I go to sleep and have a dream. Very vivid, as if I were living an ordinary day in real life.

I wake up, drink my hot coffee, but catastrophically burn my mouth on the first sip. I got really mad and ran to rinse my mouth and put on my cocoa butter to avoid further damage—but it had run out. Everything was going wrong that morning. I changed clothes and rushed off to class, since I couldn’t stand being home any longer. “Bye mom, love you.”

 

I get to school. The history teacher dumps loads of assignments on us. Then more boring classes.
 

Calculations and more calculations from Ms. Zuleica, the most demanding woman in the world—she snapped at me just because I misplaced two commas in the formula, and then everyone made fun of me. It was so awful that I even felt a weird chill down my spine… Finally, the last class was French literature, one of my favorites.

 

After this disastrous day, I went home, had a hot chocolate, and read the romance book that had arrived while I was at school—the only good thing about the day. I lay down after finishing my homework. I could finally rest…

But before falling asleep, I felt a strong shiver and woke up into the real world.

 

Waking into reality, I noticed the world was following the script of my dream.

 

I avoided burning my mouth with the coffee, stopped by the pharmacy and bought my favorite cocoa butter, arrived at school excited and ready to face the history class. During math class, I felt a shiver and a strange unease, like someone was watching me closely—but it was just the teacher, who was standing oddly in the hallway before finally deciding to come into the room.

 

Focused on math, I had forgotten about the dream. But suddenly the teacher called me to the board, and almost instinctively I responded, not even feeling my hand move. I saw that I had gotten the answer perfectly right, and I knew it because Zuleica was looking at me, surprised.

 

I got home happy and immediately asked my mom for my new book. She laughed and said:

“Wow, how did you guess?? You were really waiting for it, huh? It’s on the little table in the corner, sweetheart.”

I laughed, grabbed my hot chocolate in the kitchen, went up to my room, finished my homework quickly, and started reading my wonderful new book — and obviously from the same page I stopped at in the dream.

​

Opening to page 37, I felt a bad chill like the one at the start of class. Maybe it was just anxiety. A strange pain in my hands. A breeze brushed the back of my neck, sending shivers through me and pulling me away from the book. 

 

I noticed my window was open, something I didn’t remember from the dream, but… it’s normal not to recall everything. I calmed myself. Closed the window and decided to lie down.

I covered myself, and just before closing my eyes, I felt something watching me—but still, I fell asleep almost like in a trance.

 

I fall into the dream world again, and things unfold just like before. The day begins normally, I arrive at school, the classes are all the same—but in the last one, we’re given a surprise test. I hadn’t studied much because I hated the new geography teacher, so I didn’t even try to answer the questions—I just kept reading them over and over until the bell rang.

I headed home already expecting the scolding I’d get from my mom. On the way back, I felt that weird discomfort again. I thought about running, but the feeling faded almost instantly. I really must be very anxious lately.

 

At home, I rushed to my room, trying to avoid my mom, but failed miserably since she was already waiting for me in the hallway. I told her everything, head down—and surprisingly, she was calm. 

 

But when she hugged me to console me, her skin was cold. Then again, the day was chilly, so nothing unusual… I think. I went upstairs, gloomy, trying not to overthink. I decided to go to bed early, since I had a bit of a headache.
 

I fell asleep quickly despite the pain and the strange feeling—like eyes were smoldering toward me, just like when my mom got angry and caught me doing the dishes last minute. But I was too tired to care.

 

But the peace doesn’t last long.
 

I feel myself being dragged from the dream world into reality in an unstable tug-of-war, unable to remain on either side. Until suddenly, with a terrible tightness in my chest, I wake up with wide, startled eyes, staring into the corner of the bed, burning with intense heat.

 

A demon, at the foot of the bed — Was I losing my mind?
 

Radiant like the sun, the thing was overwhelmingly hot. A presence so evil it felt as though death itself was claiming me. Seeing that creature awakened all the intrinsic despair of human terror — like prey that knows it’s about to die.

It was as if reality bent and warped around it. I tried to avert my gaze, but it was impossible, like a black hole devouring everything around it. The room, once dim, was now pitch dark.
 

Even though that presence was brighter than a supernova, I couldn’t see anything else — not even myself. I could only see that damned being. Drenched in sweat and agony, I tried to scream for my mother, but my voice echoed only inside my skull.
 

It kept approaching me, slowly, unrelentingly.

 

I began to feel searing pain — a terrible burning from the inside.

 

My organs felt like soup, boiling and then tearing apart, disintegrating. An excruciating pain consumed me completely, and just before I could lose consciousness, everything was bathed in a phosphorescent red.
 

I felt my eyes bursting from their sockets and my head compressing with a sound like cracking stone. The void swallowed everything, and only one sentence was spoken:

 

“Nothing escapes me. You are mine.”

 

Leonardo woke in terror, aching all over but with no memory of why.
 

It felt like that one time he’d caught an inexplicable virus as a child. He also remembered the terrible fever he’d had back then, and how, though worried, his parents always seemed to calm down whenever Leo would say,
 

“Mommy, Daddy, look — my guardian angel is here.”  But soon after, he’d go back to crying.

 

It was a being of overwhelming light, dazzling and intense, that even without eyes, stared at Leonardo constantly, guarding him, solemnly repeating:

 

“You are my chosen one, and you shall be taken by the Light.”

 

Coming out of that trance of old memories and silly childhood thoughts, he got up and got ready for school as quickly as he could — the only thing he remembered from the dream were the geography test questions, and he didn’t want to forget them.

 

During recess, anxious but confident, he researched all the questions he remembered. He didn’t even pay attention to his friends calling him to play volleyball, which he usually loved.
 

He took the test with ease, even though he felt tingling sensations as he wrote the answers and saw the letters blur before his eyes.

 

He walked home calmly, his headache slightly better after taking some medicine, and excitedly shared the good news about his grade — he got a nine.
 

He received a warm, loving hug from his mother. But a shiver ran through his whole body.
 

Suddenly, he felt terribly unwell. He gave his mom a quick kiss on the cheek — she held a strange smile and blush — and ran to his room, saying as his head throbbed:
 

“Love you, mom, but I’m late for a game with Caio. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

 

Climbing the stairs and locking the door, feeling the unease intensify, he barely heard the muffled voice echoing faintly from the hallway at the bottom of the stairs:

 

“No problem, son. Mommy loves you. And know that you will always be my baby — the one chosen by the angels.”

 

His anguish only deepened after hearing those loving words. His body shivered. The best thing to do was lie down — surely, this would pass.

 

He grabbed his thickest blanket, even though it was hot — it was his childhood favorite.
 

He covered himself from head to toe. His anxiety told him something was wrong, but he ignored it and tried to sleep. His body rested for a few hours, but suddenly Leonardo was forced to awaken.
 

Drenched in sweat, fingertips numb, he was soaked. Fear overtook his mind, accompanied by flashes of a terrible nightmare — one where his bones shattered and tore through his flesh. A pressure hit his chest and climbed toward his head.
 

Unable to bear it, Leo ripped off the blanket in desperation, suffocating from the heat — and then he saw it, at the foot of the bed.

 

It was Him.
 

Shining in the darkness, the figure that had always watched him from afar had finally reached him.

 

A firm, deep voice echoed inside his panicked mind, and he knew it was the end:

 

“You were warned. Nothing escapes me.”
 

 

And everything was swallowed by The Light.