“Elliot!” I screamed, lunging toward him. But my legs wouldn’t move—they were stuck underneath me, caught by something dark like mud but thick with bone, rot, and other foul, disgusting things. It clung to my feet and forced me into stillness.
Elliot hunched over his knees, bony arms gripping his sides. His hair was dirty and matted, his clothes nothing but long, dwindling rags. They reminded me of the grey demon’s clothing—nothing suitable for a human boy.
“Sawhee,” he moaned, sobs wracking deep and heavy from his chest. “I-I’m sawhee Mothah. I’m sawhee Fathah. I’m sawhee ‘smeh.”
My skin prickled at that word: sawhee .
Growing up, Elliot struggled to say certain sounds. Other words of his were jumbled or altogether strange; he enjoyed creating new phrases and sounds, stringing them together in a language all his own. And his language had been mine, too. I could understand him when no one else could. Or when no one else cared to try.
But he had grown out of it. Years ago.
I took another look at my brother. He was thinner, smaller—his voice wavering and more childish than I had heard in some time. This Elliot wasn’t the same boy I left behind in Norhavellis; this Elliot was a young child ravished by sickness and hunger.
“Sawhee!” he howled again, raising his face toward the endless pit of bone, snow, and filth. The pit changed as he howled, slowly unfurling one of its edges. A winged demon peeked over this unfurling edge, its skull ringed in horns that crowned red, smoking eyes. Where its face should be was a mask of swirling darkness, empty of everything save for those eyes, and its body was colossal, clothed in armor that formed to every part of its unnatural shape. Elliot saw the demon and howled louder, crying to a snowing, horrible sky.
“Elliot, look at me!” I fought against the ice-slicked wind that was now whirling around the pit. It stuck to his back, froze against the strips of his rags. “You need to wake up right now! Fight it—fight this! You can’t let it get you—please! ”
Somnus had thrown me into one of Elliot’s nightmares when he was dying of fever. I had been thirteen at the time; it was a year that had no end or beginning. There was only hunger, darkness, and the lingering stench of death. Mother and Father had managed to provide us with elixir—the Norhavellian supply, I knew now—but only after Elliot had told us of his dreams.
They had been horrific, those dreams. Filled with things most vile and terrifying, they were far worse than any of the stories we had known. But for a time he had kept them from us, determined that his silence would mean our safety. He thought his dreams were his fault. That he had done something to deserve them.
But he had never mentioned a demon.
The demon descended slowly, crawling over the lip of the pit and staring hungrily at my brother. Elliot sniffed, his slight shoulders trembling, tilting his face toward the sound of my voice.
“Are yoweh a d-demon, too?”
“No, I’m your sister—it’s me . It’s Esmer.”
Recognition dawned in his dull eyes. “‘smeh? You whook diff’rent…”
Boom.
Continuing to descend, the demon grew closer and closer, its eyes glinting with hellfire. Its armor shifted with each step, the sound of it echoing, booming—a deep, rumbling that shook the core of the earth.
Boom.
And as it walked, my body sunk deeper into the mire. First my ankles. Then my shins. It sank into my thighs, bit deep into my hips. A breath later, and it was seeping up over my stomach, cold and foul.
Boom.
I was helpless to this—helpless .
“Hewhp m-me,” Elliot begged, reaching for me. “Pwhease don’t go. I-I’m scahw’d.”
The muck was heavy now, squeezing my ribs like a vice.
From within my arm, the sword began to thrum, reminding me of something.
Use what you’ve been given and conquer all that you face.
I looked in newfound horror upon the demon. I sincerely doubted Somnus meant conquering that . It didn’t seem conquerable in the slightest, but it was the only danger here—and I was the only one with any power to stop it.
“Maker help us,” I muttered, pulling the blade from my palm.
I wasn’t born a fighter. I had no formal training, no lessons in self-defense or swordplay; a true sword—one with actual weight and a history of battle—had never found its way into my hands. But my muscles were somewhat strong, honed from chores and carrying boxes of elixir to and from the village.
