The Last Dreamer

The sky always held a strange calmness when Avery dreamt. It wasn’t the usual kind of sky; no, this one was a deep shade of violet, swirling in ways that defied logic, alive with the possibilities of things that hadn’t yet happened. When she was younger, she’d been amazed by its vastness, the open-ended wonder of the world inside her mind. But now, that sky was shrinking, contracting with each passing night, and Avery couldn’t help but wonder if she, too, was shrinking with it.

She was the last of her kind, the last Dreamer. The last person in the world who could shape the future with the visions that came to her in sleep. She had learned early that the gift came with danger—danger to herself, danger to the people around her. Too many had been burned by their power. Too many had pushed the limits, trying to manipulate fate for their own gain. And one by one, the others had faded from the world. Some died. Some disappeared. Avery had never understood why she was the last one left, but she had learned to keep her gift hidden. She had to. If anyone found out, the world wouldn’t just burn; it would be consumed by a fire that only she could spark.

The dreams had always been strange, but over the past month, something had shifted. They were no longer the hopeful, serene visions of a bright future Avery had once seen. Now, they were filled with flames, smoke, destruction. Collapsing bridges. Buildings that buckled under their own weight. Cities swallowed whole by endless waves of water, drowning in terror. And every time Avery woke up, she felt the pulse of those dreams still lingering in her chest, like the echo of an impending catastrophe.

The first one had come a week ago: a crumbling skyscraper, teetering over the edge of a river, unable to hold itself together. The air had been thick with smoke and the sharp scent of burning metal, the cries of panicked people ringing in Avery’s ears. The dream was so vivid, so raw, that when Avery opened her eyes, her heart raced in fear. It didn’t feel like just a dream. It felt like a memory.

Then, two days later, the news broke. A major skyscraper, the one Avery had seen, had collapsed. She watched, frozen in place, as the footage played across her screen—the twisted wreckage of what had once been a shining monument of steel. Panic had gripped the city, just as Avery had seen it. The echoes of the destruction, the feeling of impending doom, crashed over her like a wave.

But that was only the beginning.

The bridge in her dream collapsed the following morning, the one that had been torn apart in the visions before. The cracks in the foundation Avery had witnessed came to life, and no one seemed to understand why or how. People talked about it as if it was just a freak accident. But Avery knew better. Each disaster was a piece of a much larger puzzle, one that would soon lead to the end of something—maybe everything.

She had to stop it.

But how? How could she stop something so massive, something so inevitable? Avery had tried to warn people before, but no one ever believed her. They would just look at her with pity in their eyes, the kind of pity that said, you’re just dreaming, just imagining things. She had seen it too many times before. Who would listen to someone like her, anyway? A young woman with no power, no influence, no way of getting the attention of the right people?

Avery couldn’t waste time hoping for anyone to believe her. She had to do this alone. No one else could see the dreams, no one else could hear the warnings that pulsed in her chest like a ticking clock. And if she didn’t act fast, there would be nothing left to save.

So Avery studied the dreams, the pieces of destruction scattered in her mind. Every detail, every warning, every moment—each one had to be examined. The things she had seen couldn’t be random. They had to be connected. They had to be stopped.

But it wasn’t just the magnitude of the events that terrified Avery. It was the fact that she had no idea how to change it. She had always been able to shape smaller things—win a few bets, nudge events in her favor, prevent a bad day from turning worse—but stopping something on this scale? That was uncharted territory. Her gift wasn’t meant for this, for something this huge. She had never dreamed of anything like it before.

The answer came to her, unexpectedly, in the middle of one of her dreams. Avery had always used her ability to bend small moments in the future, to guide things in the direction she wanted, but what if she could use that power differently? What if she could stretch time itself, bend it, slow it down? Maybe if she slowed the events before they even happened, she could give herself more time—time to stop the chain reaction before it was too late.

She plunged deeper into the dream that night, letting it consume her. The building teetering over the river. The cracks in the bridge. The wave of destruction that followed. Avery reached out to touch the dream, to stretch it, to weave her will through it like thread through fabric. The more she focused, the clearer it became. She could feel the future, almost taste it, the texture of it rough in her mind. She could slow it down, twist it, redirect it.

When she woke up, the world felt different. But it wasn’t just the dream. Avery could sense it, the way the air had shifted, like the universe itself had taken a breath. She had done something. But what had it cost? Could she really stop the destruction? Or had she merely delayed the inevitable?

She didn’t have much time to figure it out. When she stepped into the city that day, Avery noticed the subtle signs, the quiet shifts in the world around her. The foundations were still cracking. There were tremors in the world, in the people, in the buildings. And somewhere, out there, something was still coming.

It was just the beginning.

The question that lingered, as Avery walked through the crowded streets, was whether she was strong enough to stop it. But one thing was certain: she couldn’t let the future fall apart without trying. Not when she was the only one who could still dream it back together.

And maybe, just maybe, the world wasn’t as unchangeable as she had thought.