The ring was their heart.

One day, I would come to know what this truly meant.

It was a day like any other, work was over and I was headed home when I heard a familiar voice calling me.

"Hey, Sam! Wait up!"

I turned around and I saw a tall woman, with silky long black hair and a tan skin running towards me.

She was one of my colleagues at work and her beauty, although average, was quite unique. She had heterochromia, with one eye being a shade of baby blue and another being a mix of blue and amber. What set her apart physically, and got her noticed easily, was a scar she had on her cheek. It was rather large, going from her eye almost to her jawline. No one knew how she got it because she always refused to say.

"Kimberly, I didn't know you went this way." I said in a soft tone with a surprised look.

"Normally I don't but today is my girlfriend's birthday." she replied happily.

We were walking side by side but I couldn't look at her in the face, instead I kept looking around to distract myself. Kimberly, however, was visibly animated. Her steps light and her arm swings wide. Soon, her cheerful demeanor calmed down a bit though as she looked at me.

"Is it that distracting?" she asked, with a slight frown and touching the edges of her scar.

She must have thought that I couldn't look at her because of it, but she couldn’t be further from the truth.

"I'm just messing with you!" Kimberley suddenly shouted, lightly punching my shoulder at the same time. "I know why it is, you're not the most subtle at work, you know."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." I retorted, puffing out my chest and trying to be as silly as I could be. "And also, it doesn't really matter, does it. One day I'll find someone and we can all go for a drink." I then said in a more serious tone.

I was trying to not sour the mood, it was something I did often unintentionally and I had been practicing self-control lately. Plus, this was a moment I wanted to remember as something positive, even if it was fruitless.

A few minutes later and we reached Kimberly's girlfriend's house. We said our goodbyes and I went home. All I could think about was how much of a dumbass I had been towards Kimberly, I just wished I could live a different life, somewhere else. When I got home, I took my coat off and went to shower. It was always the first thing I did. In a way I was taking the expression "cool your head" literally. Afterwards, I went to heat up some leftovers from the fridge.

When I opened it, I saw many different tupperwares with different things in them. I didn't like throwing away food when there was a lot left so I always kept it for later. I took a random tupperware and heated it up. While it was heating, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. Not feeling like checking who messaged me, I just left it.

"It's probably nothing important. If it were, they would just call me." I told myself.

After eating and finally going to bed, my phone vibrated again. This time I looked to see who was messaging me so much. I became flustered when I saw the sender, it was Kimberly. She probably wanted to talk about what happened earlier, or that's what I thought. Unable to think of a clear reason and after overthinking for what seemed like hours, I ignored her texts regretfully and quickly fell asleep.

The wind was cold, the sky was dark, and the ground was covered in grass. I knew exactly where I was. A dream. My body almost felt nonexistent and my vision wasn't completely clear. As I was about to talk, most of the people began running away from me and screaming in terror. Before I could turn around to verify that I was really the source of their fear, a ball of fire flew through me and hit one of the people that stayed. The fireball caused a large explosion and smoke formed immediately after, covering my sight.

"What do you think you're doing?" a harsh voice spoke from within the smoke.

"I thought he was one of them." another voice spoke, this one more familiar and coming from the direction of the fireball.

They seemed to know each other and the fire ball was supposedly aimed at me. I was confused yet curious, I had never been attacked so suddenly in any dream.

"It went right through him! He has to be!" the familiar voice exclaimed.

"I have to what? Just so you know, this reality is what I want it to be.” I spoke, completely calm yet more intrigued after hearing these people talk.

The reason I was so confident and openly stated that I could control the dream was because I liked seeing how dream people would react to such a thing. The smoke settled and the people in front of me could be seen again. To my surprise, the ones that stayed were showing all sorts of magical powers. There were people that manipulated different elements, other had visible mutations and there were even those that were empowering everyone else.

"Who are you?" I asked with a puzzled look.

It wasn’t uncommon for such things to appear in dreams but I had never seen something like this before.

"No, you tell us first who-" The person behind me was floating towards the rest of the group as they were speaking.

"Wait." I interrupted, dumbfounded by what I saw.

It was Kimberly, but her clothing was different, not to mention her more aggressive personality shift. She wore leggings in which one leg was white and the other black, she had a top that showed her belly but covered her arms, the cuffs wrapping tightly around her wrists. Like the leggings, the top was also divided into black and white. Her hair was tied into a ponytail and her eyes were sharp, very much the opposite of her real life self. Looking at her more toned and muscular body, you would think she had been working out for years already.

"Kimberly? Is that you?" I asked, trying not to tell her that she was a creation of my subconscious and that none of this was real.

"Sam! How did you get into this world? It's like a dream but so much more real." She replied excitedly, her gaze getting more relaxed and her demeanour returning to how I knew it to be.

"You two know each other? We should get back to base before they show up then." the person who got hit by the fire ball said impatiently. "I'm Shizuka, by the way."

