Chapter 67 Dream-Walking Discovery

Chapter 67 Dream-Walking Discovery
Ondine arrived wrapped in a sleeping robe, hair loose and eyes sharp despite the hour.

She took one look at Thessaly huddled on the bed and her expression shifted from concern to something harder to read. Fear, maybe. Or recognition.

"Tell me exactly what happened," Ondine said, settling into the chair across from her. "Every detail. Don't leave anything out."

So Thessaly did. Described falling asleep and waking up in the place made of mist and stars. The threads connecting everything. The pulse she could feel like a second heartbeat. Reaching out to touch the golden thread and being pulled into the nightmare.

The child. The man with the belt. The terror that had felt so real she could still taste it.

Ondine's face went pale.

Not the healthy kind of pale where color drains from shock. This was deeper. Like all the blood had left her body at once, leaving behind something fragile and breakable.

"Ondine?" Davorin stepped forward. "What is it?"

The healer didn't answer right away. She was staring at Thessaly like she'd transformed into something else entirely. Something dangerous.

"How long?" Ondine asked quietly. "How long have you had the dreams?"

"Since I was a child. They've always been vivid. Violent sometimes. I thought everyone dreamed like that." Thessaly wrapped her arms around herself. "What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing is wrong with you." Ondine's voice shook. "Gods. Nothing is wrong. You're perfect. Terrifying, but perfect."

"That's not comforting."

"It's not meant to be." Ondine stood, pacing to the window and back. Her hands were trembling. "Thessaly, what you experienced tonight. That wasn't a dream. You entered the Dream Realm."

"The what?"

"The space between consciousness and unconsciousness. The place where all dreams exist simultaneously." Ondine was talking fast now, words tumbling over each other. "Most people never see it. Their minds aren't built to perceive that layer of reality. But you did. You walked there. And you touched someone else's nightmare."

Thessaly's stomach dropped. "That child. That was real? Someone's actual memory?"

"Yes. Somewhere in this palace or beyond, there's a person who lived that moment. And you experienced it through their dream." Ondine turned to face her fully. "Do you understand what that means?"

"That I'm cursed?"

"That you're a Dream-Walker."

The words hung in the air. Thessaly waited for them to make sense, but they just sat there, heavy and incomprehensible.

"I don't know what that is," she said finally.

"Because they're extinct." Ondine's laugh was brittle. "Or they were. Until you." She moved closer, and Thessaly saw genuine fear in her eyes now. "Dream-Walkers were rare even in the old days. Maybe one born every few centuries. They could navigate the Dream Realm like you and I walk through rooms. Could slip into people's sleeping minds. Read memories. Plant suggestions. Reshape nightmares into pleasant dreams or twist happiness into terror."

"That sounds horrible."

"It was powerful. Dangerously so." Ondine sat back down, but her posture was rigid. "The last recorded Dream-Walker died three hundred years ago. A woman named Keira who used her gift to end a war by convincing both kings they'd lost already. She walked their dreams for months, showed them futures where their kingdoms burned, their children died, everything they loved turned to ash. They sued for peace within a year."

"What happened to her?"

"After the war ended, people got scared. Started wondering what else she could do. What she could make them believe. So they hunted her down and killed her." Ondine's voice was flat. "Burned her alive to make sure her gift died with her."

Thessaly's throat went dry. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you need to understand what you are. What people will do if they find out." Ondine leaned forward. "Dream-Walkers were powerful enough to reshape reality itself. Not the physical world, but the world inside people's heads. And since most people live more in their thoughts than in their bodies, that made Dream-Walkers more dangerous than any army."

"I don't want to be dangerous. I just want to sleep without accidentally invading someone's trauma."

"I know. But wanting doesn't change what you are." Ondine's expression softened slightly. "The gift you have, it's not a curse. It's old magic. Primal. The kind that existed before kingdoms, before structured society. Your family probably suppressed it without knowing, told you that you were broken when really you were just different."

Thessaly thought about her mother's disappointment. The way she'd been hidden away, treated like a shameful secret. "They called it a curse. Said I was powerless."

"Because they didn't recognize what they were looking at." Ondine's voice carried something like anger now. "Your 'curse' kept you from using normal magic because all your power was going into the Dream Realm. That's where you belong. That's where your strength is."

"So what does that mean? I just accept that I'm going to keep falling into other people's nightmares?"