STARLIGHT UNBOUND by Deus Ex Machina - HTML preview

STARLIGHT UNBOUND

electric, the memory too solid, too real.

His fingers trembled as he rubbed his eyes.

That wasn ’t a dream. It was a place. I was there. I could feel it.

His pulse thundered in his ringing ears. He scanned the room, trying to anchor himself. Trying to remember where—when—he was.

He found Lyra.

She lay beside him, her hand lightly resting against him, her breathing deep and steady.

Something in him eased.

He considered waking her.

But the words from the dream echoed, pulling him back.

“You opened the way.”

What does that even mean?

The air in the room felt too thick.

Lucien swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his bare feet meeting the cool floor.

He stood, reached for his jacket, and slipped out of the room —into the dark, into the silence, into something that felt much bigger than him.

***

Lucien watched the ember of his cigarette pulse in the breeze.

The messages in the sky cycled in slow, deliberate loops, painting rebellion across the heavens.

“Free Will.”

“Your Life Is More Than A Chart.”

“AstroSYS Controls – You Choose.”

“Wake Up.”

At the center of it all, the starburst pulsed like a heartbeat, burning against the void.

Lucien watched the shifting lights, but his mind was elsewhere.

The dream still clung to him —too sharp, too solid, too real. Dreams were supposed to fade when you woke up, dissolving like smoke.

This one didn ’t.

This one stayed.

He took another drag of the cigarette.

"This is not a dream. This is a place."

The words weren ’t fading, either.

187