The exact events that led to my eventual ruin remain blurred, as though memory itself recoils from the truth. Yet, I recall clearly where it began. It was an unremarkable day, one of those idle afternoons downtown where I wandered with no intention, seeking nothing in particular. That was when I saw it – The Curio Vault, a thrift shop that hadn’t been there before. Or perhaps it had, and I had simply never noticed.

Curiosity steered me through its dust-laden doors. Inside, the air was stale and heavy, thick with the scent of forgotten years. Old clothes, faded furniture, odd relics filled the space. I was ready to leave when my gaze fell on a painting tucked away in the far corner.

It depicted a solitary mountain, its jagged peak piercing through a roiling grey sky. A vast, snow-covered plain stretched out from its base, an expanse of white so pure it seemed untouched by time. To the left, the edge of a dark forest brooded, trees stark and gnarled against the whiteness. But it was the summit that held my gaze. There, impossibly small but sharp in focus, stood a woman in a flowing white dress. Her hair streamed behind her in the wind, her arms open as if to embrace the cold. She wore nothing else. No coat, no boots. Just the dress, billowing like ghostly smoke around her frame. And despite the impossibility, despite the absurdity of her presence on that icy peak, she looked serene – almost radiant. The longer I stared, the more the painting unraveled something within me. I had to have it. Without another thought, I purchased it and carried it home.

When I eventually returned back home, I went into the living room, where the painting awaited me like a patient sentinel. It seemed to glow subtly in the dim light, its cold hues whispering something I couldn’t quite hear. I sat, the weight of my thoughts pressing down, and let my eyes fall upon the image once more. I couldn’t look away. The snow stretched out like a shroud, the forest loomed with unknowable silence, and the mountain stood eternal, unmoving, watching. Each element pulled at something primal inside me – fear, longing, awe. The wind in the painting seemed to breathe against my skin. The stillness hummed like an old melody I’d once forgotten. And the more I stared, the more it all felt so…familiar. Not just a memory, but a belonging. Like home – not the one I lived in, but one I had always been searching for without knowing it.

I admired the painting for a while, its image lingering behind my eyes even as I moved from room to room. Every glance, every passing thought circled back to it. The stillness of the snow. The silence of the woods. The serenity on the mountaintop. It followed me like a shadow. I did a few chores, my hands moving on their own while my mind remained tethered to the canvas. Eventually, weariness set in, and I drifted to bed. Sleep came easily, almost too easily, as though something had lulled me into its grip. But the peace it promised was a lie. My dreams did not comfort me. They pulled me back into that same, frozen world – only colder, darker, and impossibly vast.

In the dream, I was back in the snowy tundra, the world around me bleached and endless, painted in muted shades of white and gray. The mountain loomed ahead, a jagged monolith cutting through the sky like the blade of some ancient god. The forest to the left whispered again, but now its voice carried hints of language – faint syllables twisted by the wind into something almost familiar, almost understood. I strained to listen, my breath fogging in the air, my skin raw and exposed. I stood naked, the cold no longer biting – it gnawed, savaged, devoured. My limbs trembled violently, not just from the cold but from something deeper, something rooted in dread. The landscape was silent, but not still. It pulsed with an unseen presence. And then came the roar. Not a sound of any creature I knew. It was the grinding of mountains, the shudder of the earth’s own bones. Deep. Resonant. It rippled through the snow and sky, rising from the forest like an ancient curse awakened.

I awoke abruptly, drenched in fear, my breath a shallow gasp as if I’d surfaced from drowning. Disoriented, I sat up and looked down – and froze. My skin glistened with frost, delicate ice crystals clinging to my arms like the breath of some unseen specter. My toes had turned a sickly shade of blue, stiff and unfeeling, as though they belonged to someone else. Panic surged. I stumbled out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, limbs numb and trembling. The tiles were like ice beneath my feet. I ran the tub and plunged myself into the steaming water, my body shuddering as sensation returned in painful waves. It felt like being resurrected from the edge of the grave, each second in the steaming water peeling away the chill of the void that had tried to claim me. Every second was agony, but I dared not leave the heat. Not yet. As I sat there, submerged in warmth, trying to make sense of what had just happened, I couldn’t stop glancing toward the open doorway, half-expecting to see snow seeping in from the hallway. But the apartment was as it always had been – warm, still, untouched. No open windows. No draft. Nothing out of place. Except me.

Later, wrapped in a blanket, I stared at the painting again. I could not look away. But something had changed. There, in the middle of the snowy field, stood a solitary figure. His posture was hunched against the wind, his skin stark against the endless white – bare, exposed, vulnerable. The snow swirled around his feet, yet he remained still, as if bound to the place by unseen chains. I stepped closer, heart pounding, and recognition struck like a blow to the chest. The curve of the shoulders, the tilt of the head – it was unmistakable.

