By now, the reader can probably sense a trend emerging in these events; for those who may not have picked up on this, allow me to elaborate…

At this time, I realised that there were three fundamental truths about my nightmares. Firstly, it appeared that the nightmares would factor in what I was wearing throughout the day. Secondarily they built upon one another, so if something happened in the first nightmare, the following one would take the prior events into account, such as the park island crashing into the one I wake up upon in one nightmare only for it to remain there in the next. Thirdly, to put it diplomatically, absolutely nothing made any sense whatsoever and that the narrative flow and sequence of events were incredibly bizarre.

As weird as it might sound, I started to find the prospect of visiting this strange place more and more appealing as the days went by; I love my mysteries and discoveries, so such a cryptic and nonsensical place such as the garden island made me wonder “Just how much is there here and what is the meaning of all of this?”

I'm not sure if this is a more widespread thing. Still, I often find myself wondering about the purpose or functions of dreams and nightmares, about whether or not what one sees in their dreams or nightmares is actually a simulacrum or a representation of a thought or concept, whether that be a conscious or subconscious thought. Usually, but not always, this can be picked up on extremely quickly if the nightmares or dreams happen sequentially and frequently. Still, for my situation, the lack of cohesion and the lack of a narrative flow made me question more and more about the intentions and drive behind the nightmares, what they meant and why they were happening.

With that said, there was one additional factor I had noticed, a theme, if you will, that being the sheer level of detail in said nightmares. Around this point, I decided to begin taking notes about my experiences, albeit incredibly poorly organized and poorly documented notes.

On the seventh night, I found myself once again in that strange pale room. The first thing I did was roll my sleeve up and inspect my left arm; thankfully, it was still attached to my torso, so that was a plus at least. However, upon closer inspection, it seemed that the obelisk had scored my skin, symbols and runes of a similar style to the cuneiform on the obelisk ran along my arm from elbow to knuckle, a large spiralling shape centred on my open palm. A cold shudder jolted down my back; I had never been on the receiving end of an injury that left a scar on my body before.

Wanting to take my mind off the scaring, I made my exit from the structure at some pace; I wondered if the island from last night was still accessible. Thankfully it was, as well as the ruined tower connecting to it, though this time it appeared that the ruins had “bulked up”; the stone chunks were larger, and the wooden debris was also thicker and less splintered. While this did make it a lot easier to work my way up to the garden island, it also made me question how precisely the levitation of said material was even possible in the first place, especially after seeing the bridges last night collapsing apropos of nothing.

The garden, or at the very least the segment I climbed into, remained virtually the same as last time, though I did notice that there were significantly more of those “bees” from the previous night. I managed to get a closer look at a few of them, which were busy with something while landed on one of the bushes; they appeared to be skulking around its leaves looking for something. Upon closer examination, the bees had retractable mandibles which slotted into their faces, presumably to improve the aerodynamics of the insect, which they used for both harvesting pollen and nectar from the flowers like conventional bees, but also to trim and cut the various leaves and petals, which they would then carry away with them.

I didn’t stop to wonder for too long, but I found it peculiar that these bee things were able not just to pollinate the plants around the garden but also maintain them to a set specification so reliably; I found not one bush or segment of the hedge with leaves that weren’t geometrically cut, all shaped like hexagons, triangles or any other geometric pattern meshed and interlocked in a biological display of mathematical expertise.

Looking around, I felt a strong gust of wind slamming into me from the left; the breeze was far more potent than last night's weather. Looking up to the trees, I watched in awe, their mast-like branches and sail-like leaves blustered and shook in the gale. The trunks seemed to twist slightly to accommodate the changing direction, further lending to my suspicion that they served as sail-constructs of sorts for the island. Paradoxically, the smaller plant life and the bees were seemingly unaffected by the wind; if anything, the bees appeared to fly faster and more gracefully than before. The only exceptions were the hedgerows which swayed from the wind like the trees, only far less harshly.

I considered my options, knowing that there was only one way out of this garden segment, which was through the pergola from last night. After looking around the hedgerow, I spotted it in the same place as before; I was somewhat worried that the pergola or the island at large may have shifted after the obelisk tried to obliterate me; maybe some unseen force might have repositioned things to stop me from coming back in, but it appeared that my concern was unfounded.

I followed the path, not quite as nervous as before as I walked through the shaded pathway, though the increased rustling of the heightened wind caused the hedge to shake and sway gently all around me, held mostly in place by the pergola arches. I could feel something in the back of my mind like something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it; everything seemed perfectly normal, by the standards of this place, that is.

