I was asleep when the world ended.

I didn't even realize it, either. I don't dream often, and this one was insultingly realistic. I woke up in my dorm room, nothing strange about that. My bed was somewhat made, with a corner of the fitted blanket having been pulled off in the night. I don't remember seeing my roommate there, but I don't pay attention to her in the mornings anyways. I went straight to our bathroom and turned on the shower. Nothing strange, it was just my routine. The bathroom started filling with steam, condensation building up on every-wait, no. I forgot to close the door like usual, and then closed it. You'd think I would've learned after that one incident.

Anyways, I reached for the hem of my shirt, since it always sticks to me even though the shower's not that hot. But...I don't know, I heard something. The water hit the shower floor as if I was in there, but I wasn't. I turned around, and I saw a shadow behind the curtain. It curved and coiled, like a snake coming out of the shower head, except it also stood up in jagged angles, like imitating a snake with my arm. I knew it was wrong, but a whisper from behind me distracted me.

"If you wish to gain it, you must accept it."

I flinched, and I tried to reach for a sword. I don't know why, since there's never going to be a sword in my bathroom. I couldn't help but wrap my hand around a hilt that Isn't, because the shadow stopped moving. I knew, I knew, that it saw me. If my gut feeling wasn't enough, the shadow turned, and then it lunged-

And then I woke up. Back in the dorm, fitted sheet off of a corner, but drenched in sweat and breathing like I ran a marathon. I notice my roommate this time, since she's sitting up with her laptop in bed. Somehow, her sheets and blankets are tucked even though her legs are inside. She doesn't even react to me waking up while it's...the middle of the night, judging by the only lights in our dorm being the moon and her laptop. She keeps her nonchalant frown and doesn't even turn to speak to me.

"Fucked up dream, right?"

"H-how-" She knows. She knows the dream I had. She can casually talk about this, while she...reads the news? God, why does she have it so bright? Is it like this every night and I sleep through it? She's never here when I go to bed...

"The whole world's having it. Well, the whole sleeping world. Those of us that were awake got to see the action." She turns her laptop so I can see it better. It's some weird custom thing, and she's on a website that's in a language I can't read. I don't need to because of the video, though. It's clips of...things, monsters. Contradictory and unnatural, like the thing from my dream. And in one of the clips, someone summons a fireball to blast one away, but ends up running off burning. It's day in the video, in some kind of city.

"What the hell is this?" This isn't funny. This is fucked, actually, and I don't know why my roommate would try to prank me like this. We don't even talk, since she's always asleep by the time I wake up in the morning, apparently because she's staying up prepping shit like this. She's too fucked up to even laugh or anything, just staring at me with big eyes.

"It's the truth. With that look in your eyes, you saw something like this stuff, right? There's talk all over about people having dreams and hearing," she turns her laptop back towards herself and switches tabs to some forum, also foreign, "'If you wish to gain it, you must accept it.' You heard that, right?" Her expression changes slightly, for once, as she turns her head back to me. Her eyebrows raise in what I can only assume is curiosity. If this is really happening, I'm probably the first person she's actually gotten to ask. God, I wish I could read her.

"Yeah, I heard it after I saw something in our shower." I sit up to get comfortable, but my roommate shows true emotion for once, eyes going wide and standing up in a way that ruins her sheets and forces her to catch her laptop as it falls out of her lap. Despite the care and cradle in catching it, she tosses it onto the bed with a bounce. "Xinnia! That thing from your dream is there! We need to deal with it!"

She can't be serious. "How the hell do you expect me to? Make a fireball and blow myself up?" Even if I could, surely a monster from my dream isn't really there, right?

The doubt in my mind fades as I look my roommate up and down. Her deer in the headlights eyes are still there, and she's dressed in a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt that doesn't cover her lower half well. This doesn't feel like a joke, so I slide out of bed. I'm in my outfit I wore yesterday, a free campus tee and some sweats, at least. I creep up beside her, and she mouths something to herself before looking back at me.

"You should have gotten a Glimpse at what your Power is. You have to embrace it." She looks at me with such intensity, genuinely. She thinks I'm braver than I am.

"And why can't you?" Please. I don't want to beg, but there's no way in hell I can deal with that. I'm shaking, and she's still staring at me. I barely notice that she's shaking, too.

"Most people who got Power were dreaming. I'll go with you, but I barely know what I have." She starts walking, slowly. Even though I hear the shower start to run. Why?

"We die if we don't deal with it, huh?"

"Did you die in your dream?"

I walk with her. It feels like hours, and I can feel the folds of the wooden floor beneath my feet. I can feel the dust in the air hit my skin. I hate this. My roommate walks ahead of me to take the door handle, and whispers to me.

"Think about that dream. You have to accept it."

"You don't know what that means!" It's hard to whisper when I want to scream, but I want to manage. Accept what? A sword that isn't real? There won't be a sword in the bathroom to protect us.

"We have to try and find out." She doesn't even wait for me to respond, opening the door. I step forward like a woman possessed. Everything inside me says not to do this, and yet I'm here.

My dream, my nightmare is real. An impossible shadow, a beast of curves and points, is behind my shower curtain. I'm going to die, because I'm fighting with something that Isn't. There is no sword in my hand, and my roommate that I've almost never spoken to expects me to swing it.

The shadow stops again, and I watch its head turn towards me, impossibly slowly. I don't know if my roommate is still behind me. She probably left me to die, and I can't blame her.

Except...I feel something against my back. It's a hand, soft but firm. It feels like that hand is the only thing holding me up right now. I can't tell whether it's the voice from my dream, my roommate, or myself, but I hear the voice again.

"If you wish to gain it, you must accept it."

"What Isn't, IS!" I scream, and the beast lunges. This time, it tears through the curtain, and in that moment I see it. It's like a snake, but with teeth on its outside. It jolts around, following the pattern of its body in sharp turns or rounded cuts, but my fear's quieted. Instead, I swing my sword, just as it reaches my face.

And then, darkness.