CHAPTER 1:  THE DREAM OF GLASS 

The night was thick with silence, the kind that settled deep in the bones, pressing down like the weight of an unseen presence. The moon hung high, a sickly, pale eye watching the world below, casting long, skeletal shadows across the cliffs. Alaric stood at the precipice, staring down into the abyss where the village lights barely flickered in the distance.

He had the dream again.

It always started the same way—a whisper in the dark, a voice calling his name, distant yet deafening, spoken by something that did not breathe as men did.

Then came the glass.

A towering structure of pure, crystalline light, standing in the middle of a void. It was not a mirror, nor was it a simple artefact. It was alive, humming with a deep, eerie pulse, like a beating heart of something ancient. The glass did not reflect his image. Instead, it showed him something else—something that made his blood freeze in his veins.

A figure stood inside the glass.

It was him. But... not himself.

The Alaric inside the glass was different. His eyes were hollow, his skin cracked like dry earth, and a thin smile stretched across his face—not a smile of joy, but something deeper, something grotesque. A smile that did not belong to a man.

Alaric tried to step back, but the force of the dream held him still. He had no control here.

The figure in the glass tilted its head, as if studying him. Then, slowly, impossibly, it moved.

It pressed its hands against the glass, and the glass began to splinter.

The sound was unbearable—a high-pitched, screeching wail, like the screams of a thousand souls trapped in a single moment of agony. The cracks spread rapidly, weaving a web of fractures across the surface.

Then—

Shatter.

The glass exploded, sending shards flying in all directions. But Alaric did not wake up. Not yet. Because in the space where the glass had once stood, there was now only darkness.

And from that darkness, something reached out.

A hand—blackened, with elongated fingers and nails like jagged knives—emerged, grasping at the air, reaching for him.

That was when the whisper turned into something else. A voice, deep and raw, its words scraping against his mind like rusted metal.

"The glass is only the beginning."

Alaric gasped awake, his body drenched in cold sweat.

He clutched his chest, his heart hammering against his ribs like a prisoner trying to break free. The dream had never gone this far before. Never had the figure moved. Never had the voice spoken so clearly.

Something had changed. Something was different.

And the worst part?

The voice had not faded. It was still there, lingering at the edges of his mind, whispering, whispering, whispering.

A Curse or a Calling?

Alaric had lived his entire life in the village at the foot of the mountain, a place where nothing changed, where the people were content with their simple lives. They built, they harvested, they traded. But Alaric? He was different.

Ever since he was a child, he had felt it—a pull, a quiet but insistent force that whispered of something beyond the life he had been given. The elders had warned him against it.

"Dreams can be dangerous," they had said. "Some things are not meant to be followed."

But Alaric knew that this was not just a dream. It was something more. A vision. A prophecy. A warning.

The problem was, no one else saw it. No one else heard the voice in the dark.

No one else felt the pull of the glass.

The Warning

Alaric barely noticed the passage of time as he wandered through the village that day. His mind was trapped between reality and the dream, the whisper still gnawing at the edges of his thoughts.

"The glass is only the beginning."

He needed answers. He needed truth.

But truth, in the village, was a dangerous thing.

He made his way to the outskirts, where the oldest man in the village, Master Elion, lived. The elders whispered about him, calling him mad. But if anyone knew about the glass, it would be him.

Alaric knocked on the heavy wooden door. Silence.

Then, a sudden, raspy breath from the other side. The door creaked open just enough for a pair of pale, sunken eyes to peer through.

"You should not have come," Elion said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Alaric hesitated. "I need to know. About the glass."

A sharp inhale. Then—the door slammed shut.

Alaric's stomach turned to ice.

The man was terrified.

Not of Alaric.

But of what Alaric was asking about.

The Path Has Been Decided

That night, as Alaric lay awake in his small hut, staring at the ceiling, he realised that there was no turning back.

He could feel it now—the pull of something greater than himself.

The dream was not just a dream. It was a door.

And doors were meant to be opened.

Even if what lay beyond was something meant to remain hidden.

The glass was calling him.

And soon, he would have to answer.

Next: "The Prophesied Path"

You must not skip the next chapter.

What Alaric has seen is only the surface of a much deeper truth. The whispers will grow louder. The warnings will become more dire. And soon, the first step toward his fate will be taken—one that cannot be undone.

But there are things in the dark that should

not be disturbed.

And Alaric?

He is about to disturb them all.