The first time I noticed Isabella's nightmares, was actually my very first nights in this world. Our small cottage in Millbrook had thin walls, and my makeshift bed was positioned close enough to hers that every restless movement, every whispered word, reached my ears through the darkness.
At first, I dismissed them as ordinary dreams—the kind everyone has when memories resurface unbidden in sleep. But as weeks turned to months, I began to recognize a pattern. The nightmares came with increasing frequency, sometimes multiple times in a single night, leaving Isabella exhausted and hollow-eyed by morning.
I would lie still in my bed, listening to her toss and turn, her breathing growing rapid and shallow. Sometimes she would whimper, other times she would speak in fragmented sentences that made little sense. But there was always fear in her voice—a deep, primal terror that seemed to claw its way up from somewhere dark within her soul.
"Please... no..." She would whisper, her voice barely audible above the creaking of the old wooden floorboards. "I won't... I can't..."
But it was the name that caught my attention most of all. Through her fitful sleep, through her desperate murmuring, one word emerged with chilling consistency:
Neospheres.
The name meant nothing to me initially. It sounded foreign, unfamiliar—like something from a distant land or perhaps from the old stories the village elders sometimes told around the fire. But the way Isabella spoke it, with such visceral fear, made my young heart race with curiosity and concern.
One morning, after a particularly restless night where she had called out the name three times, I decided to investigate. I slipped out of our cottage while Isabella was still sleeping off her exhaustion and made my way through the village streets.
Millbrook was a small place where everyone knew everyone else's business. If this Neospheres person had any connection to our village, surely someone would recognize the name. I started with old Henrik, who ran the blacksmith shop and had lived in Millbrook longer than anyone else.
"Neospheres?" He paused in his hammering, wiping sweat from his brow with a soot-stained rag. "Never heard that name before, lad. Sounds like something from the eastern kingdoms, maybe? Why do you ask?"
I gave him a vague answer about hearing it in a story and moved on to the next person.
By the end of the day, I had spoken to nearly everyone in Millbrook, and the result was always the same: blank stares, shaking heads, and the uncomfortable feeling that I was asking about something that didn't belong in our peaceful little world.
That evening, I sat by our small fireplace, watching Isabella as she prepared our simple dinner. She moved with efficiency, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands trembled slightly as she stirred the pot of stew. Her white hair fell across her face like a curtain, hiding her expression from view.
"Mother," I said carefully, testing the waters. "Do you know someone named Neospheres?"
The wooden spoon clattered to the floor.
Isabella's face went pale, and for a moment, she looked like she might collapse. She gripped the edge of the cooking table, her knuckles white with strain.
"Where did you hear that name?" She asked.
"You... you say it sometimes. In your sleep."
She closed her eyes, and I watched a single tear trace its way down her cheek. When she opened them again, there was something there I had never seen before—a depth of pain and fear that seemed to reach into her very soul.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, but her voice cracked on the words. She bent down to retrieve the spoon, avoiding my gaze.
I knew she was lying. We both knew it.
As the weeks passed, I began to piece together fragments of a story that Isabella had never told me. She had arrived in Millbrook while pregnant with me, that much I knew. But the details of her past, of where she had come from and why she had chosen our remote village, remained shrouded in mystery.
The nightmares continued, and with them, more pieces of the puzzle. Sometimes she would speak of running, of hiding, of someone who wouldn't stop searching. Other times, she would plead with invisible figures, begging them to leave her alone.
"I did what you asked," she would whisper in her sleep. "I gave you everything. Why won't you let me go?"
But always, always, there was that name: Neospheres.
One night, as I lay listening to her latest nightmare, a terrible thought occurred to me. The timing of her arrival in Millbrook, the fear that seemed to consume her whenever the name was mentioned, the way she had always been evasive about my father—it all pointed to one conclusion.
Neospheres wasn't just someone from her past. He was connected to me, to my very existence. And if my growing suspicions were correct, he might be the reason Isabella had fled to Millbrook in the first place.
That night, I lay awake listening to her restless sleep, and when she began to murmur that name again—Neospheres.
Who the fuck is Neospheres anyway?