I crashed into a bone-numbing lake.
Cold water rushed over my head, burying me. For a moment I was stunned into stillness, suspended and floating.
Incredible.
Water mingled with light and darkness, casting an endless array of luminous shapes over my arms, and the gleam of something iridescent floated through it all, rotating and spinning like a thousand moving stars. It swept over my skin and danced along the lines of my dress, nearly making me forget who I was and where I was supposed to be. A familiar melody hummed in the distance, drifting faintly—ever so faintly—through the water. It repeated itself twice before threading into nothingness. And as the sound faded, so did the light.
At once, the source—the meaning —of the sound slammed into me. It was the song from the Light Bringer and his legion.
No—no. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be home. Home with Mother and Father. With Elliot.
I clawed to the surface, crying out for breath the moment my mouth met air.
“It’s you ,” a familiar voice snarled.
The nameless man stood at the edge of the water, hate glittering in his eyes. Wet glass the color of twilight arched above him, twining with vines and crumbling stone. The space might have felt oppressive if it weren’t for a jagged hole cut through the entirety of it all, allowing the glow of the moon, reinforced by flecks of starlight, to pour in.
“Yes, me . Stop haunting my dreams,” I snapped, unable to decide if I should swim to the edge—where he was—or remain where I was, suspended in a bottomless pit of icy water. I brought a fingertip to my eyes, wagging it back and forth.
It seemed real enough, for a dream.
“A foolish demand, considering you’re the one trespassing. A second time, no less,” he said, fixing me with a stare equivalent to the temperature of the water. He clasped his metal-encased hands together, drawing a stream of billowing, inky darkness from somewhere within himself. It draped across his shoulders in a languid pile, likely waiting for his orders to capture or maim me in some way. “I tire of your presence.”
“And I tire of yours, too. Help me wake up and we can just forget this ever happened.”
His silver eyes narrowed. “Impossible.”
Shadows rushed from his shoulders, rampaging in fierce, erratic loops over my head. A few separated, springing out from the cloud like a swarm of serpents, and rustled around in my hair, picking, prodding, and pulling. I screamed, clawing at them, but they fell against my neck regardless, pricking at the skin with a depraved eagerness.
“Strange. I’d expected their stain, but there is none.”
“I am not stained , you bastard.” A shadow slipped beneath the water, pinching my side with a deft clip of its…teeth ? Were there teeth on these things? I blindly swiped at it, horrified, and watched as the entire swarm released itself from me, nestling back into place at his side.
“Perhaps you aren’t of the Weavers after all. A pity.” As he considered this, the shadows atop his shoulders roiled in unison. It bore a slight—very, very slight—resemblance to laughter. But whatever it was, laughter or amusement or something else entirely, was gone before it could solidify, replaced instead by darkened eyes and a scowl. The shadows stilled. “Still, this is an unforgivable breach,” he continued, more forcefully this time. “And if you aren’t of the Weavers, then why are you here? I’m beginning to think I didn’t scare you enough the first time.”
Cold water continued to lap against me, swirling my dress into tangles. I kicked against the clinging folds, aiming to untangle the fabric from my legs, all the while trying everything in my power to keep my expression neutral. If he knew that I was struggling, he’d likely use it against me. I had no doubt he’d force me under the water, leaving me to suffocate on the dark, swirling liquid. And with the Light Bringer’s power still echoing in my head, I didn’t know if I would wake up.
At least not right away.
And with everything feeling as real as it did, I’m not sure I wanted to find out.
He noticed something in my expression—something distracting. He tilted his head. “You’re unable to swim. Odd. Especially for a dreamer.”
“Don’t mock me, demon.” I sucked in an angry breath, indeed struggling to maintain my position above the water.
He bared his teeth. “Careful.”
Something grabbed my flailing ankle, hard , and pulled me under.
At first, I thought it was him—that he manifested some ugly, clawing darkness again for the sheer purpose of punishing me. But as I twisted, thrashing, and choking, I saw what was squeezing my ankle so roughly that it was burning, screaming—close to snapping. The thing had golden eyes, a ruined, gaping mouth, vaguely human features, but it wasn’t a human at all.
A monster. A demon.
It peered up at me through the water, its too-wide mouth trembling open and shut. I fought hard, kicking a heel into the demon’s bony neck. It stretched to grasp the hemline of my dress, but it couldn’t quite reach. The cloth danced out of its claw, tumbling through the water like a frightened animal. The demon gurgled out a screech so piercing and full of madness that its entire body quaked.
Then it grabbed my ankle with both claws, dragging me down with it.