That, and I was in a dream. Surely I could be more than who I was in reality.
Right?
As soon as the blade met the air, three things happened: the demon positioned itself to jump, its cloud-like maw parting to reveal black teeth, Elliot started running, and the ground below me solidified, spitting me out. Instinct told me to raise the weapon high, focusing every ounce of my willpower into making it do whatever it was supposed to do. The metal, reflecting a glorious night sky within its body, began to glow, and snow circled in a pattern around it, swirling rapidly like a blizzard might.
“Hewhp!” Elliot cried, stumbling to kneel behind me. I spared a hand to hold him to my side. “I-it’s cold , ‘smeh. I wanna go h-home.”
“I do too, Ell. But I need to defeat this thing first.”
Ice coated Elliot’s eyelashes and clung to my hair in clumps. I blinked back tears, focusing, trying my hardest to see beyond the swirling wall of snow. The demon was out there somewhere, lumbering its way toward us, but the snow obscured it.
Boom.
“I-it ‘ates the wight.” Elliot warbled.
It hates the light.
My breath hitched. “How do you know that? You’ve seen this demon before?”
Elliot nodded, hiccupping. “But nevah this close.”
The demon attacked.
It barreled at us from the vortex of wind and snow, its body so massive that parts were still obscured in grey, milky mist. I swung the sword up, willing it to make contact, begging it to burst with a light so bright it would force the creature back—and it began to glow, gleaming with the force of a million stars. It parted the snow and ice, lifted parts of the fog.
Don’t fail me now, sword. Please don’t fail me now.
The demon hesitated, leaning back into the mist. It was working—the light truly was giving it pause. I grinned in utter disbelief.
It’s working .
But suddenly, just as it ignited, the sword went dark. It faded into a regular blade, something that one might find forged at a village blacksmith’s. Elliot and I looked at each other, horrified. The demon lurched forward, lowering its depthless face to meet my own. It didn’t speak, exactly, but I could feel its raw hunger, its boiling rage. A raw, all-consuming want to devour me whole. This creature was unlike anything I had encountered before; it dwarfed every demon in the Bringer’s castle. It made them seem insignificant and small.
And it was about to consume Elliot and I alive.
I screamed as it reached for us, unable to keep a sound of primal horror from escaping my lips. It pinned us to the ground with a press of its claw, nearly forcing the sword from my hands. Elliot howled miserably, squirming against the thing’s charred flesh, but the effort was useless; its claw was the size of a carriage, crushing our bodies.
“I can’t wake up, ‘smer! I can’t . I’m sawhee!”
I groaned, unable to take a full breath. “Hang on! ”
Waking up wouldn’t save us. Not like this. Not when the demon had already claimed us. Tears leaked from my eyes, stinging my frozen cheeks with their warmth. Somnus sent me to this dream for a purpose, but I had failed him—failed my brother, too.
Because if this demon wasn’t destroyed, there was a chance it could alter Elliot’s past.
I ground my teeth in frustration, throwing my weight up into the demon’s fingers. If Elliot battled Corruption when he was at his sickest, he would die. Quickly. Fever had already wasted away his body for months; physical deterioration, in deadly combination with the deterioration that came from Corruption, would have been unthinkable.
An unwanted image of the Shadow Bringer danced in my peripheral, taunting me. He was strong where I wasn’t—had power and command over his surroundings in ways I only borrowed. Enemy or otherwise, had he been here, he would have been able to do something.
This is his fault. All of it—
“You claim to know a man’s guilt without first knowing his soul? ” Somnus’s voice rang, piercing sharp and clear through my mind. “This reality is beyond that of your Shadow Bringer’s. Use what you’ve been given; see the light within the darkness and let it sing. ”
See the light within.
See the light within.
See the light within.