Now that I looked closely at her, I could see that she wore clothing similar to Kimberly. The only difference was that instead of it being black and white, it was lime green and purple. Her face was rather different from what I was used to. Her eyes were narrow, with a slight eye shadow. Her irises were a dark brown and she had rather small lips. Her hair was a light brown bob cut down to her shoulders. Like Kimberly, her body also showed proof of intense physical training.

We went back to their base, and strangely, the journey wasn't instant. We went through a forest and then a small plains. Looking at the sky made it seem like it was midday and I began to wonder for how long I would continue dreaming. We finally arrived at the base and it was a rather unassuming hole in the ground leading into a cave. I stayed silent as we entered the cave, its entrance was plain and decorated just enough to make it look like it hadn’t seen movement in a long time.

After a few minutes of walking in the dark, we were suddenly in a large empty room. Looking around, the room was large, its walls painted with a light cream and the floor had metal tiles, forming a simple square pattern. There was one door in front of us but no door behind us. The door opened and a man came from it, walking with his arms wide open toward us.

"You made it back! I was told you were attacked by-" the person cheerfully talking suddenly stopped as his eyes caught mine, his arms dropping to his side. By the looks of it, he was a guard of this hidden base.

Before I took a single step, Kimberly spoke up.

"Don't worry, Greg. He's a friend of mine." she said, putting her arm around my neck.

"Uh, hi. I'm Sam. I have no idea what's going on." I sheepishly muttered out.

All I could think about was wanting to explore this place and practice my lucid dreaming.

"Do you have a ring, Sam?" Greg said as he walked up to me, his eyes flaring up.

He stopped very close and the height difference between us was very obvious. He was a tower next to me. He had large green eyes that felt like they stared straight into my soul. He wore basic clothing, a simple white t-shirt that seemed a bit tight, you could easily see the contours of his muscles, and simple pair of black jeans. For some reason, everyone seemed to only wear two colors. Looking at his hair, I could tell that he never really groomed it and probably just used his hands, it was messy but not too much. In terms of colors, it was hard to describe, by the root it was black but the closer it got to the ends the whiter it got. If I stared long enough, his hair seemed to gain a variety of colors out of nowhere. His skin looked smooth and contrasted with his white shirt and hair. It was a common shade of brown you would see in South American and European countries.

"Are you done staring? I asked you a question." Greg was getting impatient, he seemed to have a short fuse for someone so tall.

"Ah, sorry. I don't. I don't use jewellery." I replied, turning my head to the side to avoid his gaze.

"I see. Either you're lying or you haven't met your god yet.” he retorted, not trying one bit to hide his suspicion.

God? My god? What was he talking about?

I had a ton of questions, but most of them weren't toward Greg or anyone else, they were mostly toward myself. This was my dream after all, I created this entire scenario from somewhere in my imagination. I was visibly at a loss for words when Shizuka broke the silence.

"Come on, Greg! Can't we talk about that while we eat? I'm starving." she blurted out while make a hand movement like she was shooing away a stray docile dog.

Greg looked at her and nodded, turning back to the door and leading us to where they ate.

We walked to a big room, it looked like a typical prison cafeteria, except everyone was talking loudly and was rather happy. The atmosphere fit more a school cafeteria rather than a prison one. We got our food and sat down at an empty table. The food looked rather normal and something you would see in an ordinary home, plus the smell was quite irresistible.

"So Sam, about the ring business." Greg said as he placed a ring on the table.

It was a simple silver ring, with a marking going all around in a wavy pattern. It had a weak glow around it, giving it the illusion it was a wave moving in the ocean.

"Is that a god ri-"

As I was speaking, my vision became blurry for a moment and memories invaded my mind.

I saw dreams I had forgotten about, people that had died and those that had never existed before. Among these memories, I saw a young boy crying alone. He was in a ball of wind that seemed like he had created and was surrounded by darkness.

"Why did you leave?" The boy cried out to the air. "I wasn't strong enough to protect you."

My vision became dark and the boy’s voice became further away. When I couldn’t hear the boy anymore, I felt my body collapse. When I opened my eyes, I was in my bedroom. I had woken up. I looked at my surroundings and saw that everything was normal, it wasn't a false awakening where at first glance everything was normal but if you inspected anything, you would realize that you were still dreaming. It was reality.

I sat up on my bed, rubbing my eyes to take any sleepiness out of them, and remembered the messages Kimberly sent the night before. I went to pick up my phone and saw something strange, a ring was on my finger.

This ring was made of copper, with an indentation on one side and had four jewels decorating it. These jewels didn’t look like any that had been discovered yet.

Either someone snuck in last night and placed this precious looking ring on my finger or I had forgotten I even owned it. No matter which option I went with, it didn't make any sense.

I finally picked up my phone and saw the messages. 5 unread messages.

"Thanks for the company!"

"I forgot to tell you something, be car£@)#"

The rest of the messages were corrupted.

Is my phone busted? I thought, staring at the dim screen in confusion.

I got out of bed and did my usual morning routine. While I was having breakfast, my phone vibrated on the table. It was a text message.

I went to see who had messaged me, thinking it might have been Kimberly reprimanding me for not answering her last night.

To my surprise, however, the sender had no name and no number. Even stranger, the text only said three words.

"Take. Me. Off."