Story 1035: Dreambound

They say sleep is an escape.

For Dorian Vex, sleep became a prison.

It started after the storm—when the black rain fell for hours over the orphanage ruins in Briar’s End. Dorian had found a broken music box among the rubble. It played a haunting lullaby, off-key and sweet, as if sung by someone drowning.

He took it home.

That night, he dreamed of them.

Children with hollow faces, skin like cracked porcelain, limbs stitched at the joints with red thread. They danced in circles beneath a crescent moon, their mouths opening and closing in silent, aching rhythm. The music box played from nowhere. From everywhere.

And at the center of them stood her—the Dreambinder.

Tall. Pale. Veiled in gossamer shadows. Her fingers were too long, her eyes stitched shut. Yet somehow, she saw everything.

“You turned the key,” she whispered through stitched lips. “Now the dream turns you.”

Dorian awoke with blood under his nails and a music box wound tighter than before.