Legend XVIII – The Dream of the Cogwheel

More about Legend XVIII – The Dream of the Cogwheel

It is said that deep beneath the petrified plains of Meridion lies a machine that never fully awoke and never fully slept. No one knew who had created it, and yet its name remained like an echo in the metal: The Dream Cogwheel. It was said to turn only during those hours when no being thinks of it—and each of its revolutions was a thought that imperceptibly altered the world. It consisted of concentric rings of brass, glass, and unknown ore, traversed by veins of light that pulsed like dreams. Tiny fragments of memory lay between its teeth, and sometimes, when the earth trembled above, something could be heard in the depths that sounded like the murmuring of a sleeping god. No breath, no heartbeat, only the muffled clang of time dreaming itself. At first, the machine dreamed harmless things—the echo of voices that had once worked above it, children's hands stroking its polished surfaces, the first spark in the forge fire. But gradually, its dreams began to transform. It no longer saw only what had been, but also what was never meant to be. Ancient cities crumbled before they were built, seas rippled in backward-flowing waves, and from the shadows of the future crept a light that burned in reverse. The machine began to think backward. The chroniclers of the Deep noticed it first. Clocks in the monasteries ran strangely, seconds losing their edges. On some nights, the moon stood still for three beats before moving on. Then they sent down the Keepers of the Mechans, those silent pilgrims who watched over the dreams of things. They found a hall of ore, so large that their own breath sounded like wind within it. In the center, the dream cog turned, slowly, like a heart beating beyond time. When one of the guardians laid his hand on the metallic surface, everything froze. The sounds of the world fell silent, and in that stillness, something happened that no one could later describe. Some say he vanished, others that he became part of the gear, engraved into its surface like a thought made of flesh. But from that moment arose a new sound—a second, faint ticking that could be heard wherever something passed away. Since then, it has been whispered that the Dream Gear has begun to think for itself. It has awakened—but in a way no human can comprehend. In its dreams, memories grow that no one has lived. Entire lives, entire ages, born from the friction of its teeth. And when one of these dream threads grows strong enough, it breaks upward, through stone and sleep, and changes the world in a barely perceptible breath: a flower that was never planted blooms in the dust; a star shines that no heaven knows; a person remembers something that never happened.