I woke up at 4 AM this morning from one of the strangest and most vivid dreams I've had in a long time.

I was watching a scene that appeared as if from a movie. Two men were talking in a dark environment, almost like it was nighttime. One was slightly taller and seemed to have some authority over the other.

And then I realized something.

The man on the left was Cade, a character Christopher Preiman and I created for The Amaranth Chronicles nearly twenty years ago.

What's strange is that I didn't recognize Cade immediately. It was almost like I'd changed channels on a television and landed on a movie halfway through a scene.

Cade was standing there with his arms crossed, wearing his dark trench coat and sunglasses. He seemed relaxed, confident, and a little mysterious. He even gave this quick, slightly cocky laugh, almost like he'd made a little joke. Not laughing at the other person, just genuinely amused by something.

But what really caught my attention was his voice.

I could hear it SO clearly. He sounded like a man in his late thirties, speaking a little quickly, with a sharp, precise, incredibly dynamic voice. His words started in a slightly higher register. Still, as he finished each word, his voice sank into a deeper tone accompanied by the faintest electronic distortion, almost as if his cybernetics were subtly affecting it.

It sounded so familiar, too. Like a voice actor I'd heard in a video game or movie, but I couldn't figure out who. Then the conversation seemed to change.

Cade no longer wore his sunglasses or coat. His arms hung at his sides, and he leaned slightly forward toward the taller man. His cybernetic left hand, the same arm that is able to transform into a sword, was slightly raised and clenched.

He wasn't attacking anyone. He was talking, but something about the other person felt threatening, and Cade pushed back. His speech grew more direct, his face stiffened, and I could see him grinding his teeth slightly after he spoke.

It was almost like he was saying, "You're not going to intimidate me."

And the weirdest part was how REAL he felt.

Chris always understood Cade's personality better than I did. I could visualize him, but I often struggled to imagine exactly how he would behave or sound. In this dream, I wasn't writing him or directing him. I was watching him exist, and he had a personality and voice that appeared completely independent of anything I'd consciously imagined.

Then, as I started waking up, the scene changed again.

The darkness gradually became an early morning in a residential neighborhood near Cabrillo Street in San Francisco. Cade wasn't really visible anymore, but it almost felt like I was still experiencing his world, or perhaps something happening later in his story.

And I could hear music. It was Sean Townsend's piano cover of Killswitch Engage's "The Arms of Sorrow," which I'd actually been listening to the night before.

The music started with this cold, foggy, almost sorrowful feeling, like a cold dawn with a little wind moving through the trees. But as it progressed, it became more determined. Not exactly triumphant. More like someone carrying a little sadness but declining to back down from whatever happens next.

And then I woke up.

I've spent the morning trying to reconstruct what I saw, including creating these images of Cade with help from an AI. They're remarkably close to the two different expressions and appearances I remember.

The frustrating thing is that I can already feel his voice dimming from my memory. It was so incredibly vivid when I woke up.

I have absolutely no idea why my brain put all of this together. The character, the conversation, the voice, the San Francisco neighborhood, and that particular piece of music.

Was my brain pulling together memories of video games, years of writing, and music I'd heard the night before? Was it somehow working through a character I've always had trouble fully understanding?

Who knows?

But for a few minutes at four in the morning, I felt like I was watching a movie adaptation of a story I helped create, and I wasn't the one telling it. I was watching… And that was pretty damn incredible…