she did what no one should have been capable of.

She looked directly into the shadows where I stood.

She should not have sensed me so clearly.

Her voice broke the stillness with impossible calm.

“I know this isn’t real.”

Not denial.

Not panic.

Recognition.

I stepped closer, testing her awareness. The shadows moved with me, ready to consume the edges of the dream.

“You can’t hurt me in a dream, can you?” she asked.

Her voice trembled, but her resolve did not.

I have watched billions of mortals die. I know every expression of fear, every attempt to bargain with the inevitable. Nothing in my long memory resembled her reaction.

She felt fear, yet she moved through it as if she had already accepted its presence.

So I answered her.

“If you believe that, then sleep is the most dangerous place you possess.”

She froze, but not in horror.

In understanding.

She recognized the voice that had touched her waking mind.

“In my dream…” she said. “You’re actually here.”

Her awareness unsettled me more than her composure. Mortals were not meant to perceive me at all in life. The dying sometimes see me, but only in the form I choose. Comfort for the worthy. Terror for the damned.

No mortal sees my true nature.

Not in dreams.

Not in waking thought.

Yet Nora sensed me as if she were meant to.

“Dreams are doors, Nora,” I said. “And you opened one.”

I had not meant to speak her name aloud.

The sound of it shifted something between us.

Then she fractured the quiet of the dream with one simple truth.

“I couldn’t just let him die.”

No mortal had spoken to me that way in all my existence. Her voice held no arrogance. No rebellion.

Only compassion.

The threads surrounding us shivered beneath my awareness, reacting to her sincerity with a warmth that did not belong in my domain. Mortals had pleaded before. Begged for more time. Cursed me for taking someone they loved.

But none had spoken with such certainty, as if saving a stranger were as natural as breathing.

“Mortals do not do that,” I said.

The words felt false.

She had done it.

And the universe had bent.

I studied her carefully, trying to categorize the anomaly she represented. She feared me, yet she did not cower. She knew I was dangerous, yet she stood her ground. She recognized me, yet she questioned me.

“You fear less than you should,” I told her.

“I know this is just a dream,” she said.

I considered letting her cling to that illusion. But her confidence irritated me, and irritation was not something I allowed myself to feel.

“Are you certain this is where your dream ends and I begin?”

The dream cracked.

The walls buckled as if made of brittle paper. Light bled out through the seams as space collapsed inward.

She fell back into waking consciousness, leaving me alone in the imploding realm.

I withdrew into the in-between.

What happened should not have been possible. No mortal had ever drawn me into a dream or spoken with such certainty while altering a fate already written. I should have classified the anomaly and secured the threads around it.

That is what my purpose demands.

Yet instead of restoring order, I found myself replaying a single sentence.

“I couldn’t just let him die.”

As if life held value beyond its designated end.

As if compassion could challenge inevitability.

As if protecting a stranger could matter.

The echo of her voice lingered longer than the tearing of a thousand threads. A small pull tightened behind my ribs, and before I understood why, I frowned.

The realization came late.

Frowns are emotional reflexes. Human reactions.

I do not react.

I do not feel.

At least, that has always been true.

I shifted through the realm of dying lights, reaching instinctively for her thread again. It glowed faintly beneath my awareness, marked by my command to observe.

I could have reached through it and taken her soul the moment she altered fate.

That is what I should have done.

That is what I have always done.

But instead of destroying the anomaly, I found myself studying it.

Studying her.

Nora did not fade from my notice.

She deepened it.