My arms moved in ways I wasn’t conscious of—jerking, swirling, reaching—and my lungs filled with a brutal, suffocating flame. I was dying. I was going to die. And it felt so real. This was a dream, but the fire burning my lungs and breaking my ankle was real .
The thing fixed its yellowed eyes on me again.
Was this what it felt like to fall into Corruption? To be taken, destroyed, ruined from within?
The water shifted into darker and colder hues as we dropped, clouding my vision and settling over the scarred face of my captor. Its yellow-gold eyes were incredibly swollen, bulging out of its skin like that of a giant, misshapen river fish.
Was this what Eden, Mother, and Father felt—the panic, the horror at being so weak—as they lost themselves?
I looked up, frantic. Him. He saw me slip under. He knew that I was drowning, dying. He had power—incredible, raw power—that could likely destroy the monster beneath me. This was his chance to prove what he claimed: that he wasn’t a demon.
So why wasn’t he doing anything?
The claws at my ankle slipped, sinking deep into my boot, and pulled it off, forcing the monster off-balance.
Now . I had to move now.
I tore my way to the surface, blind, without breath, and hating myself for being so damnably useless at swimming. My shin knocked against something—another monster? No, a ledge —and I stepped on it, not caring that my left ankle was shrieking at me, most likely sprained or broken. I breathed deep, relieved—so pitifully relieved at what would likely be my full last breath before the demon took me under again—and splashed my way to the edge, a bundle of flailing limbs and fear so strong it nearly made me gag.
The nameless man stood as he did when I last spoke with him: armored arms crossed, onyx-crowned face set in a scowl, grey eyes lifeless and cold.
“I have no further use for you, dreamer,” he said, pinning me with dead, empty eyes, “but perhaps the demons do.”
Damn you , I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t form between gasping, heaving breaths.
He turned without another word, scale-lined cape billowing out from behind him, and left the chamber—just as the demon, still clawing my discarded boot, broke through the surface behind me. Along with several more just like it. All human-like, but marked by horrific, deformed additions. Additions that made them other .
Demons, all of them.
At that moment, something snapped within me.
A sensation pulled itself taut behind my eyes, connecting me to something outside of the cavern—perhaps the nameless man. A rush of power interwoven with pain, anguish, and a few final, pathetic shreds of courage poured through me, pooling in my mind like a feral sea. It felt familiar and yet unfamiliar. It felt overwhelming and yet not enough . It felt like a blanket of soft silk. It felt like a squeezing cage of iron. It felt uncomfortable.
It felt glorious .
For a moment, the rush made me forget my bleeding, injured ankle. It made me forget my grief—grief at seeing Mother and Father, shadow-marked and hated. Grief at seeing the corrupted citizens of Norhavellis fighting and dying. Grief at imagining my family’s future—our lack of future. Grief because of my weakness. Grief because of my world .
Then the shadows burst in.
They churned around me, spinning and rotating as a furious whirlwind, flashing and sparking like daggers of obsidian. The shadows were more powerful—more demanding —than the languid pile that had draped itself over the man’s shoulders.
It fell upon the demons in a fury.
I could scarcely see, scarcely breathe as the dark ripped skin, forced itself down throats, wrenched heads into the water—until it finally moved into a towering cage of impenetrable black, pinning the demons to the chamber’s glistening walls. The demons—or what little were left that could move—prodded weakly against the smothering black. One by one they stilled, and the roaring, shadow-drenched power faded from me like smoke forced away by the wind.
A crashing noise echoed from somewhere behind me.
The nameless man had returned.
He swept into the room as if he was death embodied, blood leaking from his nose and marring his pale skin. It slid down the column of his throat, pooling at the top of his armor.
“How dare you—” he gasped, materializing a dark blade from his palm and charging into the water after me. “How dare you—”
I staggered backwards, forgetting about the pain in my ankle. I tried to fling the shadows up and around me for protection, but the darkness fluttered, sputtering, and went out entirely, dropping the demons into the water.
“You think you know my power? You think you can control it—control me ? ” He grabbed the cloth at the front of my collarbone, roughly twisting it in a taloned hand. He jutted his blade under my chin. “The Seven already destroyed my life when they ripped out my soul and shaped it into rot and ruin. No one has any right to anything else.”
His tone and stance were filled with hatred, but his eyes, a dim shade of grey, felt cold and hopeless—miserable and without any light or soul. I pulled at his hand, trying to weaken his grip, but the metal on his gauntlets was impossibly sharp. Touching him was like grabbing a rose by its thorns or a snake by its fangs. Impossible and painful.
“Enough of this .”
And he made to separate my head from my body.
