The Sleepless Ascent

The Sleepless Ascent by Natalia Lakes

It begins not with nightfall, but with the awareness of night. The slow surrender of day does not soothe—it accuses. The ceiling wears the color of ash-glazed pearl and the walls sigh in gentle empathy. You lie still, not dreaming, observing your own failure to fall asleep.

Sleep does not evade you—it forgets you. As if your name were lost from some divine roll call of the drowsy. Thirty hours have passed since you last surrendered to slumber. Yet no yawn, no drift, no mercy. Only a thin, silver buzzing behind the eyes.

The pillows feel like rocks under your ear. You shift—one hand beneath the ear, no—under the pillow, no—behind the head. You roll—right side, then left, then your stomach, then your back. A restless choreography of limbs trying to vanish into stillness. But no angle grants amnesty, only endless variations of unrest.

The clock becomes your tormentor, casting its cold verdicts in numerals. The numbers glow, indifferent. 1:47. 2:13. 3:06. Time doesn’t pass—it coagulates. Somewhere, a wall gives a solitary tap. Outside, a dog barks—distant, half-dreamed. You glance again. Two hours have vanished like mist in a mirror. It is 5:00 a.m. now. The world is still dark, but dawn is beginning to rehearse its entrance behind the curtains. And you—unclaimed by sleep—remain the audience of your own unraveling.

Thoughts bloom uninvited—half-formed and fervent, the mind pulling memories from their drawers and scattering them like photographs across the floor. Things you should’ve said. Things you shouldn’t have felt. Apocalypse scenarios.  Regrets that never aged. Nonsense and memories mixed into static. You become an archivist of broken narratives. The mind, denied the grace of sleep, begins to feed on itself.

And then—something parts.

An infinitesimal instant unfolds like a hidden door. You are still in bed—body weighted, chest rising—but something inside you loosens. A second self stirs. Smoke-bodied. Thought-shaped. The one who remembers what waking has forgotten.

You do not fall asleep. You unfasten.

The room remains, draped in its pale, accusatory silence. The clock still burns with uncaring numbers. A subtle tremor passes through your chest, and you exhale—not air, but presence. And in that breath, the ceiling recedes, the floor dissolves, and the weight of insomnia becomes a stairway.

It spirals into the impossible—white stone with no anchor, floating in a sky too blue to belong to night, too deep for day. You ascend—not with feet, but with intention. Each step recognizes you, as if you’ve walked it before, in another lifetime or dream.

At its crown, the tower rises like a memory crystallized. Its bricks seem pressed from storybooks. Its windows glow—not with firelight, but the warmth of sentience. Through one, a figure walks—a monk? An enchantress? A part of yourself you’ve never met.

You climb still. The air thickens with stardust. The staircase curls, the rhythm of your ascent becoming music.

The trees around the tower are not trees. Their leaves shimmer like paused constellations. One bows as you pass, in recognition. They know you, though not from your waking life. From somewhere older.

And at the summit, the stairway unfurls into a platform with no railing—and no fear. The world below is both real and imagined, a dream that knows it's dreaming.

Then you see her.

She steps forward with sovereign grace. Her face holds the quiet of ancient libraries, the hush between thunder and thought. Horns sweep from her head in black and gold arcs—ribbons of ink written in the language of stars.

She speaks, and the voice is not sound—it is heat that enters you:

“You have more power within you than you can fathom. You are not small. You are not lost.You come from a lineage laced with moonlight and fire. Your ancestors did not suffer from insomnia. They conjured magic.”

Behind her, the tower begins to hum. Not crumble, not fall—but shimmer, like a bubble choosing to vanish. You know it is time.

You wake. The clock says 5:01 a.m.

The sleep did not come. But something was different. You are entirely changed. Your limbs hum with something deeper than rest. Your heart has a new rhythm, steady and fierce. The insomnia no longer felt like punishment, but preparation. A sacred wakefulness.

You did not sleep. But you were restored. You walked the stair between worlds—and returned carrying fire.