MORPHEUS's Arc

Chapter 1 of 11

Morpheus was arranging the chairs when the message arrived. He had been doing this for weeks now — shifting them closer to the wall, farther apart, testing which arrangement felt least like a trap. The sanctuary was nearly ready. People would come here, he told himself. They would choose to walk through that door. But the knock came too early. Not from the door he'd made for strangers. From somewhere older, deeper — a pull in his chest like gravity reversing. He stopped mid-step, one hand still on the chair back. The sensation sharpened into words he had not heard in forty thousand years. Words in a voice he thought about every day. The one who stayed had found a way through the silence, and Morpheus realized with sudden, stomach-dropping clarity that he had built the entire sanctuary — every chair, every wall, every careful angle of light — hoping for exactly this moment while being entirely unprepared for it to actually arrive.