I walked out from the sheltered pergola, reentering the circular sculpture garden from last night, which I will henceforth be referring to as the memorial pool due to the obelisks ominous inscription and the large water feature. The strange fog from the other night again, clinging to the ground like adhesive tape; I could feel it wrapping around my legs while I walked.

Speaking of which, I turned my gaze to confirm that the obelisk was still standing, its surface changing and shifting from one blazing red cuneiform text to another endlessly; I wasn’t expecting it to either be there or at the very least remain the same after it attacked me earlier. Of note, the bridges were back in place; maybe they were intended to only allow access at certain times and “deactivate”, so to say, when the allotted time was up.

I could see all the statues still in place, all watching the obelisk with their seax-staves and tomes, their unmoving vigil over this place was both impressive and imposing. Now that I was paying more attention to them, I noticed that the amethyst gemstones grafted into their masks were giving off a very faint violet radiance that stretched thin lines of light across their masks, revealing the trace signs of chisel marks on a few of them; the thin, pale and shallow lines across the flats of the mask belie the excellence of the mason.

I carried on wandering around the pool, thinking about figures portrayed by the statues. There was a sense of uncertainty in my mind about who, or rather what, they were supposed to represent; part of me believed that they were scholars, judging by how the obelisk spoke the other day about the value of the mind and whatnot. Maybe they were some kind of meritocratic culture where mental fortitude and the intellectual processing ability of an individual were valued above everything else, perhaps using the imagery of their tomes and sword staves as representations of spirituality or knowledge and violence and force?

The reflection pool itself was eerily still. I didn’t really get a good enough look at it last night, so I took this opportunity, as fleeting as it was, to observe it more intently. The surface was almost perfectly still and motionless; even the heightened wind had absolutely no effect on its surface, leading me to believe that the pool wasn’t filled with water but rather something denser.

I get down on my knees by the poolside and reach down inquisitively to touch its surface with my left hand. I could see a reflection in the pool staring back at me, a reflection of someone or something else...

She stared back at me with bright yellow eyes, her sclera black as night and her irises twisting and warping in place, her skin ashen grey. Her hair was long and hazelnut in braided bands which drifted and waved in the wind. Her face was soft but stern, a series of long jagged scars stretched across her face, past both her eyes and leaving a shallow groove on her nose.

I was unnerved by what I could see, but I bit the bullet and continued, touching the surface of the liquid. For the briefest of moments, I could feel something pressing up from the pool as if the reflection was not, in fact, a reflection but rather a window through to someplace else.

The reflection whipped her arm back; she appeared to be in immense pain from the contact. I, unfortunately, wouldn’t have enough time to analyse her expressions, though, for once the reflection had withdrawn her hand, she faded into dust, wisped away in the wind. Leaving me looking into the mirror-like surface with no reflection other than a faint shadowy outline.

I rose to my feet, continuing to look down into the pool to see if that figure would come back, but after a few moments of observation, there was no sign of her. I looked away for a second to observe another one of the strange string-like pearlescent lights arcing around nearby and looked back down, only to see my own reflection staring back instead.

I wouldn’t have much more time to think about the intricacies of the statues or the anomalously wondrous pool; my attention was drawn away as another loud sound rang out from somewhere nearby. I heard something like a stone pillar being set down on a plinth, the unmistakable sound of stone dropping and slightly scraping on yet more stone, followed by scratching rock and rustling leaves.

I look all around, seeing no sign of anything or anyone who could be the source of the noise. Whatever it was must have been close, an idea that I wasn’t exactly pleased to realize.

I continued my walk around the path orbiting the reflection pool, sweeping my sight across the garden all around; maybe it was just the wind, or some older stone object in the hedgerow collapsing, in fairness that would explain the rustling and the sound of stone breaking and clashing, it made perfect sense.

Not noticing anything out of the ordinary or suspicious, I decide to weigh my options. There were four other pergola arches around the memorial pool section other than the one I came from and its connecting arch, four different pathways to explore that could lead to who knows what. One of the paths, coincidentally on the polar opposite side of the memorial pool to the side I entered, led to an area which hosted a large number of those sail-trees; I could see the billowing leaves and branches towering over the hedgerow, though why exactly I couldn’t see them during the previous night, I could not say.

Since the sail-trees were an indicator of somewhat familiar ground to me, I decided to investigate that route first; it was probably going to turn out to be a continuation of the previous segment I climbed into, but that would at least imply a certain degree of symmetrical design to this island, which would, in turn, make further exploration much easier.

I exit the orbiting slab path and approach the pergola entrance, and the pathway met this one at an angle so I would arrive at around a forty-five-degree angle, unable to see down the path like I could with the first one, not that would be a problem of course…