Starved for Hope

Renna drifted in that liminal space between waking and sleep, where sound felt like water and time curled back upon itself.

Eyes.
Endless eyes, suspended in the darkness. Some were wide with fear, others glazed with exhaustion, and some—most—were empty, watching without seeing. They pulsed faintly, like the last embers of dying fires. She tried to look away, but there was no away here—only more eyes, staring, pleading, accusing.

She could not see herself. Her hands were gone, her body unmoored. Every step forward was swallowed by shadow until, far ahead, a rectangle of gold light broke the black. A door.

The yellow was wrong—too bright, too warm—like it had been painted from the memory of a summer no one had lived through in decades. The closer she came, the heavier her chest became, as though the air itself clung to her ribs.

A whisper rose from the eyes. Don’t open it.
Another voice followed. It’s the only way.

Renna reached for the handle. Her fingers returned, trembling, as if they had only been waiting for this moment to exist again. The door opened, spilling light so blinding she thought she might finally see.

And then—silence. The light became wind on her face, fresh and wild, carrying the scent of open fields. She stepped through, the weight sliding from her shoulders.

When she woke, the echo of that wind still lingered in her mind. She lay in the half-dark of the bunker, listening to the distant rumble of artillery somewhere beyond the hills. Was the yellow door a promise? A warning? Or just the desperate invention of a mind starved for hope in a war that had erased nearly all of it?