Every night, she began to dream of the same place. A small village nestled between two hills, where the air was always thick with mist and the trees whispered in a language she almost understood. The dreams were vivid, too vivid—each detail sharp and clear, like a photograph that had been etched into her mind. She would wake up with the scent of damp earth on her skin, and the sound of distant church bells ringing in her ears. At first, she thought it was just a coincidence. Maybe she had seen a picture of such a place before, or read about it in a book. But as the nights passed, the dreams grew more intricate. She could see the cobblestone streets, the red-roofed houses with ivy climbing their walls, and the old man who stood at the edge of the square, watching her with eyes that seemed to hold centuries of sorrow. He never spoke, but she felt his gaze like a weight on her chest. One morning, she woke with a strange ache in her bones, as if she had run miles through the dream world. She decided to look for the village online. There were no results. No records, no maps, no mention of a town called Elmsworth. It was as though it had never existed. But the dreams continued, each one more detailed than the last. In one dream, she found herself standing in front of a mirror that wasn’t there. When she looked into it, she saw not her reflection, but the face of the old man from the square. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Then, he reached out and touched the glass, and the mirror shattered. In the fragments, she saw other faces—people she didn’t recognize, but they all looked back at her with knowing eyes. She started to notice things in real life that matched the dreams. A street corner that looked exactly like the one in her visions, a bell that rang at the same hour every night, a tree that grew in the shape of a cross. She tried to ignore it, to convince herself it was all in her head. But the more she ignored it, the more persistent the dreams became. One night, she dreamed of the old man again. This time, he was speaking. Not in words, but in images. She saw a woman standing at the edge of the village, holding a child in her arms. The child’s eyes were wide with fear. The woman turned toward her, and when she did, the dream shifted. The village disappeared, and she was standing in a dark room filled with shadows. The old man was there, but now he was younger, and his eyes were filled with pain. She woke up gasping, her heart pounding. The next day, she found an old newspaper buried in a box in her grandmother’s attic. The headline read: "Local Woman Disappears After Walking Into the Woods." The article mentioned a woman named Eleanor, who had vanished without a trace. The date was exactly 30 years ago. And the photo beside the article showed a woman with the same face as the one in her dreams. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. Every night, the dreams returned, and with them, new details. The old man’s name was Thomas. He had lived in the village for decades, and he had watched over the people who passed through. The woman in the newspaper, Eleanor, had been searching for something—or someone. The child in her arms was her daughter, lost in the woods. The final dream was the most haunting. She stood in the village square once more, but this time, the people were gone. The buildings were crumbling, and the mist had grown thicker. The old man approached her, his face lined with age and regret. He placed a hand on her shoulder and whispered, “You are not the first.” Then the dream ended. She woke up to silence. No bells, no mist, no familiar scents. But something had changed. The house felt different, colder. And when she looked in the mirror, her reflection was not quite her. Her eyes were darker, and there was a faint smile on her lips. She didn’t know if she had truly left the dream behind, or if she had only begun to understand what it meant. The village still called to her, even if it no longer appeared in her sleep. Sometimes, in the quiet moments between waking and dreaming, she could hear the distant echo of a bell, and feel the weight of unseen eyes watching.