I woke in a pile of silken pillows and feather-soft blankets, bathed in the strange scent of a thunderstorm mixed with dusty furniture. I pressed my face to the nearest pillow and breathed in, relishing it. It reminded me of a fog-covered field, but with a subtle undertone of smoke and old books.
“Letussouttletussouttletussoutt! ”
I sprang to my feet, disoriented from the low candlelight. My barricade needed to be reinforced—immediately .
“Oh, Maker. No .”
My heart plummeted as the chamber sharpened into focus. Gone was my shield, the barricade of furniture piled high against the door. Every item, every glass, every book, was precisely placed, resting exactly where it had originally been.
“Let us outtttttt! ”
I made to slam a chair against the bowing door but quickly changed my mind. A chair would be nothing against the might of a demon; I might as well have been using a scrap of lace to stop the force of a river.
Maybe there’s a way out through the balcony, a hidden ladder of some sort.
The two demons rested against a pair of trees, their distorted faces mocking and cruel. One was sharpening a piece of metal, carving its edge into something gleaming and sharp. The other simply looked bored.
“Dreamer. Still without that cloak, I see. Here to delight in this good morning? ”
“This is no morning.” The sky was the color of sapphires and turbid, ancient wine; without the balcony’s candlelight and the forest’s silvery orbs, the demons would be altogether obscured. “How is this morning”—I motioned wildly at the sky—“and what about any of this is good ?”
“Ah, that. Should we tell her? ” The first demon glanced at the second, its expression thoughtful, but the attempt was ignored. The second demon merely continued sharpening its makeshift blade. “Excellent, I will tell her. ” It looked back at me and grinned. “We aren’t in the mortal world, darling. Our eternal night is, well, eternal. ”
“But we’re dreaming. Can’t its structure be altered?”
I thought back to when the Bringer’s dungeon shifted, transporting me back to my home in Norhavellis. Or when wings burst from the Bringer’s back, carrying him high over the Visstill.
“No. This domain was permanently set to protect Erebus. Or to curse him—we aren’t certain. Have we decided our opinion on that? ” The demon glanced at its companion again, and again he was ignored. “It’s as I thought. We aren’t certain. So eternal night it is. ”
I cursed under my breath. The forest below was a long way down, dropping further and further away the more I looked. Without wings or the Shadow Bringer’s shadows, I’d have to physically descend the wall. Or jump. And neither of those options seemed very realistic.
“Are you in distress? You seem a bit distressed. ”
“No.”
“If you ask our lord nicely, I’m sure he would quell your troubles. ”
“I’m sure he would.”
The demon—still clawing at the Shadow Bringer’s door—roared, its howl rattling the chamber and echoing out into the night.
“He’s in a mood today, hmm? Trouble sleeping? ”
“Enough with your games,” I seethed. The demons clearly knew more than they were choosing to say—likely withholding information that would prevent my escape. “You know that isn’t him.”
“Could have fooled me. ”
“I need to wake up from this dream. Tell me how I can.”
The first demon thumbed its chin, considering. “Quite a dangerous truth, that. ”
“I don’t care what I have to do. I don’t belong here, and I need to go home.”
“You truly wish to wake? ” Its grin widened. “Then you must first go to sleep.”
The other demon slammed its blade into the grass. “Your attempt at wit is making me lose my own. If the girl cannot— ”
A second roar erupted, along with the shuddering crack of a door splitting open.
The demon lurched out into the balcony, spindly arms trailing like liquid across the stone. Its spine was long and crooked, needled with twigs and fur, and its face—if it could be called a face—was the skull of an elk. I reeled backwards, frozen with terror. My hands were empty, bereft of either steel or shadow, and I could do nothing but watch, horrified, as the demon slunk forward. If I jumped from the edge, would I wake in the Tomb of the Devourer? I shook my head. No—my body was physically tied to the Realm. If I died here, I might not come back on the other side.
I might not come back at all.
“Outtttttt, ” the elk demon rasped, as three others joined it. The balcony trembled from the weight of their collective steps, shivering as I did when I looked upon their bodies. Atop each neck sat a skull; there was the elk of the first, the horse of the second, and something fanged and serrated atop the third.
They looked up at the midnight sky, raising their faces to meet the wind.
“Ceveon ,” the elk demon growled, towering over the balustrade. “Where is he? ” Its voice rumbled and cracked around each syllable—as if it hadn’t spoken a coherent sentence in centuries.
The long-caped demon beamed, strangely triumphant. “Whatever do you mean? You should have passed our unruly lord on your way out. ”
As an answer, the demons on the balcony made a furious, animalistic noise.
The demon coiled its cape around its shoulders, hefting a staff from somewhere beneath the cloth. He pointed one of its jewel-tipped ends at me. “No? Then ask that one. ”
The elk demon turned to face me, halting its jagged movements. For a moment it simply stared, its empty sockets suggesting eyes that saw everything—saw movement and shape beyond the physical. Things deep within the soul. Then it stepped forward, and again, slowly dragging itself to me. I pressed myself flat against the balustrade, attempting to still my shuddering limbs.
I had almost succeeded—until it bowed low enough to scent the air by my neck.
“Something of his resides within her. ”
The fanged demon circled close, followed by the other. It looked ready to jump, its clawed hands gripping at the stone. “She was here before. Perhaps she is his replacement—or perhaps he has abandoned us.”
