When the planets aligned, the skies shimmered with a cosmic elegance unseen in a thousand years. Astronomers called it the Grand Parade—a celestial spectacle where all the visible planets danced across the heavens in perfect formation. But no one predicted what would follow.

It began that night, as people all over the world drifted into sleep. The dreams came vividly, like films projected onto the backs of their eyelids. Each dream was eerily specific, unfolding moments yet to happen.

Lila dreamt of a fire in her apartment building. She saw herself racing down smoke-filled stairs, clutching her cat, Simba, to her chest. When she awoke, the memory of the dream clung to her like ash. She dismissed it as a nightmare—until the fire alarm shrieked hours later, and she fled, her dream playing out exactly as she’d seen.

In New York, a cab driver named Yusuf dreamed of a woman in a red coat leaving her wallet in his back seat. The next morning, as he pulled over on Fifth Avenue, the same woman climbed into his cab. When she got out, the wallet sat there, just as he had seen.

Everywhere, stories like these spread. Social media lit up with hashtags: #FutureDreams, #PlanetParade. Skeptics called it mass hysteria, but too many coincidences piled up. Entire forums buzzed with people sharing their dreams, some trivial, others terrifying.

One man dreamt of a bridge collapsing, and his warning saved hundreds. A teenager in Tokyo dreamed of her sister in danger and prevented her from walking into an oncoming car.

But not all dreams were so kind.

In a small town in Montana, Sheriff Dale Thomas woke from a nightmare drenched in sweat. He had seen himself firing his gun at a man he didn’t recognize. The scene felt so real—the crack of the shot, the recoil, the man’s stunned expression as he fell.

Three days later, the man from his dream walked into the sheriff’s office, angry and armed. Dale hesitated, his hand hovering over his holster. He remembered the dream, how it had played out. But this time, he chose differently. He talked the man down, disarming him without firing a shot.

As the planetary alignment began to wane, so did the dreams. By the end of the week, they vanished entirely, leaving the world shaken and unsure.

Were they warnings? Gifts? Curses?

Lila, cradling Simba in her smoke-stained apartment, thought they were a second chance. Yusuf, counting the generous tip from the woman in red, believed they were a strange kind of guidance. And Sheriff Dale, sitting alone in his office, wondered if they were a reminder of choice—the power to rewrite fate, even when it seemed fixed in the stars.

Above, the planets drifted apart, the Grand Parade fading into the infinite vastness of space. On Earth, humanity looked to the heavens, waiting to see if the stars might one day speak again.