At Somnus’s direction, I began to see something within the demon: a small vein of light, trickling out from a crack in its armor. The light was no larger than a wisp of hair or the stem of a flower; still, it was there. Waiting. Watching. Yearning to escape the confines of the demon’s armor and rotting heart. It reacted to the sword immediately, glowing brighter and brighter as the blade absorbed it.
The demon made a miserable sound, its teeth flashing once before disappearing into its clouded face. It drew its claws up as it roared, shaking its crown of horns. Elliot and I scrambled away, stumbling backwards and tripping over ourselves as I fought to hold the sword upright. Light was pouring into it now, gushing from the demon in a river of white, sun-drenched blood.
“It’s shwinkin’!” Elliot exclaimed, looking on in wonder as the demon folded into itself. And as the demon shrank, Elliot’s skin cleared; his eyes became bright and luminous, his hair gleaming with shiny curls. No longer was he clothed in rags, either; he wore garb suitable for a prince. Even the snow had stopped, replaced by a shower of light. “You did it, ‘smeh!”
Within seconds, the demon was reduced to the height and stature of a goat.
Its horns were brambles, its stormcloud face a puff of smoke. I stood over it, furious at this demon who terrorized my brother, pressing the sword to the exposed flesh of its stomach. It made a squealing, whistling sound, falling to the ground in a fit as it tried to back away, but I held on, cutting straight through flesh and bone and blood. My vision burned red, my hands felt both foreign and alive all at once. Only the back of the demon’s chest plate, still cupping its skin despite its reduced size, stopped me.
A rhythmic sound echoed over the pit.
The edges of the pit began to flatten, shivering down until the landscape was smooth and uniform. The mist cleared, too, as did the light that had flowed from the demon’s body. An army was revealed, led by a man ringed by floating swords, a ghostly woman draped in white, and a man armored in crimson and gold.
Xander, Weaver of the Present, Theia, Weaver of the Future, and Mithras.
Elliot’s mouth gaped open. “Weavahs—!”
“Stay close,” I said, motioning for Elliot to step away from the demon. It gasped out irregular, shallow breaths, letting out a final wheeze of air as the sword slid from its stomach and back into my palm.
“Your report was lacking,” Xander, Weaver of the Present, intoned to a soldier at his left. Hundreds of soldiers, faces obscured by masks, stood behind their leaders, marked by the color of their leader. Xander’s were in iron, Theia’s in diamond, and Mithras’s in gold. “It is merely a pup.”
The ironclad soldier bowed his head. “I’m sorry, my lord. Perhaps the demon moved dreams—”
“Enough. It is done,” Xander responded, commanding and clear. He appeared as he did in the tales, a legendary king made immortal. Chestnut hair swept back from his temples to rest under a crown, framing a strong, shrewd face and bright eyes.
Mithras kicked the demon’s lifeless body, knocking loose one of its twig-like horns. “A face wild as a storm, body protected by the Maker’s stolen armor. A lacking report indeed. Pathetic creature.”
“I wouldn’t let it sully my boot,” Xander said, mouth twisting in displeasure. The ground was stained heavily by the demon’s blood, and he stepped to avoid it. “Come, let us return to the Citadel.”
“Ahem ,” Theia said, gesturing delicately at Elliot and I. Her eyes were wide and silver, her hair glossy and full of light, but her form felt false in its perfection; she seemed a sculpture, a living painting—not living, not breathing. “The dreamers are here; they appear to be lucid.”
The Weavers’ attention snapped to Elliot and I, instantly wary. But the more they examined us, the more they grew disinterested. It was clear we were of no importance; therefore, we weren’t worth their time or attention. Still, Mithras strode over to us, boredom and vague curiosity—but not recognition—set deep into his golden eyes.
“Is it true? Are you aware, dreamers?” Mithras asked, looming over us. “How rare.”
“I can’t be’weive it’s weally you guys!” Elliot exclaimed, completely ignoring his question. “Fightin’ them an’ stuff—wow !”
