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The dreams begin when you are thirteen.
You come roaring to life with a violent gasp and a strangled scream, eyes darting wildly around your room. It is just as you remember it, before you closed your eyes and gave in to sleep's embrace—your lamp is still on, and your window is open, silver tendrils of moonlight streaming through and illuminating the room.
The photos above your bed have not changed, and nor have the items on your bedside.
There is no flickering of the lights, and there is no monster hiding beneath your blankets, wearing your face.
There is a mirror, directly opposite the foot of your bed. The light streaming from your window lets you peer into it, and even from afar, you can see that there is nothing on your crown, but for a head of black hair. You do not have horns. You do not have horns.
But your legs still feel weak, shaking beneath your blanket as if you were a scared child hoping the monster under your bed will not eat you. But your hands are on your head, swiping and patting as if to make sure that there really are no protrusions. But your head tingles as if something were trying to grow from it, as if a seed has been planted, and only time will tell if it will bear any fruit.
Once again, you peer into the mirror.
You see yourself, a pair of horns sprouting from your head. They do not look so bad, like this. They look almost beautiful, framed by the moonlight and casting a mighty shadow upon your woodbrick floors.
But the image shifts, and all of a sudden, you see yourself, one horn broken off and a cut on your throat. You see yourself through a filter of crimson, blood smeared gruesomely on the mirror's gleaming surface.
A shout of alarm. You back away from the mirror, hurriedly, barely even registering that you have hit your bed's headboard.
You blink, and everything goes back to normal.
There is only you and the moonlight, and you relax. Slowly. Slowly.
It's just a dream.
You look down at your hands. They are smooth, free from calluses that tell of working with a sword. They are still yet clear, free from the crimson blood that had wet them in your dreams. Looking at your hands almost feels wrong, as if there is something missing from them—an entire history, wiped clean as consciousness cuts through dreams.
Your hands are clutching your blanket.
It's all a dream. What is wrong with me?
You eventually fall back to sleep, burying yourself under your blanket and hoping beyond hope that it had just been a disturbing nightmare. Vague images of forests and odd-eyed cats fill your train of thought to the point of bursting, but they fade just as quickly as they come.
Come morning, as warm rays of sunlight filter through your windows, you manage to convince yourself that it had just been a dream.
—
There are four boys.
You are older than all of them, but that doesn't matter much, when you all are practically the same size. You are sitting at a bench, a toy sword clutched in your hand. They tug it out of your grip and place it down beside you, urging you to come and play.
"Yeonjun-hyung!" they say. "Let's look at the stars!" Their eyes shine like the stars they want to look at.
You don't know who they are—their names evade you, but they are familiar and they are safe. You follow after them, grinning as widely as they are.
"Last one to the telescope's a loser!" you shout, running ahead and past them, up the stargazing hill.
There are the sounds of a scuffle behind you, and one of them—what was his name again?—shouts that ███████ was being unfair, but ███████ only laughs, saying that "Anything's fair game, ██████-hyung!"
All five of you eventually make your way to the top of the hill, sitting cross-legged on the grass. After a bout of teasing for ██████, who'd ended up at last, the five of you settle down, taking turns looking through the telescope and at the stars, utterly mesmerized.
It's not often that you can do this. Your parents are strict with bedtimes and usually don't want you staying up late just to look at the stars. But New Year's Day allows everyone to stay up, and you five had gone before the fireworks were set off.
"Guys," ███ begins, "can we make a promise?" He's smiling brightly, sitting cross-legged on the grass.
"Sure!" you four say in unison, urging him to continue.
You look around. I wish I could've protected this.
What was that thought? Whatever, ███'s speaking again.
"Let's promise that no matter what happens when we grow up, we'll still meet again here," he says, holding out his pinky to the group.
You scramble to interlock your pinkies together. It's a struggle, with five of you, but you manage, grinning as you exclaim "We promise!" under the stars' careful watch.
You wake up with a start and a stop, a sob lying at the base of your throat.
—
Do you want power?
There is an odd-eyed cat.
It towers over you, blue and green eyes glowing ominously under the shadow it casts. The clearing you are in, right in the middle of nowhere, suddenly feels far too small. The breath in your lungs feels like it has been stolen, and you grapple to regain it, watching the cat cautiously as you back away.
Your throat itches.
The ground beneath you is purple, verdant overgrowth crawling along it. They rustle against your skin, biting and cutting with the affliction of thorns. The wounds sting.
Your throat itches.
The trees tower over you, branches reaching upwards as if reaching for the stars. Through the spaces inbetween, you glean a starless sky—there will be no one to save you now.
Your throat itches.
And all throughout, the cat inches ever closer, pushing only a single question into your mind: Do you want power?
"No," you speak, even despite the itch in your throat that is building into pain, even despite the fear gripping your limbs and slowly pulling you into the ground. Your voice is shaky, but your words ring true. "I have no need of it."
We'll see.
You back away.
You back away.
You back away.
You open your eyes. The crown of your head burns.
And yet.
—
You are a protector.
You hold a sword in your hands, use it to cut through muscle and sinew, and you do it to protect. You are not a warrior—you seek not to cut down your enemies, but to protect those you love from them.
