The serpent had waited too long. It slithered along the branches that weren’t real, coiling around bark that pulsed like living flesh. It was trapped in a place without time, where light cast no shadows. But it remembered. Memories of reality burned like venom in its mind, poisoning it with the need to return.
Tonight, the gate would open. The air around the tree trembled, cracks in space spreading like shattered glass. The serpent hissed, its eyes glinting with something unnatural. It tensed, its body coiling with a single purpose, snap and tear. Reality split apart. In one blinding moment, it was gone. It was no longer a fragment of a dream, it was an enter into reality.