The elk demon joined in, circling me. “Where is he? Where is the lord who would not release us? ”
I held my chin high against the demons’ menacing faces. I had neither steel nor shadow to fight with—only words. “If you so much as touch me, the Shadow Bringer will have his revenge upon you all.”
“Do not trick us. He cares not for you nor anyone. ”
The fanged demon hissed. “Your death would be of little consequence, dreamer. ”
Beneath me, the stone of the balustrade cracked.
No, no, no.
I staggered against the crumbling stone, swaying, reaching, grasping for anything —but the demons, in the chaos, thrashed their limbs into the bannister. They shattered the stone, flinging it wide and far over the forest.
As I fell, I didn’t know where the screams were coming from—if it was from my lungs, my mind, or some nauseating union of both. All I could see were the demons. A horde of skulled, broken beasts crawling, climbing, and lurching their bodies over the edge behind me.
Hundreds of demons, pouring into the night.
I woke in darkness upon the Shadow Bringer’s floor.
The fall did not kill me—nor did it force me to wake in the tomb.
The dark had become a living, breathing thing, cloying its way into my eyes and nose. It hurt to breathe. Cold air swept over the blankets still strewn about the floor, flipped the pages of books left unread, and whistled through unlit chandeliers and candelabras.
For the first time, the castle had not restored itself.
Drawing a velvet blanket around my shoulders, I stumbled to the balcony, cursing my fate and contemplating whether or not it would be worth it to yell into the night. If this were to be my reality for the next month—or year, even—my mind would surely disintegrate before I saw the light of day again.
I shivered from a new kind of fear.
Just how long would it take for me to wake up from this?
When I was little, the idea of dreaming felt precious and wondrous. Sacred, even. To dream before the Shadow Bringer’s existence was to be given a gift from the Maker; in a dream, one could relish in hope and wander in possibility. Eden and I used to whisper about dreams, worried that Mother or Father would hear and think we were being disrespectful. But we enjoyed imagining what the Realm might look like. How the Weavers dressed, talked, moved. We would curl under a tent of blankets with our Weaver tales, spinning tales of adventure. We discussed how a dream might feel—conjecture the sights and sounds that we might experience. We wondered what it would take to become a dream warrior of legend or to have a Weaver choose us as a follower. But most of all, we wondered what we might have to do to leave behind our twisted life in Norhavellis.
I laughed, the sound of it weak and small against the void around me.
What I wouldn’t give to have that life back.
A knock sounded from somewhere within the castle, rumbling low and powerful. One knock melted into three, three into five. It felt like a beating heart, a thrumming, full-bodied thmp against the stone.
Days before, when flames still burned within their receptacles, I ventured outside of the Bringer’s chamber. I had crept through winding halls and strange, unearthly rooms, battling the fear that someone—or something—was watching. Fear was a battle I couldn’t win here. It suffocated me—crawled over my skin, squeezed my heart, chilled my bones. Because of this fear, I had retreated before reaching anything of importance. There was always the crumbling crack of a stone that sounded like footsteps, a whisper of wind that sounded too near to a breath.
Still, even with my fears, there had been no sign of life.
The demons were gone.
So who was knocking?
Thmp. Thmp. Thmp.
I knelt behind a statue, drawing the blanket close. If I concentrated, I could pretend I was a child in Norhavellis, spinning tales of wonder with Eden.
Dreams weren’t meant for this.
Fear, sorrow, hatred—dreams were meant to quell these things. Not ignite or reaffirm.
From my burrow of velvet and stone, I watched in horror as a figure leapt to the castle’s highest spire. It was tall and spindly, bone-white skin glowing as though it were the moon and stars. Sweeping tendrils of hair flowed out from its skull, webbing the castle in black.
A demon?
For a moment it stood, motionless, its face tilted downwards.
I couldn’t tell where it was looking; its face was shrouded in shadow, its limbs half-cloaked by its hair. I sucked in a slow, steady breath and held it, flattening myself against the statue.
Don’t see me. Don’t see me. Don’t see me.
As though it could hear my thoughts, the creature cocked its head.
Then it descended.
It floated through the air, landing elegantly in a pile of robes and hair. The creature—the man—looked my way, his face a serpentine array of angles. His mouth was a thin, cunning frown, his nose a sweeping line between listless eyes of coal.
And atop his brow sat an ivory crown.
“You needn’t cower so,” the serpentine man said, acknowledging me but maintaining his distance. His voice was slow and melodic, a dusting of silk upon stone. “Had you answered the door, I would have entered properly.”
I lifted myself from my burrow. “It isn’t my door to open.”
“Darkness beckons to the isolated. If you do not open the door, you will still be found,” he murmured, his eyes clouded in thought. Then, as if a weight was lifted from his skeletal shoulders, he sighed. “But I digress. Will I be invited indoors, or will we continue this charade on the balcony?”
“Who are you? Are you of the demons?”
“At one time or another, we all are nearly demons.”
I clenched my jaw. “That isn’t an answer. I asked who you were.”
“And I owe you nothing, dreamer.” He fixed me with his eyes of coal. “But I will give you my name, because you already know it.”
For a moment I studied him, the angle of his dark, intelligent eyes, the ghostly undertones of his voice. He spoke as though he knew sorrow, despair, and death—knew them so intimately that he no longer feared them.
He looked nearly the same as his image in the book of Weaver tales.
Somnus, Weaver of the Past, bowed.
“A pleasure.”
