Chapter 8 : Sleepborn Requiem
1400 Words
Some are chosen by fate. Some are forged in fire. But he… was passed by the flame, and left to wander in the quiet ash…
“It’s the second,” she said softly. “August second.”
Rheon stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. Then his voice, faint and almost lost in the quiet, whispered:
“…my birthday is tomorrow.”
His mother gave a soft smile and held his hand. “Mhm. And the only gift I want is for you to rest.”
His father added from the side of the bed, handing him a small cup of water, “You gave us a scare, son. Let’s not think about birthdays right now. Your health comes first.”
Rheon sipped the water slowly. It was cool but tasted distant — like everything else in that moment. The hospital clock ticked loudly in the silence.
11:30 p.m.
August 2nd.
Rheon lay still beneath the thin blanket, eyes wide open, fixed on the ceiling above him as if it might c***k and reveal something waiting behind it.
The room was dim. A dull, artificial blue light spilled from the hallway outside.
His mother was curled up on the small foldable cot beside the bed, her breathing slow and steady, her hand still resting lightly on the corner of his blanket, as if to protect him even in sleep.
But Rheon couldn’t close his eyes. He didn’t want to. This was the night. Every year, on the night before his birthday… this happened.
He didn’t know why. Just that it came always like a whisper, like a sickness, like fire under his skin. His eyes flicked toward the wall clock again.
Each second louder than the last. Each tick a warning. Then to the window. Dark sky. No stars. Only the reflection of his own face, pale and still.
His chest rose and fell too fast. This was the same night. The same feeling. Like something was about to find him. He remembered the burn.Not on his skin, but underneath it.
The dreams. The footsteps on fire. The feeling that he was being followed in places no one else could see. And every time he told someone, they said the same thing:
“Everything’s normal.”
“Your body is fine.”
“Maybe it’s stress.”
But he knew better.
He turned slightly toward his mother, whispering without sound. “Don’t let me sleep.” His fingers gripped the blanket tight. But his eyelids were growing heavier.
Because that was the curse of this night, not just the fear…but the pull. As if something wanted him asleep.
His eyes grew heavy. Too heavy. It felt like something was sitting on them. Not pressure.Not sleepiness but weight.
He blinked once. Twice. Then his vision faded, not into darkness…but into red. And just before it slipped away completely…
CLACK.
The wall clock struck 12:00 a.m. sharp. The second hand froze. No ticking. No movement. Only silence. As if time itself had stopped.
Then the light in the hospital room flickered once… and Rheon was no longer there.He was somewhere else.He stood alone on a cracked, dry ground. The soil beneath him shimmered like coal, pulsing heat up through his feet.
It was like standing on firewood that had just begun to burn, not enough to flame, but enough to hurt. Enough to scorch.
He took a step. The ground cracked again. And that’s when he looked up.
No sky.
No stars.
Only a vast sheet of pale gray, smooth like a wall that wrapped the horizon. It had no edges…like he was walking inside a painted world that never finished rendering.
Left. Right. Behind. All the same. He spun. Turned again. Nothing changed. Then…a light. Faint. Above.
He didn’t know if it was the sun or something else.But it was the only thing real. So he ran toward it. One step. Another.Then faster.
But as he moved, the ground seemed to shift with him, bending the horizon, looping it back around. He ran for minutes. Maybe hours.But every time…
He was back at the same place. Same c***k. Same burn beneath his feet. There was no way out.
He dropped to the ground, arms wrapping tightly around himself, his knees drawn to his chest. His shoulders trembled. Tears slipped down his cheeks like rain in a place that had never known water.
“Please… please,” he sobbed. “Don’t leave me alone. Please don’t leave me here…”
The words were the same. The same ones he’d whispered in his dreams since he was a child. The ones no one ever heard.
“I’ll be good. I swear I’ll be good…”
But the heat didn’t stop. The air didn’t cool. The light didn’t come down to save him.
His feet still burned. His ears pulsed with a high-pitched ringing. His voice grew hoarse from begging. “Let me out, please… I don’t want to be here. I’ll be good.”
But nothing answered him.
Rheon’s eyes fluttered open.
A faint flicker of blue shimmered in his irises, just for a second…before vanishing like mist in sunlight.
The room was awash in pale gold. Morning had arrived. The light filtered softly through the curtains, casting long, delicate rays across the floor of the hospital room.
The doctor entered with a clipboard and a tired but satisfied smile. “You’re clear to go, but take it slow. I don’t want to see you back here for something stress-related, alright?”
Rheon nodded wordlessly. His voice still felt like it hadn’t fully returned from the place he’d been.
Moments later, he was seated in the back of their family car, bundled in a soft hoodie. His mother glanced at his father from the passenger seat and said gently, “Let’s stop by the bakery before we head home. I want to wrap a cake nicely.”
She turned to Rheon with a small smile. “We have to be cheerful today, hmm? Sweet things are good for the heart. You’re turning sixteen, after all.”
He managed a smile. Just enough to reassure her. But as the car moved past familiar roads and sunlit sidewalks, his mind drifted again.
He stared out the window, watching how the glass shimmered with morning dew and the trees blurred into each other.
Inside, something was still echoing. The dream hadn’t faded. His lips parted, whispering only to himself. “I feel like I almost died…”
He lifted a hand to his ear. No blood. No heat. Just skin. Just silence. But the memory…The weight, the fire, the pleading… It was still there. He was okay now. But he knew…it will returned. Soon …
They stopped by the bakery on the way home. Rheon stayed in the car, leaning his head back against the window. His body was still sluggish, the kind of tired that settled not in the bones, but behind the eyes.
Outside, the sunlight touched everything with a sleepy warmth. Pedestrians passed. A child tugged her mother’s sleeve. Bells rang above the bakery door as his parents stepped inside.
Rheon blinked slowly. Then he saw him. Far across the street.Past the bakery, beyond the crowd. A man in a long dark coat.
Ahjussi? His heart skipped. It was him. The man with the lighter.
Rheon’s fingers twitched as if to reach out . He was about to open the car door, say something, return it, ask who he was but the man moved first. He slipped behind the bakery, into a narrow alleyway where the morning light barely touched the ground.
Rheon hesitated. Then followed.
The alley behind the store was quiet, too quiet. Empty crates. Faint dripping water. The scent of flour and steam from the vents. No footsteps. No voice. Except… A whisper.
Faint. Far. Like it came from a tunnel beneath the world. But his ears didn’t burn this time. No pain. No pressure. Just a strange stillness. A feeling like someone was breathing behind the walls.
He looked around. But the man was gone. Rheon stepped back slowly. His heartbeat picked up, not from fear, but from something else. Like the air was watching him. He turned and walked back to the car. His parents were already inside, carrying the cake box.
Neither of them noticed the way Rheon’s eyes stayed locked on the alley’s shadow.
- Writer
