I don’t remember when sleep became the best part of my day, only that at some point it quietly replaced everything else. School feels like something I just move through now. Voices blending together, people laughing in groups I’m never part of, teachers calling my name just to check I’m still there. I sit, I listen, I leave. No one really notices and after a while, I stopped expecting them to. By the time I get home, I’m already tired in a way that sleep seems like the only cure for, like closing my eyes is the one thing I can look forward to without disappointment. And every time I do, I end up in the same place.

It’s always waiting for me unchanged and quiet, stretching out beneath a pale endless sky. The ruins feel ancient, like they’ve been standing long before I ever found them, and there’s something strangely comforting about how nothing here ever shifts or disappears. It doesn’t ask anything from me nor does it doesn’t expect me to be different.

I can just exist.

The first time I saw him I thought he was part of it, just another detail my mind had created. He stood near the edge of everything, where the ground simply stopped, like the rest of the world had been cut away. But he didn’t blur when I looked at him, didn’t fade or change like dreams are supposed to. He just… stayed. Watching me in a way that made it impossible to pretend he wasn’t real in some way that mattered.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said the second night I found him again, like he’d been expecting me to return. I frowned, my eyes sweeping around the dilapidated remains. “I could say the same thing to you.”

For a moment he didn’t answer and something about that silence felt heavier than it should have. “I don’t leave,” he said eventually, there was an edge in his voice that made my chest constrict, and I couldn’t explain it.

After that, I started noticing things I hadn’t before. I could walk wherever I wanted, wander as far as I liked, but he never moved beyond that same invisible line near the edge. It was like the world allowed me to come and go, but kept him in place, as if he belonged to it in a way I didn’t. Every morning, I’d wake up back in my room, the dream slipping away around the edges, but he would still be there, waiting.

I tell myself it’s just a dream, that none of it is real, but it doesn’t feel like one anymore. Not when I catch myself thinking about him during the day, when I’m supposed to be listening to something that doesn’t matter, or when I find myself wishing the hours would pass faster just so I can go back. It’s the only place where I don’t feel invisible, where someone actually looks at me like I exist, like I matter enough to notice.

And lately, it’s been getting harder to wake up, not in a way I can explain but just a feeling that something is holding on a little tighter each time I try to leave. Like the place isn’t just somewhere I visit anymore, instead somewhere that’s starting to recognize me, to expect me.

Last night, just before everything faded, I thought I heard him say something faint. “Don’t stay too long.”

I don’t know why, but that’s the one thing I can’t stop thinking about.

"What were these ruins?" I asked him.
"Things from before."
"Before what?"
"Before."
I traced my finger along the fluting of a fallen column. It looked like one of the columns at the university library. And over there is a clock lying face-up on the crumbled stones... it had to be the clock set into the pediment of that grand old church on Main Street. Looks just like it. The hands were stopped at 10:16. AM or PM? Who knows! I half-expected it to be 11:11. If you ever just happen to notice that it's 11:11, it means you've forgotten something important.
The man watched me.
I moved to a depression in the dirt and powdered stone. The top three steps of a marble staircase led down into the earth. The rest of the stairwell was packed with rubble. I poked it with my toe, gingerly testing it. Yeah, there's no getting through that. I didn't recognize the stairway, though.
"What's down there?" I asked.
"This." He gestured broadly around us. "Other things."
"Can we go down there?"
"I don't leave."
A heavy click sounded behind me, like metal striking stone. The hands of the fallen clock now read 10:17.

"Why?" I pressed for the first time. "Why don't you leave?"

He smiled sadly, his eyes staring past me to the distant horizon as if searching for ships far at sea. Only the ruins stared back, an endless expanse of beautiful architecture bits recombined to create something delicate yet eternal.

"Because there's nothing for me there," he murmured at last, so low I could barely hear it.

I clenched my fists. "But you could at least explore these beautiful ruins with me instead of always standing here at the edge! Not that I don't love your company..." I didn't finish that sentence, realizing in that moment that the strange young man in my dreams was the greatest friend I had ever had, and here I was pushing him away. He always listened to what I meant, not just what I said. He made me feel understood in a way that nobody in the waking world did.

Only now, I realized that only went one way. I didn't understand him at all.

"What's down the stairway?" I whispered. "You showed me that I can escape my waking pain. Let me help you escape yours."

He sighed, looking at me at last. His eyes were darker than anyone else I'd ever met. So intense that my imagination could never have come up with them on its own. "You can't help me," he whispered back, low and confidential. "But I can help you. It's not too late for you."

A shiver ran down my spine. I took a step back, looking at the ruins and the void beyond them. My eyes wandered slowly downward, past the fluted columns, to heaps of artfully arranged rubble, to that staircase leading downward. The three steps beckoned like the threshold of an adventure, though I wasn't sure if it would be a good adventure or one that ended in tragedy.

"Help me with what?" I asked suspiciously. The ruins had never harmed me before. They had only accepted me as I was.

"Look, I've already said too much." He stepped back as though he wanted to walk away from me, but took the action back just as quickly, as though his body itself stopped him from moving. Fear flickered through his eyes, followed by a look of sorrow and regret. "You're a good person. You need to go live your life up there and forget about this place. That would be best for you."

I stood firm. "What about you?"

"I don't leave," he said again, those deep eyes filled with pain, and I wondered if he couldn't cry any more than he could walk away.

The ruins faded around me, the edges of my vision becoming fuzzy in a way that could only mean I was waking up. I reached for his hand but grasped at empty air.

"Wait!" I called as my bedroom called me away. "What's your real name?"

"Tiarnan," I heard him say.

The last thing I saw before I woke up was that clock, its hands farther advanced than they had been earlier. It showed 10:30 now: ninety minutes to midnight, or noon. Whatever happened when it got to twelve, I couldn't be sure. But I was sure that when I dreamed again, whether it was this evening or earlier in the day, I would do my best to break whatever enchantment held my best friend in his spot in the ruins.

"I'm coming, Tiarnan," I whispered into the soft lining of my pillow.