I’ve returned to this place four times now in my dreams, and each visit reveals another layer of its impossible architecture. Last night, my parents were with me—my father limping on his bandaged knee, just as he is now in waking life—but the place itself remains constant, waiting somewhere between sleep and memory.

The Entrance

The hotel sits in what feels like a European mountain town, though I know it’s neither fully here nor there—perhaps a future that hasn’t quite arrived, or a place that exists in the margins of what’s possible. Outside, snow blankets everything. Teenagers mill about in the cold, their breath forming clouds, unaware of what waits beyond the doors.

But once you step inside, the world transforms entirely.

The lobby is like nothing you’ve seen—futuristic yet somehow ancient, warm despite the crystalline surfaces that catch the light in unexpected ways. You check in like any hotel, but that’s where normalcy ends. To reach your room, you descend in an elevator that defies physics, dropping through floors that shouldn’t exist, each level a revelation.

The Crystal Shop

On one of these impossible floors, there’s a marketplace. The first person I met there—truly met, after several dreams of passing glances—was a young man about my age. He works in one of the shops, and over time, we became friends. Real friends, despite the absurdity of befriending someone who exists only when I sleep.

Next to his shop stands a woman who looks like she stepped out of medieval fantasy—robes of deep purples and blues, the bearing of a wizard or mage. She sells crystals and minerals, each one more breathtaking than the last. Expensive, rare, glowing with inner light. I’ve never been able to afford anything from her shop, but I always stop to look.

The Virtual Realm

From somewhere in the hotel—I can never quite remember how to find the entrance deliberately—you can access another world entirely. A virtual reality, perhaps, though that term feels too mundane for what it actually is. You become an avatar, equipped with a sword and armor, and step into a fantasy landscape that shifts like dreams do.

Sometimes it’s absurd: a Mario-esque level where I’m jumping into green puddles to prevent mushrooms from spawning, the logic of childhood video games bleeding into epic fantasy. Other times it’s breathtaking—rivers winding through ancient forests, outposts that could have been lifted from World of Warcraft, NPCs who feel more real than real.

The randomness is part of its magic. Each visit brings something new, yet the underlying world remains familiar, like returning to a childhood home that’s been redecorated.

The Secret Dispensary

The second time I dreamed this place—or maybe the third—I made a mistake in the elevator. Wrong floor. The doors opened onto a hidden level I’d never seen before.

It was a cannabis dispensary, but not like any in the waking world. The products were aged like fine wine, with labels describing mystical breeds and effects I couldn’t begin to understand. The lighting was low, intimate, clearly not meant for hotel guests who punched the wrong button.

I realized my error immediately and felt that peculiar dream-guilt, sharp and certain. I got back in the elevator and selected a different floor. When the doors opened again, the shop’s owner was waiting for me.

“How did you get in there?” Her voice held curiosity, not anger.

I explained my mistake, and somehow—dream logic at its finest—this accident became my job interview. My friend from the crystal marketplace vouched for me, and suddenly I was on staff. Part of whatever mysterious operation runs beneath the hotel’s surface.

The Firing

In a later dream, something went wrong. The details are hazy, but the guilt is crystal clear: I got my friend fired. Maybe it was my fault directly, or maybe I just failed to prevent it, but the result was the same. He was upset, arguing with his boss—a woman this time, someone I hadn’t met before.

I followed them into the elevator, unsure if I was welcome but unable to let him face this alone. We rode up, up, up—past all the floors I knew, past the rooms and shops and secret levels, all the way to the top.

The doors opened onto space itself.

Not a room decorated like space—actual space. Nebulas swirled in colors that don’t exist in waking physics. A vortex of cosmic matter spiraled around us, stars being born and dying in accelerated time. They fought there, my friend and his former boss, with swords drawn, dueling among the stars. The sensation was overwhelming—the vastness, the impossibility, the sheer beauty of it.

I can’t explain it properly. I wish I could.

The Underground Mall

There’s also a mall accessible from the hotel—because of course there is. Standard retail space, nothing special, until you find the entrance to the underground level.

Down there, the architects gave up on pretense entirely. The underground mall is divided into biomes, each one a complete ecosystem under impossible artificial skies. One section recreates a tropical paradise, all humidity and vibrant green, built among ancient-looking sandstone ruins. Brown stone carved with symbols I almost recognize, weathered by rain that’s never fallen.

You follow a path through the ruins until you reach a central area—a restaurant, technically, though that word is too mundane. To get to the dining area, you have to cross a river on small boats that move along a track, like a theme park ride merged with practical transportation. The boats glide silently through the water, delivering guests to the middle where tables are set and food appears from kitchens hidden in the stone.

The Memory

I keep forgetting to write this down when I wake. The dream fades like all dreams do, and I’m left with fragments, sensations, the ghost of wonder. But it keeps coming back, this hotel, this impossible place. Each time I return, I learn its geography a little better, meet another resident, discover another hidden floor.

Last night my parents were there. My dad with his bandaged knee, so present and real it made the fantasy more grounded somehow, more believable. We explored together, though I can’t remember where we went or what we found.

But I’ll go back. I always do. And maybe next time I’ll remember to ask the mage what her crystals actually do, or find the entrance to the virtual realm deliberately instead of stumbling into it. Maybe I’ll take the elevator to a floor I’ve never tried before and find something even more impossible than cosmic sword fights or underground rivers.

The hotel is always waiting, somewhere between sleep and story, ready to reveal another secret when I return.