Welcome to my Dream World || (deukae)

Chapter 1: The Dreamer's Descent

The whispers of the night clung to Handong like a second skin, as insidious as the shadows that danced just at the edge of her vision. She could not shake the creeping sensation that eyes—unseen, unblinking—watched her from every darkened corner of her room. The faintest creaks of the wooden floorboards beneath her feet seemed like sinister messages passed between hidden observers, orchestrating her impending doom with each echoing step.

"Is anyone there?" she murmured, her voice barely rising above a whisper, lest it betray the tremor of fear that threatened to shatter her composure.

No answer came; the silence was almost mocking in its completeness, broken only by the erratic drumbeat of her own heart.

Handong's nights had become a canvas for the bizarre and the arcane, painting strokes of unease deep within her soul. When sleep finally claimed her, it dragged her into an abyss far stranger than the simple darkness of her bedroom—a dream world so vividly surreal and mysterious that it defied all logic and reason.

In this realm, the sky churned with hues that had no place in the waking world, colors born from the fevered imaginations of mad painters. Towers of twisted crystal rose like petrified lightning against the ever-shifting firmament, casting labyrinthine reflections upon the undulating ground below. It was a landscape both majestic and menacing, each breathtaking vista hiding an undertone of malice.

"Where am I now?" Her voice echoed across the dreamscape, bouncing off invisible walls and returning to her ears distorted, as though spoken by another.

She walked through an orchard of silver-leaved trees, their branches heavy with fruit that shimmered like captured stars. As Handong reached out to touch one, the surface rippled beneath her fingers, and a face surfaced briefly before dissolving back into the gleaming flesh of the fruit. A gasp escaped her lips, and she withdrew her hand as if burned, the image of the ephemeral visage seared into her mind.

"Help me understand," she pleaded to the dream itself, her words a mix of command and entreaty.

But the dream remained enigmatic, responding only with the rustle of leaves and the distant, haunting melody of an unseen harp. The notes twined around her, pulling her deeper into the heart of the dream world, compelling her to uncover its secrets, to unravel the mysteries held captive in its embrace. Each step forward was a defiance of the fear that grasped at her, an assertion of her will against the unknown.

With every visit to this ethereal domain, Handong felt a growing connection to the elements around her—a silent acknowledgment that she was part of this world, and it a part of her. Yet even as she navigated its oddities, the sense of being watched never left her, the unseen gaze as palpable here as it was in her waking hours.

"Show yourself," she demanded, her voice strong but tinged with the knowledge that some questions, once asked, cannot be unspoken, and that some answers might come at a price she wasn't sure she was willing to pay.

"Yoohyeon?" Handong's voice came out as a quivering murmur, the name of her sister an anchor in this shifting realm.

"Handong? Is that... is that really you?" The response carried on the wind, soft yet unmistakable. It was Yoohyeon's voice, a melancholic lilt amidst the dream's cacophony.

"Yoohyeon!" Handong's confusion blossomed into astonishment. "How can we be speaking? Are you here?"

"More than I wish to be," Yoohyeon's reply crackled through the aether, tinged with a desperation that sent shivers down Handong's spine. "I'm trapped, Dongie. The Dream World, it's holding me prisoner."

"Trapped? But how?" Handong's thoughts spun like leaves caught in a tempest. Communication had never been part of her oneiric experiences before, never beyond the scope of silent communion with the enigmatic forces at play around her.