You stare down at a dragon's carcass, four boys standing next to you, looking as worn as you feel. Crimson blood wets your blade. Who would've known that monsters bled the same as people?
(You would've. Because you are a monster, and yet you bleed the same scarlet that everyone else does. The broken horns on your head betray you.)
—
The dreams stop when you are sixteen, only three years after they began.
They stop but they do not leave you, because now your head burns like something is trying to push through it, like something is trying to crack it open and slither out, and it's then that you know: It will happen now.
The dreams stop, but they do not leave you. They have marked you far too deeply for that. A lamb for slaughter, and you know it. All that is left is to wait for the day of sacrifice.
Do you want power?
—
Horns are growing out of your head.
They crack your skull open with pronged ends, push bone apart to make way, and grow, up, up, as if they were sprouts reaching for the sunlight.
The horns are light brown and smooth. Right now, they peek only slightly from under your hair, and you hide them by wearing a hat and never taking it off. You look at the mirror and think about digging your fingers into your skull and pulling them out.
A migraine constantly rings in your head, bubbling just beneath the skull, and you wonder if you really will grow into the monster everyone said you became.
—
When the horns grow to the point you cannot hide them anymore, you run.
You take the bag you've been hiding for three years. It should be full of everything you will need, all packed with trembling hands and accompanied by frenzied prayers—please don't let it be real.
This dream has been awaiting you for three years. You look back at the door of your childhood home, look at the warm light emanating from your parents' window.
"I'm sorry."
The words fall from your lips as a whisper, carried by the wind and lost in it just as quickly as you uttered them.
You set off for Magic Island—far south and right in the middle of nowhere.
—
Do you want power?
There is an odd-eyed cat.
It towers over you, blue and green eyes glowing ominously under the shadow it casts. The clearing you are in, right in the middle of nowhere, suddenly feels far too small. The breath in your lungs feels like it has been stolen, and you grapple to regain it, watching the cat cautiously as you back away.
Your throat itches.
The ground beneath you is purple, verdant overgrowth crawling along it. They rustle against your skin, biting and cutting with the affliction of thorns. The wounds sting.
Your throat itches.
The trees tower over you, branches reaching upwards as if reaching for the stars. Through the spaces inbetween, you glean a starless sky—there will be no one to save you now.
Your throat itches.
But it doesn't go the way it went—the cat stops, and says, We've done this already, haven't we?
And before you can answer, before you can push your voice through the thick fear lodged in your throat—Yes we have, but why am I still so scared?—a blinding light steals your attention.
There is an odd-eyed cat.
And then there is an angel.
A boy stands in front of you, pure white wings made of feathers and gears whirring with life. He smiles, reaching his hand out towards you as if you were an old friend, and says, "What're you doing on the ground, Yeonjun-hyung?"
Dimly, you note that the odd-eyed cat has gone now, gone to retreat in the shadows it favors. The scene went differently. This wasn't supposed to happen.
Who…
"Kai," you say. The name slips out of your mouth before you can even recognize what it is, mouth already forming the word, and then, oh. It hits you like a truck. He doesn't look the way you remember him—of course he doesn't, you five were toddlers—but you recognize that smile, recognize the shine in his eyes that still hasn't been eroded by the sands of time.
"Kai," you say again. "You're all grown up, huh?" And you take his hand, letting him pull you onto your feet. You brush the dust of the island from your clothes, staring at Kai as if trying to figure out and catalogue everything that has changed about him, from the way he now towers over you to the mechanical wings on his back.
"Yup!" he grins. "The others are here too, hyung, should I call them?"
"Sure," you start, but a familiar voice shouts out, cutting you off, "No need, we're already here." Soobin.
And indeed, it's Soobin, Taehyun and Beomgyu following right behind him. Even under the shadows of the forest cover, you can tell they look different from the them in your memories—your dreams—but their names come to you as if you hadn't lost them at all. The three of them brush through a few low hanging branches, and the light finally hits them.
And it hits you, not for the first time this evening—I have them back.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
(...Do you want power?)
—
There are four boys.
The five of you sit around a campfire you set up, and begin to talk.
You haven't seen them in a long time, but the five of you pick up the conversation as if nothing has changed—as if you were still those little kids, asking to look at the stars.
Of course, this doesn't mean that nothing has changed—there are a few gaps where the changes each of you have undergone peek through, stark against the childlike wonder that envelops the five of you, now that you're reunited.
For one, the fact that each of you have your own 'irregularities': for Soobin, his ear, pointed as if he were half an elf; for Beomgyu, his shoulder, spikes blooming out of his it as though they were flower petals; for Taehyun, his eye, pitch black if not for the star-shaped pupil; and for Kai, his wings, pure white and mechanical. You don't talk much about it, but it hangs in the air the entire time. After all, they were what brought you together.
(And this is a secret you would like to keep to the grave, but you're happy they did. I'm not alone anymore.)
(You don't tell them about the dreams, though. There's a mass in your chest, writhing and screaming out that they cannot know about the dreams. An outcast in a group of outcasts. How funny.)
The crown of your head burns.