The Daydreamer's Curse

Ishra Taneja, a 28-year-old linguistics researcher, begins experiencing mysterious daytime dreams—not hallucinations, not imagination, but fully sensory, hyper-real, cinematic episodes that do not wait for sleep. These visions are vivid, emotionally violent, and always happen in broad daylight, while fully awake, lasting exactly 3 minutes and 14 seconds each time. In these waking-dreams, she sees places she has never been, hears voices speaking in extinct languages, and witnesses fragments of events that haven't happened yet—but soon will. She sees a girl drowning in a dry well, a nameless man screaming in a burning train, a piano playing in an empty school, and a countdown—always a countdown. Doctors call it "lucid seizure". Psychologists call it "trauma response". But an old blind historian hears her descriptions and quietly whispers: "They are not dreams. They are summons." When Ishra starts accidentally preventing tragedies she saw in her visions, everything changes—because now, someone else seems to know she can see. And that someone is making sure she keeps seeing more. Someone who also dreams. Someone she has never met. Someone awake. And watching. The last dream doesn't show a tragedy. It shows her own death, happening in 11 days. And a message: "Meet me before the dream ends. Or wake up dead." Now it's a race across hidden monasteries, forgotten languages, secret dream societies, and a 300-year-old mystery of people who do not dream in sleep—but in reality.