It was me. Not just a likeness. Not a vague resemblance. It was me, rendered with eerie precision, down to the curve of my jaw and the scar above my knee I’d had since childhood. But it wasn’t the recognition that chilled me – it was the stillness in that figure, the way it stood frozen as though bracing for something unseen. The posture captured more than my image; it captured my fear, my helplessness. The sight rooted me to the floor. My breath slowed to a crawl. An icy dread settled into my bones, heavier than the snow in the painting, curling up my spine like frost climbing glass. The light in the room seemed to dim, the shadows thickening. Somehow, impossibly, the canvas had become a mirror – not of my past, but of my fate. A portrait not painted from memory, but from prophecy.

I returned to the shop the next morning, a strange combination of dread and urgency driving my every step. The morning was grey, and the streets seemed quieter than usual, as though the world itself anticipated what I would find. But where The Curio Vault had stood was now a grocery store – brightly lit, ordinary, and out of place. I stood across the street, staring at it in disbelief, hoping I had made some mistake. But I hadn’t.

Inside, fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead. The aisles were lined with the mundane: canned soup, cereal, detergent. Everything about the place felt wrong. I approached the counter, where a young woman with tired eyes stood thumbing through a receipt roll. “Excuse me,” I asked. “Do you know what happened to the shop that used to be here?”

She looked up, slightly puzzled. “Shop? We’ve been here a long time. My family owns the place. It’ll be 25 years next spring.”

I turned pale. The number hit me like a punch to the chest. Twenty-five years. I felt the blood drain from my face, the floor beneath me tilt just slightly. She frowned. “Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I didn’t answer. My mouth opened slightly, as if to speak, but no words came. The weight of her words – twenty-five years – settled over me like the crushing pressure of deep water, as though I had sunk too far below the surface and the weight of everything above threatened to press me out of existence. My pulse pounded in my ears, each beat a drum of disbelief. My limbs moved without thinking, the store receding behind me as I stepped into the blinding light of day. The fluorescent lights flickered above me like mocking stars, indifferent to my unravelling. I fled into the street, the sound of my footsteps echoing against the buildings like hollow accusations. My vision swam. I felt untethered, as if the ground might fall away. I walked, turned corners without direction, passing familiar buildings that now felt foreign and too bright. I needed air, distance, silence. The weight of the impossible pressed harder with every step. I couldn’t go straight home – not yet. My mind was a storm of disbelief and dread, and I needed space to weather it. So I wandered – through alleyways, past shuttered shops and quiet windows – trying to piece together a reality that no longer seemed to fit. Trying to keep from unraveling completely, to tether myself to a reality that now felt fragile and distant, like a dream I was slowly forgetting.

When I eventually returned home, the painting drew me in again. I sank into the couch and stared, eyes wide, unblinking, as if the canvas had reached out and seized my mind. It no longer felt like art on a wall, but a window – open and waiting. Time passed. The ticking of the clock faded into obscurity, as though the room itself had been untethered from the rest of the world. My thoughts dulled, replaced by a curious stillness, a hush that blanketed everything like fresh snow. My breath slowed. The air felt thinner. I felt neither hunger nor fatigue – only the pull of the landscape, its silence, its eerie tranquility. It welcomed me. Drew me in deeper. And in that moment, I wasn’t sure if I was watching the painting – or if the painting was watching me.

Seven hours passed in what felt like minutes. The room had dimmed to black, the soft glow of the outside streetlamps barely piercing the windows. When I finally tore my gaze away, it was like surfacing from deep water – my lungs involuntarily sucking in air, my body stiff and unresponsive. The living room was cloaked in darkness, but the painting still shimmered faintly, as if lit from within. Night had fallen, and the silence was oppressive. Outside my window, the world remained familiar, yet I knew nothing was the same. It wasn’t just time that had passed – it was something else. A threshold had been crossed. The moment my eyes met the canvas, a silent pact had been sealed. I could feel it deep in my bones, like an echo reverberating through my spine. Something had shifted. Something ancient. Something final. Something had begun.

And then, another dream.

This time, I turned toward the roar. It clawed at the sky, louder than before, like the bellow of some ancient, slumbering beast awakened from the depths of the earth – raw, guttural, and filled with a fury that shook the heavens. The sound was not simply heard, but felt, as though the very sky recoiled from its passage. The very air seemed to warp around it, a tremor pulsing through the ground as if something colossal was awakening. I faced the woods, my body locked in tension, heart pounding, backing away slowly as though distance alone could protect me from what was coming. Each breath came ragged, my lungs straining in the frozen air. The snow beneath my feet crunched like brittle glass with every step. Then came the footsteps, slow and deliberate, coming from behind me. A sound so out of place, yet chillingly familiar. The cadence of someone who knew I would be here. Who had always known. I turned, each movement thick with dread. And there he stood. The old man.

