The meadow was gone.
In a breath, it vanished—like a mirage folding in on itself. The sunlit field, the gentle sway of grass, the serene face of Lila reaching out to him—all of it dissolved into blackness, sudden and complete.
But strangely, Ethan didn't panic.
There was no fear clawing at his chest. No cold sweat. No desperate search for footing in the dark. Just stillness. A stillness so vast, so ancient, that it felt like he had always been inside it.
It was the silence after the end of all things.
And somehow, it felt right.
He stood alone in the void, his body weightless, untethered from time and space. There was no floor beneath his feet, no sky above. Just a boundless, velvety nothing stretching in every direction. It was as if the universe had taken a deep breath—and held it.
Then a voice came.
Not from outside, but from within and around and everywhere at once.
"You've been looking for a way out, Ethan. But you were never trapped. You were always here."
It was a voice he both recognized and didn't. It wasn't Lila. It wasn't the old man in the bookstore. It wasn't his own inner monologue. It was something older. Something true.
"Where is this place?" Ethan asked, though even as he spoke, he realized he didn't need to. The question felt hollow. Performative. The answers were already inside him.
He knew.
"This is the place beneath the dream," the voice replied. "The place you created to protect yourself from the pain you weren't ready to face."
Ethan swallowed hard, though he didn't feel a throat. He felt no body, no breath—only awareness.
"I thought I was awake," he murmured. "I thought I figured it all out."
"You figured out enough to arrive here. But not everything."
Silence pressed in again, not oppressive but contemplative, like the pause between lines in a poem.
"You weren't running from death," the voice said gently. "You were running from what death left behind. The grief. The guilt. The unbearable stillness that followed."
Images surfaced in his mind—brief, flickering moments like sparks in the dark.
Lila's laughter echoing down a hallway.
His mother's tired eyes.
The empty village.
The cold bed.
His reflection in the mirror, cracking.
The letter with no sender.
Everything had been a puzzle, but now the pieces lay in a quiet circle around him, no longer asking to be solved—just seen.
"I wanted to go back," Ethan said, more to himself than to the voice. "I kept trying to find the moment I lost everything… so I could fix it. Rewrite it. Save her."
"And in doing so, you forgot what it meant to live at all."
The truth sank in, slow and heavy, like sediment settling in water.
Ethan had never been trying to wake up. He'd been trying to rewind. To undo. To return to something impossible.
His life had fractured the moment Lila died. And rather than grieve, he had buried himself in dreams of second chances. Over and over. New versions of the past. Variations of the same loss. As if by rearranging the story enough times, he could cheat the ending.
But now… there was no more story left to bend.
"I'm dead," he whispered.
There was no answer.
He didn't need one.
"I was always dead."
"Death is not the end. Not for you. You stayed because you couldn't forgive yourself."
He didn't argue. Not because he agreed, but because truth doesn't negotiate.
For the first time, Ethan allowed himself to feel the full weight of what had happened.
He had failed her. Or at least, he believed he did. That belief had haunted every step of his waking life—and his dreaming one. He had worn his guilt like skin. And in his mind, penance meant repetition. Endless wandering. Endless returning to the moment he lost her.
"It's time, Ethan."
He looked up—or what felt like "up." And in the distance, something changed.
The void began to shimmer. First a flicker, like static. Then a slow, spreading glow, like the edge of dawn breaking through a long night.
He felt it—not light exactly, but a pull. A return. A release.
"Where does it lead?" he asked.
"Forward. But only if you're ready to let go."
He hesitated.
Could he really leave? Could he walk away from the ghost of the life he had clung to for so long?
Would Lila be waiting?
Or was this goodbye?
Then he heard her voice.
Not from the void. From memory.
"You never lost me, Ethan. You only lost yourself."
His chest cracked open—not with pain, but with light. With clarity. With peace.
And he smiled.
Not because he had all the answers.
But because he no longer needed them.
He stepped forward.
And the void transformed.
The light became color. The shimmer became form. And suddenly, he was standing on a familiar street, under a fading twilight sky.
The city was quiet. The buildings tall and unmoving. The air was crisp, humming with silence.
His apartment stood ahead, worn and familiar. But it no longer loomed like a cell. It was just… a place. A memory. A part of him, no more powerful than a shadow.
And there—at the steps—stood Lila.
Her figure glowed faintly, not like a ghost but like a photograph remembered too vividly. She didn't speak, but her smile was enough. It said everything.
"You waited," he said, his voice unsteady.
She nodded. "You finally came back."
He took a step forward, and with it, the street softened. The world shimmered like morning mist burning in the sun.
"Am I awake?" he asked.
Lila looked at him. Not with certainty, but with love.
"You're ready. That's what matters."
He stood in front of her now, no fear in his heart. The wind blew through the empty street. And everything felt still.
Complete.
As the light around them brightened, gently unraveling the last strands of the dream, Ethan closed his eyes.
And in that final moment, he didn't ask for another chance. He didn't beg for answers.
He simply was.
And that was enough.
The world faded—not into blackness, but into light.
And somewhere beyond the silence, a new beginning waited.