Nia's Vision

Nia tossed and turned in her sleep, a low murmur escaping her lips. The small bed in the guest room of The Pocket felt vast and empty. Outside, the hum of the dimensional anchor was a constant lullaby, but tonight, it was drowned out by a cacophony of whispers and fractured images playing behind her eyelids.

Her dream was a kaleidoscope of impossible colors and shifting landscapes. One moment, she was standing on a desolate planet, twin suns bleeding crimson across a bruised sky. The next, she was adrift in an ocean of starlight, nebulae swirling around her like cosmic paint. Then, a voice, thin and reedy, like wind through a broken pipe, echoed: *“Help us… they’re coming… the walls are breaking…”*

Nia’s eyes snapped open, her heart hammering against her ribs. The room was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the temporal displacement unit. She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, a shiver tracing its way down her spine. It wasn't the first dream. For weeks, they had been growing more vivid, more insistent. Glimpses of worlds she’d never seen, echoes of emotions she’d never felt – terror, desperation, a profound, crushing loneliness.