In the twilight haze between waking and sleep, I found myself standing in the vast hollow of a cathedral, its ceiling lost in shadows ten stories above. The air was thick with the scent of ancient stone and wax, the only sound a faint drip echoing from some unseen corner. Moonlight spilled through stained-glass windows, painting the marble floor in fractured reds and blues. I wasn’t alone, though I couldn’t see anyone. I never did.A rope hung from the center of the vaulted ceiling, swaying gently as if beckoning. It was coarse, frayed at the edges, an odd blemish in this sacred expanse. My hand reached out before my mind could question why. The rope was rough, real under my fingers. I tugged, testing its weight.
Then it moved.
Not a gentle sway—a violent lurch. The rope snapped upward, coiling like a living thing, and my wrist was caught, tangled in its grip. It was a retractable, spring-charged rope! My feet left the ground. The cathedral blurred as I was yanked skyward, air screaming past my ears. Five seconds. That’s all it took. Five seconds to be dragged ten stories, my body slamming against the cold stone of the ceiling, pinned like a moth.
I dangled there, heart hammering, the rope cutting into my skin. Below, the cathedral floor was a distant mosaic, indifferent to my plight. My fingers clawed at the knot, but it wouldn’t budge. The shadows seemed to pulse, whispering things I couldn’t make out. Was this a dream? The pain felt too sharp, the stone too cold.
Then the rope twitched again. A low hum vibrated through it, like a machine waking up. I froze, staring into the dark above. Something was up there, where the rope vanished into the ceiling. Something waiting.
I kicked, twisting in the air, but the rope held fast. The hum grew louder, and the shadows began to move.
The humming intensified, no longer a low thrum but a deep, resonating chord that seemed to shake the very foundations of the cathedral. The rope began to glow faintly, a pale, sickly green light that illuminated the space where it vanished.
And then, it descended.
Not a single thing, but a swirling mass of them. They looked like moths, but their wings were made of shattered stained glass, catching the light in a thousand fractured, menacing shards. Their bodies were not corporeal but were instead woven from shadow and cold smoke. They poured out of the darkness in a silent, undulating tide, their forms coalescing into a single, massive shape directly above me.
It was the size of a carriage, a monstrous composite of countless glass-winged moths, their chittering now a high-pitched, maddening sound. Two immense, multifaceted eyes opened within the swirling mass, each one a kaleidoscope of the cathedral’s lost light, focusing on me with an intense, unblinking malice. The rope holding me tautened, vibrating with the creature’s power.
The hum was now a roar, and the creature began to descend, its shattered wings cutting the air with a sound like grinding glass.
Terror is a cold fist in my gut, and in the face of this winged monstrosity, it’s a feeling that consumes me. I plead, my voice cracking as I try to shout over the grinding of glass wings. “Please! Help me! Just… just let me down!” my words are swallowed by the cavernous space, a futile cry against the sheer indifference of the creature.
The composite eyes, a swirling vortex of color, do not soften. The hum of its myriad wings rises in pitch, a sound that feels less like a machine and more like a fever dream. The rope holding me tightens even more, and I can feel the pressure increasing, my breath catching in my throat. I start to pray, the words a frantic, desperate litany. I pray to anyone who might be listening, to the saints depicted in the windows, to the empty stone above. I plead for mercy, for a chance to just be on solid ground again.
But the creature does not seem to understand my pleas or my prayers. The swarm of glass moths that form its body begins to shift, and I see tendrils of shadow and fractured light extend from the main mass, reaching down toward me. They are not gentle. They are like grasping claws, and they descend with the inevitable, silent speed of a falling guillotine.
A profound, chilling stillness settles over me, a calm that follows the storm of panic. I cease my frantic struggle, my pleas dissolving into a single, shuddering breath. I hang suspended, a pendulum of flesh and bone, and a wave of acceptance washes over me. This is it. This is how the dream ends. Or perhaps, this is how it begins.
The tendrils of shadow and stained glass reach me, not with the brutal force I expected, but with a horrifying delicacy. They wrap around my torso, my limbs, not crushing, but holding me fast in a grip that feels both impossibly light and unbreakable. The buzzing of the creature intensifies, and a soft, green light pulses from the rope as if in sync with the creature's heartbeat.
