In the vast ocean, there is an island that appears only when the moon is full. No map records its existence, and no sailor who has set foot upon its shores has ever returned. Legends whisper that the island is not of this world—that it is not even real. But when an unfortunate crew is stranded there, they soon learn that the island dreams… and when it wakes, reality itself will unravel. Merlin, the eternal wanderer, recounts the chilling tale of The Island That Dreamed.
The Tale Begins…
Ah, traveler, I see curiosity in your eyes. You hunger for another tale, one that will twist your mind and bend your perception of reality. Very well. Let me tell you of The Island That Dreamed.
I have seen many places in my long existence. I have walked through lost kingdoms, sailed across forgotten seas, and stepped into worlds that should not be. But of all the places I have visited, there is one that I never wished to return to.
An island… that was not an island.
A place that dreamed.
The Lost Voyage
It was many centuries ago when I found myself aboard The Wayward Gale, a sturdy merchant ship bound for the distant shores of the Eastern Kingdoms. The crew was lively, their spirits high as the winds carried us smoothly across the great, endless ocean.
But the sea, as you may know, is fickle.
On the seventh night, the winds died. The sails hung limp, useless. The sky turned an unnatural shade, tinged with hues no mortal eyes were meant to see.
And then we saw it.
A landmass on the horizon.
It had not been there before.
It had appeared, sudden and seamless, as though it had always existed and we had simply failed to notice.
The captain, a weathered man named Gregor Kane, did not trust it. “There is no land here,” he muttered. “Not on any chart I’ve ever seen.”
And yet, it was there.
And our ship… was drifting toward it.
The Island That Shouldn’t Be
As the hull scraped against the sand, an unnatural stillness settled over the crew. No birds cried overhead, no waves lapped at the shore.
The island breathed silence.
I stepped onto the beach, my boots sinking into sand that felt… wrong. It was soft, yes, but beneath it, something shifted, as if the very ground was unsure of its own existence.
And then came the whispers.
They rose, quiet and insidious, curling through the air like tendrils of mist. They spoke not in words, but in thoughts, pressing into our minds with fragmented, half-formed sentences.
“Who are you?”
“Why are you here?”
“Do you dream?”
The men shuddered. Captain Kane drew his sword. “Back to the ship,” he ordered. “Now.”
But the ship was gone.
Vanished.
Only footprints remained in the sand where it had been.
We were trapped.
The Dreamer Awakens
The island shifted. The trees at the edge of the beach swayed without wind, their twisted limbs curling unnaturally. The sand beneath our feet rippled, as if something vast and unseen was stirring beneath it.
“We are inside something,” I whispered, realization sinking into my bones. “This place is not land—it is a living thing.”
And then, from the depths of the jungle, it came.
A figure—tall, robed in fabric that shimmered between existence and nothingness. Its face was hidden beneath a veil of shifting mist, and yet, I felt its gaze upon me.
It raised a hand, and suddenly, we were elsewhere.
Not on the island.
Not in the waking world.
We stood upon a sea of stars, drifting in the endless abyss of space, weightless and unbound by time. And before us, rising from the darkness, was the island.
But it was not an island.
It was a sleeping entity, vast beyond comprehension. Its body was the land, its veins the rivers, its breath the wind.
And it was waking up.
The whispers screamed.
The Awakening of the Sleeper
The figure before us, cloaked in shifting mist, did not speak with words, yet its message pressed against my mind like an overwhelming tide.
“You are within me.”
I gripped my staff tightly. Captain Kane, standing beside me, was pale as a ghost, his breathing unsteady. The rest of the crew? Gone.
Vanished into the space between thought and being.
I reached out, trying to grasp the essence of the world around me. But it was not a world. It was a thought, a construct of something vast and ancient, stretching beyond the concept of time itself.
The island—no, the sleeper—was dreaming.
And we had been caught in its slumber.
The Forgotten Ones
As the being before me shifted, I saw fragments of memory woven into the mist—visions of people, places, empires that had long turned to dust.
I saw sailors from centuries past, their expressions frozen in terror.
I saw cities that did not exist, blinking in and out of focus.
I saw gods, now nameless, devoured by the dream.
And then, I saw them.
The Forgotten Ones—those who had come before, who had stumbled upon this place and never left. Their forms flickered like candle flames, neither alive nor dead, suspended in the dream of the island.
One of them stepped forward, her voice layered with countless echoes. “You must leave before it wakes.”
Kane growled. “Then how do we get out?”
The figure’s gaze turned toward me. “You are different. You have walked beyond time. You… must sever the dream.”
The Riddle of the Dream
I exhaled slowly. “Sever it how?”
The Forgotten One lifted a translucent hand, gesturing toward the distant cliffs that overlooked the swirling void. There, perched atop an ancient altar, rested an obsidian monolith pulsing with unnatural energy.
“The Dream Anchor,” she whispered. “It is what binds the sleeper’s thoughts to this world. Destroy it, and you will be free.”
The world around us flickered again. The whispers in the air turned to screams.
The Sleeper was stirring.
We did not have much time.
The Descent into Madness
We ran.
The landscape warped around us, shifting with every step. One moment we were crossing a barren shoreline, the next we were sprinting through an endless corridor of towering stone pillars. The very fabric of reality was twisting, trying to pull us deeper into the dream.
Kane stumbled, his hands gripping his head. “I… I hear voices. They’re inside my mind!”
I grabbed him by the arm. “Focus! It’s trying to consume us!”
The altar was just ahead, but the closer we got, the more the air felt heavy, as if pushing back against us. The dream did not want to be severed.
And then—it appeared.
A shape rose from the mist—vast, incomprehensible. A silhouette of something colossal, shifting between dimensions, its presence sending waves of nausea through my body.
It was not fully awake yet. But it was aware of us.
The Breaking of the Anchor
I reached the monolith, my fingers trembling as I traced the ancient carvings on its surface. It pulsed beneath my touch, its energy alive.
“This is it,” I muttered. “The connection to the Sleeper’s mind.”
Kane drew his cutlass. “So we destroy it?”
I nodded. “Together.”
The Sleeper roared, its voice shaking the very fabric of the dream. Its colossal form surged forward, reality breaking apart around it.
We had seconds.
Kane swung his blade. I struck with my staff.
The monolith shattered.
A shockwave of pure, blinding energy exploded outward, tearing through the dreamscape.
Everything collapsed.
And then, there was nothing.
The Awakening
I gasped, my body jerking awake as if pulled from drowning waters.
The sand was beneath me. The ocean roared in the distance.
I was back.
The Wayward Gale sat anchored offshore, its sails intact, as if no time had passed at all.
Beside me, Kane groaned, blinking at the sky. His eyes met mine. “Did we…?”
I nodded. “We severed the dream.”
The island?
Gone.
The land that had existed for eons in the realm of sleep had vanished, returned to the void from whence it came.
And yet, as I stood, I felt a familiar presence, a whisper lingering in the wind, a fragment of something not quite gone.
The Sleeper was not dead.
It was waiting.
Somewhere, beyond the horizon, the island would dream again.
And someday… someone would find it.
So now you know, traveler. If ever you sail beneath a full moon and see an island that should not be there…
Do not set foot upon its shores.
For once you enter the dream, you may never wake again.
Leave a Reply