When Valerie woke, all around her was an abyss of deep black. The nothingness of her environment made her shudder at every glance her eyes make. She looked around, her nerves still burning with adrenaline, preparing to fight back whatever made her feel like this.
But nothing came out of the gaping void. She was trapped in total darkness, where the only thing she could see was her body. Then a mysterious figure formed in the shadows of the abyss. It had an icy stare, its body made of nothing but small black and white sparkles and smoke, it was something not of this world. Is this a dream?
Before Valerie could jump to conclusions, the shadowy figure shot a cold glare at the frightened girl. It was uncertain of this . . . innocent child. It had chosen a wise and caring person to take hold of its secrets, but instead, the stars have answered it with a child who knows nothing of the horrors and beauties of the cosmos.
The figure approached the girl. Its winter-like gaze gave Valerie a feeling that she was going through a state of hypothermia. The stars must’ve been wrong. This wasn’t the girl it was searching for. This wasn’t the destined prophet.
“You, are an anomaly,” the figure spoke in a deep, hoarse tone. It sounded vicious, a wicked voice and yet, can be so unnerving to the bone when it should’ve just made others submit. But Valerie flinched, her mouth and eyes practically shaped like wide ovals by now. The black figure touched the girl’s left cheek with a mass of invisible, but soft tendrils. It felt alien to Valerie as the figure continued to caress her face. Then it stopped.
“You, are the prophet destined to save this world from the Black Star.” The figure said darkly. Its voice still so intimidating, Valerie almost couldn’t take in its words.
“P-prophet?” Valerie stammered as the figure closed in its gaze onto her own. Then she woke up. But she wasn’t back in school like how she expected she would return. Instead, she was on a desolate land of nothing but black soil accompanied with dried cracks in them by the drought of the environment.
“This is the tale you must warn the others. You shall warn the people to stop the Black Star from destroying all, Valerie Gray.” The figure disappeared, with Valerie reaching out to its black tendrils in a futile attempt to stop it from leaving her with unanswered questions. Could this be? Could this be a real legend? Or is it just a dream? Valerie had decided that it would be safer if she believed that it was just a nightmare, but the barren land she saw in the vision looked so real—and felt so real—that she might believe in the mysterious figure who spoke to her in her dreams.
But the nightmare didn’t end. It was just a beginning.
The bleak scene from before materialized again in her gaze, this time, there were figures of soldiers clad in modern combat suits battling a swarm of—aliens? Valerie took a closer look at the scene, stepping closer to the fight unfolding in front of her very eyes. The soldiers were losing. The aliens plated in black carapace and scales charged toward the last soldier alive—and teared his guts to nothing but food for them. Valerie was shocked by the horrific scene, that she fell to her knees and stared at the dead soldier’s body being eaten alive.
The shadow figure came back.
“Do you see what the Black Star can do?”—it pointed above the dark sky with a black tendril—“This is the fate you must destroy.”
Valerie wondered if all this was real. Wondered if this had clashed with reality. Wondered if these events have something to do with the Lair of the Ouroboros. It might have. Or it might have not. The shadowed figure came close to Valerie, staring into the black mass the size of the moon just a hundred miles away from the Earth’s surface. It was truly a sight to behold. The globe that made dreams and wishes come true. The sphere that made disasters and greedy desires come true. It was all thanks to this mysterious spheroid object in the sky made it clear that this wasn’t a dream at all. In fact, Valerie had a moment of nostalgia where she felt that she had seen a scene similar to the one she was forcefully pit in by the shadow figure. This doesn’t make any sense.
But what if this is a hoax? What if she was just thinking too much during the day? Had she passed out just because of that? Valerie would have to control her time better than that after she wakes up. But now isn’t the time to be thinking of real life situations. She would have to take note of everything that comes to mind here, in her dream world.
“I have not expected a child like you to be entrusted with our prophecies, but you must not fail, or you will set humanity upon eternal chaos and extinction.” The shadowy tendrils glided over to the barren soil, stroking against the harsh texture and surface of the dead land. The tendril disappeared in an instant when Valerie blinked. She stood there, speechless and awed by the sight of how terrible the Earth now had become. Just by this celestial object the shadow figure had called the “Black Star”, the Earth had become a lifeless planet just like all the others in the solar system.
After the last sentence by the shadow figure, it retreated back into the void of darkness, leaving the confused girl to her own thoughts. It gave its last word. “My name is T’draad. Seek me out on dark nights when you require guidance.”
With its final tendril vanishing into the void, Valerie’s sweet nightmare ended.
Comments (0)
See all