The Voice of the Dream-Eater

The chamber shook.

It began with a hum — faint and low, like the warble of a broken music box in an empty room. The mirror shards embedded in the walls of the crypt glowed faintly, their edges quivering as though something on the other side was… breathing.

Elias raised his sword. I stood behind him, heart pounding like a caged animal.

"I know this sound," I whispered.

He glanced at me. "From your dreams?"

I nodded.

"No." My voice came out hollow. "From before them."

The room darkened as if light itself recoiled. Then—

A whisper slithered through the air.

"So loud, little sleeper… You've made such noise for someone who should have stayed quiet."

I spun, but no one stood behind me.

Instead, the mirror shards rippled.

A reflection flickered to life. Not mine.

It was a silhouette — tall, robed in shadows, wearing a mask like a smiling porcelain doll. Where its eyes should have been, the glass gleamed. And when it moved, it didn't walk — it flowed, like spilled ink reforming itself as it spoke.

"Did you enjoy your awakening?" it purred. "Your borrowed name? Your borrowed life?"

I took a step forward. "What are you?"

"I am what watches behind the veil. What feeds on the minds that never return. I am the voice you heard when you slept a hundred years. I am the prince your stories forgot."

I remembered.

Not clearly — but like a dream that stabs back when you think it's over.

The lonely corridors. The endless stairs. The voice that whispered lullabies when I cried in the dark of my own head. The stories it told me, every night, like thread pulled through flesh.

It had been there with me.

Not out of mercy.

Out of hunger.

"You kept me in that sleep," I whispered.

"I kept you alive," it hissed. "I made you beloved. Beautiful. A tragedy men would die to wake. I was your god, and you were my offering."

Elias stepped between us.

"Whatever you are," he said, "you're not coming with her."

The dream-eater tilted its head.

"You're right," it said softly. "She's coming with me."

And the mirrors shattered.

Time ripped sideways.

One moment I stood in the crypt — the next, I was falling through a hall of broken glass, my body untouched yet bleeding. The shards didn't cut skin. They sliced memories.

I saw myself at six, running through a garden that no longer existed. I saw a hand — gloved and cold — covering my mouth before the spell was cast. I saw a bed, surrounded by thorns, and women in blue and green robes arguing with a man who wore no face.

Then I saw the dream-eater, leaning over me as I slept. Whispers curling from its mouth like black ribbons.

"Stay mine."

I screamed—

—and landed.

I was in the same crypt.

But it was… twisted.

The mirrors were smooth, whole — but they showed no reflection. Just dark water rippling beneath glass.

And Elias was gone.

I stood, barefoot on the cold marble.

In the silence, a faint voice called to me. Not the eater's voice. Not a threat.

It was a child's.

"Aurora?"

I turned.

A little girl stood at the far end of the chamber. She looked like me — not as I was now, but as I must've been once. Hair braided, blue eyes wide, dressed in soft pink. A doll in her arms, its face cracked.

"Who are you?" I asked.

She hugged the doll tighter. "I'm the part of you that never woke up."

My breath caught.

"I… left you?"

She nodded.

And I understood.

Not all of me had awakened. I'd escaped the curse, but I left parts of myself behind — memories, innocence, belief.

The dream-eater hadn't just fed on me.

It had kept pieces.

"I need to find him," I said. "Elias. The real world. The others."

"But if you leave," she whispered, "he'll follow you again."

"I know."

She stepped closer and held out her cracked doll.

"You'll need this."

I took it. The doll's glass eye gleamed — a single mirror shard embedded where the left eye should've been.

And in it, I saw my own reflection — not the sleeping girl, not the perfect princess, but the truth.

My eyes weren't wide with innocence anymore.

They were watching.

And I was ready to see everything.