The Absolut Throne

Chapter 2 - Anxiety

The nights are long here. Too long.

I used to think the hours between dusk and dawn were for rest, a mercy granted to the body after a day of toil. But mercy does not exist in this land. Not anymore.

Sleep is no refuge—it is a trap.

The dreams return each night without fail. They do not shift, they do not change. They are carved into my mind as though by a chisel, repeating themselves until I can recite them as clearly as a lesson on the board.

First, the silence.

Then the field of bodies, stretching as far as my eyes can see.

They are never strangers. Always people I have known—children, neighbors, fellow teachers from the foundation. Their skin is gray, their mouths open but voiceless. Their eyes… their eyes are what haunt me most. Glassy and endless, reflecting a crimson sky that never brightens. I step among them carefully, though they reach for me, their fingers brushing against my ankles, cold as iron.

I try not to look down. I fail. I always fail.

And then, looming above the sea of death, the Absolut Throne. Black stone, so tall I can barely see its top. The banners of the kingdom hang from its arms, dripping crimson like blood. Upon it sits the king—crowned in bone, his face both hidden and familiar, his golden robes shining with the wealth of a nation he starved.

He never speaks. He only watches me, his gaze heavy as a mountain.

And then I kill him.

Always.

I do not remember choosing it. Sometimes my hands hold a blade, sometimes fire, sometimes nothing but fury. Yet the outcome is always the same. His body slumps forward, lifeless, and falls. The sound echoes across the field like thunder.

It should be triumph. It should be freedom.

But it isn’t.

Because when he falls, the corpses rise.

Their jaws unhinge, their mouths wide with a scream I cannot hear but feel in every bone. The world itself shudders. They reach for me, claw at me, drown me in their countless hands.

And that is when I wake—gasping, my throat raw, my hands trembling as if I have truly killed. The weight of it clings to me through the day, like smoke that will not wash away.

I tell myself they are only dreams. Just visions, born of hunger and fear. But what if they are not? What if they are warnings? Or worse—what if they are desires I dare not admit, made flesh in sleep?

The thought gnaws at me until I cannot breathe.

Anxiety is no longer a visitor—it has moved in, a permanent resident beneath my ribs. My heart races when I walk to the school, when I hear the crackle of the radio, when I see patrol wagons in the distance. My chest feels tight, as though invisible hands are squeezing the air from me. My breath shortens until my vision blurs, and still, I cannot find calm.

Even in the classroom, surrounded by the children’s thin laughter, I feel the ground tilt beneath me. I see their faces flicker—bright-eyed one moment, glassy-eyed corpses the next. I drop the chalk, my hands shaking, and tell them I am only tired. They look at me with pity, though they are too young to understand what consumes me.

Sanity feels fragile here, like thin glass rattling in a storm. I have seen it c***k in others: the neighbor who mutters to herself until she forgets words entirely, the mother who walked into the river with her infant and never came back, the soldier who laughed as he beat a starving farmer into the earth.

Perhaps it is my turn.

Perhaps the Absolut Throne does not kill us with swords or famine. Perhaps it kills us by unraveling our minds thread by thread, until we become hollow shells that cannot resist.

The worst part is the silence. I cannot speak of this to anyone.

If the patrols hear that I dream of killing the king, I will vanish before dawn, my body left in a ditch. If the villagers hear, they will whisper “possessed” and drag me to the cults, who would gladly burn me in their offerings.

So I carry it alone.

Alone, while the dream consumes me more each night.

There are moments—terrifying moments—when I begin to lose the line between dream and waking. Once, I saw a man in the market bowing his head, and for an instant I saw a crown of bone on him, glinting under the sun. I froze, trembling, the blade of the dream heavy in my empty hands. He turned, only a weary farmer, his face hollowed by hunger. I fled before he could ask why I stared.

Another time, as I wrote lessons on the board, the chalk turned to bone in my grip, crumbling into ash that stained my hands red. I blinked, and it was chalk again. The students stared, wide-eyed. I laughed it off, but the sound that left me was hollow, not mine.

I am losing time.

Hours vanish from my days, swallowed into nothing. I will look up from the board and find the classroom empty, the sun already setting, though I do not remember dismissing the children. I will light a candle in my home, then blink and find it burned to nothing but smoke. My mind is fraying, pieces of me slipping into the cracks between reality and dream.

And yet—this is the most terrifying part—part of me longs for the dream.

When I kill the king, there is a moment—an instant—when the silence breaks. When I feel powerful, unshackled, free. The corpses rise after, yes, and they terrify me. But for that one breath, I feel alive in a way I do not in the waking world.

That thought is poison. I know it. But poison can be sweet.

So now I wonder: do I fear the dream because it is false, or because it is showing me what I was born to do?

I do not know. I cannot know.

All I know is this: each night the dream waits. Each night I kill him again. Each morning I wake with less of myself intact.

I am Anna. I am a teacher. I am a woman of this land.

But if the dreams continue, if the anxiety devours me whole…

I do not know how long I will remain Anna at all.