“No… this can’t be…”

  Mikhail Kelensky caught his breath. No matter how many times he looked, he struggled to accept that the sight before him was reality. It had been a dream—vivid, hauntingly lucid, yes—but a dream nonetheless. Yet, what lay beneath his fingers was undeniable proof that the dream had breached the walls of the waking world.

  The stamp album was organized with thin PET film strips, designed to hold delicate paper in place. Near the bottom of the page sat his familiar 'David' stamp. But next to it, in a slot that had surely been vacant only yesterday, sat a stranger.

  It was a circular stamp with a gold border. Inside the clock-like frame, hand-drawn needles pointed precisely to 5:30. At the top, the number 12 was printed with terrifying precision, as if to denote its value.

  Kelensky carefully slid the stamp out of the album. The sensation against his fingertips was unmistakable. It was paper. It possessed the cold, tangible texture of the physical world—not the hazy, shifting substance of a memory. He sat frozen, clutching the tiny scrap of paper.

  It was the exact stamp from his dream.

  The Asian man had placed it there in the dream, and now, it remained in the reality. This wasn't a trick of memory or a hallucination. Reality had followed the dream.

  Outside, the sun was still far from rising. The winter city was slow to wake; the sun wouldn't show its face until past seven. At 5:00 AM, the world was still drowned in shadows. His bodyguards were likely asleep in the adjacent rooms. He couldn't wake them. Even if he did, how could he possibly explain this?

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  Kelensky sank back into his chair, lost in thought.

  He knew the Americans were watching. They knew he was in this apartment. Though never officially stated, whether through satellite surveillance or HUMINT (Human Intelligence), the U.S. tracked his every move. It wasn't ignorance on their part; it was a silent, protective vigil. They monitored his location to catch any sign of an incoming strike from Nation R and feed that data to his air defense networks. In this war, there was no such thing as a truly secret location if someone powerful enough wanted to find you.

  But even so...

  To slip into his private quarters while he slept? To bypass elite bodyguards, CCTV, and thermal sensors? To enter his very dreams and leave a physical marker behind to prove he had touched his belongings?

  Kelensky shook his head. Impossible. Not even the United States possessed such technology. It didn't exist in this era—at least, not in the world he knew. Then what was this?

  5:30 PM. The time on the stamp.

  The man in the dream had said: Tomorrow, I will come to where you are.

  Was he truly going to appear at this safehouse this afternoon? If he did, the Americans would know instantly. And that information, through some leak or backchannel, would likely reach Nation R. Should he wait? Should he alert his security?

  But who would believe him?

  His mind felt like a tangled web of contradictions. Thoughts chased each other in circles, reaching no conclusion.

  "...Hmph. Perhaps... I should just wait," he muttered to himself. He said the words without fully grasping the weight of what he was deciding.

  Kelensky stood up and walked back to his bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress. Sitting alone in the hollow silence of the room, the faces of his wife and children—hidden away in another safehouse—flashed before his eyes. The longing he had tried so hard to suppress clawed at his heart.

  He bowed his head. He was exhausted. But...

  In the end, the reason he endured this—the reason he stood his ground against the crushing weight of a superpower—was for them. For his family. For his people.