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I awoke abruptly, scared shitless by my nightmare. The sheets were damp with my sweat, and my room was as icy as in the dream. I couldn't breathe right. If this was what people saw when they dreamed, I never wanted to sleep again. My heart pounding relentlessly, I slowly sat up.

The dim room spun around me. I closed my eyes, trying to recall anything about the nightmare- a face, a name, a familiar object?- but the more I became awake, the more it slipped away. All I could register was my turbulent emotions. Fear, anxiety, dread, anger... It was so confusing. I was only sure it was a nightmare I had experienced because of my intense reaction to it. Normally, people didn't wake up crying with fear because of a happy dream, right?

I hoped so.

I don't know exactly how long I sat like that, shivering, waiting for the nausea to pass, but when I finally opened my eyes, the room wasn't spinning as much. The neon figures on my alarm clock informed me that it was just past five in the morning. Too late to go back to bed; I was normally up at five thirty. School awaited me, sleep-deprived or not. The dizziness had passed completely by now. I swung my feet onto the floor, glad I had snagged the ragged black rug at that garage sale yesterday. My feet didn't have to touch the freezing hardwood floors just yet. I fumbled in the dark, trying to locate my light switch; it seemed to elude me every time I needed it most.

My fingers felt the tiny plastic lever, and I flipped it up. And almost passed out from fright.

A figure was standing almost right next to me.

"Jane! Turn the light off!" He hissed, flinching from the bright glow. I tried to scream, but yet again, my voice was gone. I could only whisper.

"What the hell are you doing in my room? Who do you think you are?!" My hand reached out to claw him away from me, but he appeared to move faster than I could see. By the time my arm had swung all the way around, my hand hit only air. He was across the room, standing by my bed, before I could even blink.

What. The. Hell?!

I could barely think, and no matter what, that light was going to stay on. No way in hell was I going to be in the dark with a strange, albeit handsome, boy in my room.

Nana would have a fit.

"Calm down. My name is Liet, as you might already know." His dark eyes pleaded with me to understand, to not flip out and attack him with the brush already in my hand. He held up his hands in mock surrender.

Liet. It sounded eerily familiar. In fact, everything about him seemed eerily familiar. With a jolt of recognition, I realized he was somehow in my dream. Why couldn't I remember more?

"I'm here to help you, to save your fate." He paused, seeming to consider his next few words. "You are extremely important to my world. I -we- need you. Desperately." His eyes flashed a bright green that was ethereal in its beauty. I was hypnotized; I couldn't look away. It was such a heart-stopping sight..

I never really understood the concept of dreaming. To close your eyes and fall into that blissful oblivion, only to have it ruined by a random series of images? I never dreamt. Never before had I experienced a dream or a nightmare until now.

The dream started off the way I expected most dreams do- slowly sinking from awareness to something deeper, less restrained. Where anything can happen. In most cases, anything DOES happen- erratic pictures, run through and discarded as the mind sorts out what to keep and what to forget. Memories brought to our imagination.

As far as dreams went, this one was shockingly realistic. I wasn't even sure if I was dreaming at all. I didn't recognize the place, but it felt oddly familiar. A stone floor was icy under my feet, cold to the point where it hurt. I regretted not wearing my warm socks to bed. Grimacing at the sensation, I turned to look around the room. It looked to be some sort of bedroom, but the kind you would see in an eighteenth century Victorian house. I had always loved the Victorian style. Plush red chairs were in the corners, next to towering stacks of books on ancient looking tables. A magnificent but simple four-poster bed with white gauze draped over stood just behind me, along with two other people.

I hadn't known I wasn't alone.

They were both male and very attractive, the one on the right about my age. The other looked so much like him, with the same dark hair and even darker eyes, that he had to be his father, or maybe even his much older brother. Either way, you could tell he was the authority figure. And that he was very, very angry.

"Liet!" He shouted, the name cracking out like thunder in the small room. The younger one -Liet- stood unflinching. "Why must you disobey me, time and time again?!"

"Because the girl doesn't deserve this fate you're about to hand her." Liet, in the face of his father's terrifying wrath, was surprisingly calm. "No one does."

He walked across the room, seeming not to care that I was standing in the middle of his bedroom.

"Whether or not Jane Devona deserves her future is her choice alone." I stiffened as my name was mentioned. "But we need to ensure that she's aware of all her options."

"Of course she'll say yes," Liet grimaced. "I have a problem with the way you present offers to incoming Minors.. You tend to over-glorify things."

"It's my nature, Liet. I made a deal with dear Lucy-kins, and as you know, it's hampered my ability to to tell the whole story quite a bit. Technically, it isn't my fault." The man's anger appeared to have died down somewhat. He smiled, a feral smirk that held no humor.

This dream, if you could call it that, was fast becoming a nightmare. I gathered that the man could not see or hear me, but I wasn't sure about Liet. His eyes kept flickering to where I stood, unable to move from fear.

"It's okay, Jane. He can't see you."

Liet's voice sounded in my head, freaking me the hell out. I tried to speak out loud, but couldn't. It felt like someone had removed my vocal cords. I could not make a sound.

"Calm down. I can hear your thoughts right now, and you can hear mine. Just listen to me. You need to wake up."

Tentatively, I tried speaking to him through thought.

"Why? What's going on?!"

Liet's eyes flashed a brilliant green, and he turned to face the man.

"Lying by omission is still lying, Ryuk. Don't forget that."

"Believe me, when you live by something every day, you tend not to forget it."