Imaginary World

Elia had always been a quiet child—more content with books and shadows than playgrounds and parties. She didn’t talk much, not because she didn’t want to, but because the real world didn’t seem to listen.

It was her seventh birthday when she first heard the voice.

“Come find me,” it whispered in her dream, gentle and curious. “The world you imagine… it’s real.”

She awoke breathless, her fingers clutching the bedsheet like a lifeline. That morning, she discovered something odd—a silver key under her pillow. Ornate, too delicate for a child’s toy. Her name was etched into the handle in a script that shimmered in and out of visibility.

From that night forward, Elia’s dreams changed. No longer did she drift through clouds or fall endlessly through space. Now, she stood before a door—an ancient archway nestled between two crooked trees. Each night, she used the key, and the door would open into a world she had never seen yet somehow remembered.

It was a realm of impossible beauty: forests where the leaves hummed lullabies, rivers that flowed upward into glowing skies, and creatures with eyes like galaxies. The ground sparkled with every step she took. Time didn’t work the same here; hours in her dreams felt like days.

She named the world Nysera.

At first, it was a sanctuary—an escape from the lonely silence of her waking life. In Nysera, the creatures spoke to her. A fox with wings and a lantern tail guided her across skybridges of light. A tree that breathed like a sleeping giant told her stories in wind-tongue.

But over time, the world changed.

It began with the sun flickering one morning as she walked along the Dreamvine Path. Then came the cracks—tiny fissures in the sky, like broken glass. Shadows leaked through, devouring color. The songs of the trees turned mournful.

“Something’s wrong,” said the fox one evening, its light dimmer than before. “You stopped believing. The world fades when forgotten.”

Elia tried to deny it, but the fox was right. She was twelve now, and the weight of reality had grown heavier. School. Parents fighting. The gnawing loneliness. She stopped drawing Nysera in her notebook. She stopped writing down the stories. She stopped dreaming.

Until one night, Nysera vanished entirely.

Years passed. Elia grew up, silent and inward as ever. Her imagination was traded for deadlines. Nysera became a faded corner in her memory—something she mistook for childhood fantasy.

Then, on her nineteenth birthday, she found the key again.

It was in the drawer of her old desk, gleaming as if no time had passed. Her hands trembled. That night, as sleep overtook her, she whispered, “I remember.”

The door was waiting.

But Nysera was broken.

The skies were blackened. The forest was ash. The river now ran red with rust. The creatures were gone—except the fox, who sat under a dead tree, barely glowing.

“You came back,” it said, voice faint. “There is still time.”

Elia fell to her knees. “I didn’t know forgetting would hurt you.”

“This world is your gift,” the fox said. “It lives in you… because it is you. Every hope, every story you dreamed—it’s part of Nysera. And now it’s dying.”

Elia stood, the weight of her guilt pressing into her chest—but so too did something else. A spark. A memory. The wonder she used to feel when the wind sang her name.

“I want to fix it,” she whispered.

“Then imagine,” the fox replied.

Elia closed her eyes. She breathed in deeply, and for the first time in years, let go of everything the world told her to suppress.

She imagined warmth.

She imagined the trees humming again.

She imagined the stars falling like confetti.

She imagined friendship. Laughter. Magic.

When she opened her eyes, light had begun to return. The dead tree bloomed. The river turned crystal blue. The sky, once cracked and lifeless, shimmered with constellations in the shape of memories.

The fox wagged its lantern tail, brighter than ever. “Welcome home, Dreamer.”

From that night on, Elia returned to Nysera not to escape—but to remember. Every time she wrote, every time she told a story or painted a dream, she fed the world she had created.

And slowly, Nysera grew.

It grew bridges to other dreamers, doors hidden in notebooks and whispered poems. Others began to arrive—lonely souls who needed a world where they could belong.

Together, they made Nysera eternal.

Not imaginary.

But imagined—and that made all the difference.