He stood not ten feet away, framed by the swirling snow. His robe rippled in the wind, though he moved not at all. His face was carved by time, etched with lines that whispered of ancient, buried things. His eyes held no colour – only depth. Depth enough to drown in. He watched me with the sharp, unblinking focus of a hawk circling high above its prey – silent, cold, and intensely aware. There was no empathy in his stare, only hunger wrapped in patience, as though he were waiting for the precise moment to strike. Then he smiled. Not out of joy. But as one who remembers. His grin stretched unnaturally, skin tightening around his bones. It was a smile that bore the weight of grief, of cycles repeated, of doors opened that should have stayed shut. And then, he laughed. Low and brittle. A sound not of madness, but of certainty. A sound that said: it’s begun again.

Freezing again. Another long bath. Another spiral into confusion. My thoughts churned endlessly as I wrapped myself in blankets, but no warmth could touch the cold that now lived inside me. I needed to know who he was. I searched online, flipped through old books and archives, even tried obscure forums – nothing. Not a trace. A phantom of the mind, perhaps. Or something more ancient, more elusive. With a mounting sense of dread, I turned my gaze once more to the painting.

My stomach dropped. The figure – myself – now faced the forest, body rigid with tension. And before him stood a second figure. Cloaked in grey. Still. Ominous. The old man. He was there now, a permanent fixture on the canvas. Though rendered in simple brushstrokes, his presence was undeniable. The slope of his shoulders, the downward tilt of his head – it was him. I stared. Cold sweat prickled my skin. My breath caught in my throat. Fear lanced through me, but so did something else: a stillness, strange and serene. It crept in like fog, clouding panic with something quieter, heavier.

Despite everything, the painting beckoned. Its icy landscape, once just unsettling, now pulsed with eerie familiarity. The winter expanse within it shimmered like a mirage, always the same, yet subtly changing with every stolen glance. The figures locked in their silent communion seemed not only to inhabit the scene but to exist just beyond the veil of my reality – part phantom, part memory. The longer I stared, the more the canvas seemed to draw breath, as if it too was alive, waiting. Waiting for me. Its beauty was haunting, timeless, soaked in a strange gravity that neither time nor reason could dilute. I should have looked away, should have torn my eyes from it. But I couldn’t. It held me. And somewhere deep inside, I think I wanted it to.

And I stared. As I did, the world shifted.

Once more, I found myself there – caught in the endless tundra beneath a sky of bruised violet and ash. The cold was no longer just cold; it was invasive, clawing at my flesh with savage intent, burrowing under my skin like living ice. The air hung heavy with stillness, the kind that precedes a storm – or a reckoning. I stood paralyzed, heart thundering in my chest, because I knew. I knew what was coming.

Then it came – the roar. No longer distant. Closer. Deafening. It tore through the dreamscape like a god’s fury unleashed, primal and overwhelming. The ground beneath me quaked, and the sound pierced every fibre of my being, vibrating in my bones like cathedral bells rung in mourning – deep, solemn, and inescapable. From the edge of the forest, chaos erupted. Trees, distant but massive, bowed violently before snapping like matchsticks. Wood splintered, bark exploded, and ancient trunks collapsed in succession as though something unspeakably large – and impossibly strong – was charging straight through the heart of the wilderness toward me. The horizon trembled. The line between dream and nightmare shattered.

Panic surged. I turned and ran, snow kicking up behind me as I sprinted across the endless white, heart pounding in my ears. I ran away from the forest, anywhere else would seem like a good spot. Then, suddenly, the terrain folded, and I was no longer in the field. I stood atop the mountain. Beside her. The woman in white. She was just as the painting showed – barefoot, her dress flowing in the icy wind, skin pale as the snow around us. Yet there was no fear in her eyes. Only calm. A profound, aching serenity that radiated from her like warmth from a fire. She turned to me and smiled. The kind of smile that didn’t belong to this world – neither cruel nor kind, but eternal. And as I looked into her eyes, the storm within me stilled. The roar faded. The cold retreated. For one fleeting moment, I felt peace. As if I had come home.

As I felt the calm overtake me, I slowly began the process of waking up. I felt the caress of the blanket. I felt heat seeping in. And I slowly opened my eyes. I blinked twice as I stared, unbelieving, at what I was witnessing. I opened my mouth and let out a terrified scream. I had woken up to find myself awake on top of the mountain.