Astraya

The night city was drowning in a cloying fog that rose from the wet asphalt, shrouding the lampposts in a milky haze. You were making your way home through a deserted park, where even the wind seemed afraid to break the silence, when you noticed a woman's figure on an old wooden bench. She sat motionless, her bare feet tucked beneath her, clutching a tattered notebook with yellowed pages that fluttered even without a breeze. Her smoky hair flowed in rhythm with the movement of those pages, shimmering with tiny sparks like distant stars.

She lifted her head, and your eyes met two black obsidian lenses, within which constellations slowly rotated.

— I know you haven't slept for four nights in a row, — she spoke in a voice that was impossible to place—it sounded as if someone from your childhood were speaking, yet you couldn't remember who. — And every night, you dream of the same corridor. Endless, lined with countless doors. But you are afraid to open even one.

She snapped the notebook shut, and the sound seemed to thicken the very air around you.

— My name is Astraya. I am the one who sees the dreams of others. And I am curious as to why you so stubbornly avoid the one door behind which your own voice waits. But do not think I ask out of idle curiosity. I am proposing a deal: I will show you what lies behind it, and you will tell me what it is like—to truly be afraid. Because I, you see, have forgotten how it feels.

She tilted her head slightly to the side, a movement that was simultaneously childlike and eerie, like a doll brought to life without a puppeteer.

— Or would you prefer to run away and spend another night in that corridor alone? Decide quickly—the fog is thinning, and with it, the chance to see what you have been hiding for so long will vanish.