I gripped Elliot’s shoulder, pulling him back a step.
Theia’s pale lips drew back in a smile. “It is as I said. Lucid.”
“But who awh you?”
“Hmm?” Mithras responded, frowning.
“Elliot, stop—”
“Who awh you? I don’ know if yoweh maybe…Fenwee’eh?”
Mithras’s gaze grew distant. Then he placed a single gloved finger against Elliot’s brow.
“What awh you doin’?” Elliot asked innocently, looking from Mithras, to the other Weavers, and to me. “Yoweh fingeh’s cold.”
And just like that, Elliot disappeared.
“No! ” I lunged forward, unthinking, and swung my fist straight into Mithras’s golden jaw.
Stunned, he fell backwards, slamming into the bloody ground. For a second he was silent, disbelief and rage boiling in his eyes. Then he roared, scrambling upright.
“I merely woke him. I should take your—” He reached for me, but his hand froze mid-movement.
“Have grace,” said Xander. He held his hand up, mirroring Mithras’s. When he drew it to his side, Mithras’s dropped, too. “A hunt, no matter its length or success, does not warrant such base behavior.”
Theia nodded, crossing her arms. A row of bracelets, delicate and clear, chimed on her wrist. They trailed up her forearms, linking sporadically to her gossamer sleeves. “He speaks the truth, Mithras. We must save our energy for what matters.” She turned toward the army of legionnaires, headpiece gleaming. “Ensure that one’s memory is adjusted.”
Mithras’s eyes bore into me, cold and shallow despite their honeyed color. I watched as he readjusted his expression, masking his hate with something resembling indifference.
“Apologies, dreamer,” he murmured, giving a short bow. “It has been a long and arduous day. You understand, don’t you?”
I nodded and gave him an understanding smile, willing myself to hide the emotion warring in my veins. This was the Mithras of five years ago. If I caught his attention now, would he pay a visit to Norhavellis in the middle of Elliot’s sickness? I didn’t know if this was an illusion or if I was truly in the past, but it wouldn’t be wise to take the risk.
“Forgive me for striking you,” I offered weakly. “I was merely overwhelmed by your presence.”
But then—what if Mithras had visited Norhavellis five years ago? In five years, Norhavellis saw families ripped apart by death, crimes born of hate and misery, and the village’s steady descent into Corruption. Their recent cure hadn’t prevented any of that. If Mithras had come, would our fate have been different?
“You are forgiven,” Mithras said, lifting my chin. “It is rare for us to come across a dreamer who is aware.” He smiled sadly, as though he felt pity for me. “Hold on to this moment, as it will soon be taken from you.”
Ensure that one’s memory is adjusted.
“My memory will be erased, then?”
“Your memory of this dream will fade, but you needn’t be afraid. The demon you faced today will no longer haunt you.”
No wonder Elliot never told us about seeing a demon. The memory was taken from him.
“Why are the Weavers hiding themselves from Noctis?” The question stumbled out of me, uncertain but decisive. “We’ve been waiting—begging —for the Weavers’ return. Why erase our memories? Why let us think you’ve abandoned us?”
“You know nothing,” Mithras answered, looking at me as though I was an insect. “The Weavers sealed the Realm against all dreamers to protect themselves. While you sleep, peacefully cradled by the elixir, they’ve been busy waging a centuries-long war against the demons.”
“But what of the struggling villages?” I continued. Anger and disbelief burned bright behind my temples. “The people dying from Corruption who can’t afford elixir—what of them? How can you think that—”
“Be still .” Mithras’s eyes drifted over my body, settling on my hands. Did he sense the sword there, lying in wait? “Is your faith so meager?”
“This isn’t about my faith. This is—”
“And what do you think it is? What do you think you know ?” Mithras grabbed my wrist, forcing me forward, and his hand was upon my forehead before I could duck out of the way. “Go back to the life from which you came, dreamer.”
And then like glass the dream shattered.