I feel a new sensation: not pain, but a cold, deep emptiness spreading from the points of contact, a siphoning of warmth and life itself. The world begins to fade, the brilliant colors of the stained glass windows dimming to muted grays, the cold marble floor becoming a distant, indistinct haze. The creature above me seems to drink in my very essence, its glass wings now glowing with a vibrant, terrible light.
Then, the floor of the cathedral begins to break apart, not with a crash, but with a silent crumbling, as if it were made of dust. The mosaic tiles scatter into motes of light that rise and join the creature, adding to its terrifying brilliance. Below me, a vast, swirling vortex of pure shadow opens, a silent void that seems to beckon me into its depths.
A final, shuddering gasp escapes me as the last vestiges of the cathedral fade to a monochrome wash. The feeling of being siphoned, of cold emptiness, is replaced by a sense of unmooring, of weightlessness. I am no longer in the cathedral, no longer hanging from a rope. The creature and its chittering moths are gone.
I am simply there.
It's not a place, but an absence of place. I float in an infinite, silent void, a deep indigo that is neither light nor dark. Below me, the vortex of shadow is now a vast, swirling galaxy of pure potential, a nebula of unformed worlds and unborn souls. I am being drawn toward it, but not with violence—with a gentle, inexorable pull.
This is the threshold. The passage. I am a seed falling toward fertile, unknown soil. The memory of the cathedral, the rope, and the fear feels like a dream that belonged to someone else. I am no longer me, but a sliver of consciousness, a wisp of a soul on the verge of a new beginning.
As I drift closer to the swirling vortex, I feel a gentle warmth begin to bloom within me, a light where there was only emptiness. It is not the light of the sun or a star, but a feeling of profound, cosmic embrace. I am being welcomed. The journey, it seems, is not one of death, but of transformation.
But as I drift closer to the swirling vortex, just as I am on the verge of being swallowed by it, the cosmic embrace begins to feel less like a welcome and more like a pull. The gentle warmth turns to a searing heat, and the profound silence is shattered by a sudden, jarring noise.
A noise that I recognize.
It's the sound of my alarm clock. The piercing, insistent beeping of a machine determined to wake me from the dead.
My eyes snap open.
Sunlight, a brilliant, almost painful yellow, streams through my window. The familiar scent of coffee brewing and toast fills the air. I am in my bed, tangled in my sheets, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. The cathedral, the rope, the chittering moths—all of it dissolves into the hazy, fragmented memory of a dream. A dream so vivid, so terrifyingly real, that the knot in my stomach refuses to untangle.
I sit up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and look down at my wrists. They are a little red, as if from a restless night's sleep, but there is no sign of a rope, no marks, no cuts. The pain is gone, replaced by a dull ache in my muscles from a night of tossing and turning. The memory of the cathedral fades, but the feeling of falling, of being carried into the next world, lingers.
As I swing my feet to the floor, I can't shake the feeling that I was on the precipice of something vast and unknowable. I wasn't dreaming of death, but of something else entirely. Something I almost became.
I am sitting on the edge of my bed, the morning sun painting streaks of yellow across the floor. The world outside my window is bustling and ordinary, a stark contrast to the shadowy cathedral and the surreal terror of my dream. I close my eyes, breathing in the familiar scent of my home, and allow myself to return to the memory. The dream wasn't just a nightmare; it felt like a message, a cosmic whisper.
The rope wasn't an instrument of death, but of elevation. It pulled me out of the ordinary, away from the familiar ground, and toward something higher. The cathedral itself, a place of worship and reflection, could be a symbol of my own inner world or a sacred space where profound truths are revealed. The creature, with its wings of shattered glass and body of shadow, wasn't just a monster. It could be a guardian, or a herald of change, forcing me to face the unknown. And the vortex of shadow below me, that wasn't an abyss; it was a birth canal.
This wasn't a dream about dying. It was a dream about being reborn. The terrifying journey, the feeling of being torn from my old life, was a necessary passage to something new. I didn't fall to my death; I was pulled to a higher plane of existence, a new beginning.
