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At first, I couldn’t go back.
The dream world that had once opened itself to me now felt distant, sealed off.
When I did manage to slip into it, it was empty — silent where it had once been alive.
The others were gone.
The Angels, gone.
Even the familiar sense of purpose was gone.
My waking life had never been easy.
Even before the banishment, I struggled to live like others did — to connect, to succeed, to build anything lasting.
Maybe it was because part of me had always been somewhere else, preoccupied with the world behind the veil.
But after the banishment — after being touched by that forbidden knowledge — everything became worse.
The cracks widened.
The loneliness deepened.
The sense of alienation from the waking world grew heavier than ever before.
Even though I was intelligent, I drifted through manual labor jobs, unable to find a real place for myself.
It wasn’t just sadness anymore.
It was a kind of fracture — a feeling that part of me had been severed from the rest of the world, and maybe from myself.
Eventually, I left the city and moved to the country.
Life was slower there.
More bearable.
In time, the wounds inside me began to heal — not completely, but enough.
Enough to dream again.
Enough to walk again.
Slowly, almost without realizing it, I began encountering my old friends in the dream world.
The dogs came first, wagging their tails, welcoming me without question.
Then came a few of the other Dream Walkers.
And finally, after many years, even the Angels — though they came more rarely now, and always at a distance.
I still go on occasional missions.
I still find myself standing against the darkness when I am needed.
But I am never as active, or as fearless, as I once was.
Some scars never fully heal.
Some knowledge, once touched, never fully fades.
NEXT - Part 8: A Final Revelation
