History Is Written, Memory Is Lived

The purple sky pulses in rhythm with my heart, a single aurora of flesh and light. Beneath my feet, the dark earth responds to every step, lighting up with blue sparks as if breathing electricity. Before me, figures of smoke and light clash in an unreal silence. They wear mirror armor that reflects not the battlefield, but forests of silver pines, frozen fjords, and distant lands I have never seen—yet my blood recognizes them. When a sword strikes down, there is no clash of metal, only the deep tolling of a submerged bell vibrating in my bones. Arrows swim through the air, slow as silver fish. Then a wall of shields transforms into a wall of ice. Inside each shield, a black crow beats its wings in desperation. 

I feel a presence before I even see it. I look up: a vast, lidless eye stares down at me. It does not judge. It waits. A feathered shadow brushes the forehead of a warrior beside me; the man doesn’t fall, but dissolves into red petals that release a sudden, sweet scent. Wild strawberries. Jarðber. A thousand voices begin repeating a word I don’t understand—a whisper that grows, vibrates, and fills my chest until the dream shatters.

Chalk snaps sharply against the blackboard. The purple sky dissolves into the cold glow of fluorescent light.

“Silven! If you weren’t the best student in history, you’d already be out in the hallway.”

I sit up straight in my chair, my heart still racing and the lingering sensation of ice on my skin. The teacher stares at me with her arms crossed.

“Sorry, ma’am. I was studying late and didn’t sleep well.”

“Always the same excuse,” the teacher says, turning back to face the whole class. “The practice finals are the day after tomorrow. No lateness, no phones. Just blank paper and two blue pens. Understood?”

The bell explodes, saving me. The classroom turns into a chaotic mess of scraping chairs and zipping backpacks. I get up with effort, feeling an invisible weight upon me—as if a fragment of that world had remained trapped under my skin.

Outside the school, the cool air clears my head, but a voice stops me on the steps.

“Silven! What on earth did you do to your hair?”

It’s Maya. She squints at me, her eyes narrowed into two thin slits. I run a hand through my strands, which gleam with an almost metallic silver-white in the sunlight.

“Nothing. Why?”

“Yesterday, your natural dark roots were showing. Today, it’s pure white again. Did you go back to Selene to get it dyed?”

“Yeah, exactly,” I tell her, looking away. There’s no way I can tell her that when I woke up this morning, my hair had suddenly turned this strange silver-white out of nowhere.

Maya sighs, but smiles. “Grumpy as ever. Still, I always tell you: I prefer it when you don’t mess with your hair. Dark hair suited your light-colored eyes better.”

“Not this again,” I mutter, feeling my cheeks flush red.

She laughs, giving me a light nudge with her shoulder. “I love teasing you.”

We walk together to the intersection, but her words about the practice exams and the future just slide right off me. Part of me is still back down there, counting crows in the ice.

When I step into the house, the silence is a trap. I take the stairs two at a time, hurling my backpack against my bedroom door. The application page for the medical school entrance exam is open on my computer desktop. My father left it there like a reminder—or a sentence. I snap a photo of the blank form, close it in anger, and lie down on the bed, staring at the ceiling with my headphones turned up to the max so I don’t have to think.

When I go downstairs, the windows show only the darkness of night. My father is sitting at the kitchen table. His phone screen is off, but he’s staring into space. Waiting for me.

“Let’s put an end to these tantrums,” he says without raising his head. His voice is raspy, almost broken, yet heavy.

I stop on the second-to-last step. “Tantrums?”

“You knew it was going to be like this,” he continues, turning around. He is massive, nearly six-foot-six, with hands scarred by years of work on construction sites. “I gave you everything to secure that future for you.”

A bitter laugh slips out of me. “Then remind me when I said yes, Dad. Remind me when you ever asked me what I wanted.”

He stands up, looming over me. “You never said no.”

“Because you weren’t listening! I want to teach, I want to write, I want to make a living through music! I don’t want to spend my life in a hospital just because it’s your frustrated dream!”

He lets out a sharp noise, half grunt, half heavy chuckle. “And you honestly think art is going to put food on your table?”

The truth in his words hurts, but my anger is stronger. I turn my back on him, grab the keys off the entryway table, and walk out, slamming the door behind me.

The motorcycle roars to life, drowning out my thoughts. I take the country road, letting the speed numb everything. But there’s something strange in the air. The wind whipping against my helmet feels dense, heavy, almost electric. It feels like I’m breathing the exact same air from the dream.

The bend beneath the pines comes up too fast. I know it by heart, but rage makes me misjudge the timing. I squeeze the brake lever a second too late. The rear tire loses traction on the damp asphalt, the bike slides, and the ground slips out from under my feet.

Suddenly, the front of a semi-truck invades my lane. It’s an impassable wall of metal. I try to swerve sharply, the handlebars vibrate violently, and I’m thrown into the air.

For an infinite moment, I fly. The world turns upside down in absolute silence, where time grinds to a halt. Then comes the impact: a sharp, devastating blow that tears the air from my lungs and shatters the plastic of my helmet. But as I roll across the asphalt, the truck’s blinding headlights stop being white. They stain with a deep, electric purple. The exact same purple as the sky that was watching me.

A second later, the light goes out.

Only darkness remains.