We sprinted through Istralla under a film of salty mist, trailing the boy as he ducked into the surrounding forest. Even with his pack of food and drink, he ran as though he carried no extra weight, darting under boughs and avoiding roots with expert precision. The mist didn’t burden him, either; it was denser now, clinging to every surface and suffocating the air.
“So that boy—he’s really you,” I panted, struggling to match the Bringer’s pace.
“Evidently.” The Bringer lanced me with a brief, annoyed look over his shoulder. “Remember what I said about imagination. Keep up.”
Keep up, huh?
My legs felt like rocks and my head swam from all the wine, but I was dreaming—and I was running like I wasn’t. I should be nimble, not trailing behind the Bringer and tripping every few steps.
Working through my imagination, I shielded my feet from rocks and twigs, lightened my limbs, and lengthened my stride. My dress was next. It was useless and flimsy in this terrain, so I altered it into dark, close-cut pants and a belted tunic. A biting wind cut through the trees, impossible to ignore or numb, so I added a silken cloak lined with thick, comfortable velvet, taking inspiration from the Bringer’s clothing and giving it properties of smoke and shadow. Running became easy, instinctive. The more I focused on what was in front of me, the simpler it became. So I fixed my eyes on the Shadow Bringer, mimicking the way he moved.
And the Bringer moved as he always did—like a thing of living darkness.
Even without his shadows to strengthen his steps, he ran through the forest as though he were a spirit that dwelled within it.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked, releasing a stream of pent-up air. I didn’t feel like a thing of living darkness, but at least I was keeping up. “It’s your dream—you should know.”
“I have an idea.” The Bringer spared a glance over his shoulder, evidently surprised that I was still there. Or maybe it was a surprise that I now looked a little like him. “Your heart doesn’t beat in the Realm,” he added, picking up his pace. “Eliminate its influence and you’ll stop gasping for breath every five steps. We breathe merely out of habit.”
“I’m not gasping. And my heart is fine.”
“You are. And it is not.”
Unconvinced, I brought a palm to my chest. And my wrist. And my neck. But my body was quiet. Nothing but a hollow, silent shell.
“Where is my heart?”
“Ask the Maker.”
“I’m asking you .”
He sighed. “The Maker designed it, fearful that mankind would forget themselves within the Realm. It’s one technique of many used to determine whether one is awake or simply dreaming. Out of habit, however, dreamers still tend to breathe.”
“Strange,” I murmured. “I hadn’t even noticed.”
In the Realm, blood spilled. Pain bloomed. Emotions burned with rage and chilled with fear and loneliness. The Realm could look and feel real even during its most unbelievable moments. But no heartbeat? The Realm was a strange place, but this was perhaps its most unnatural quality of all.
The Bringer stopped, and I collided into his back. “What are you—”
“Get down,” he hissed, yanking me to the grass.
We had arrived at the pond. The cottage, its walls decaying and covered in filth, were no longer dark or silent; its windows glowed with light, and conversation drifted from between its cracks. Inside, the boy could be seen talking with two adults—his parents, perhaps, as they shared his dark, finely crafted features—as he offered bundles of food with a hopeful smile.
“I thought we couldn’t be seen by the dreamer,” I observed, shifting so I wasn’t eating the leaves of the undergrowth the Bringer had thrown us into.
“No, we cannot,” he said simply, peering intently at the cottage and everything else beyond it. Mist passed around us like a shroud, lingering atop our backs and turning the Bringer’s hair into a veil of its likeness. “Somnus hasn’t designed it to be, so we follow his rules.”
“Then why are we hiding, exactly?”
The Bringer looked at me as though I were an idiot. “The demon.”
I ripped my attention away from the cottage, eyeing every shadowed corner within the clearing. And there were many shadowed corners. Most of which were also draped in mist.
“You’re the Shadow Bringer ,” I remarked, sounding more nervous than I wanted. Where was the demon hiding? What could he see that I couldn’t? “Subdue it or something with your wicked might.”
The Bringer reached out as if to grab me by the chin, but stopped, instead fixing me with an exasperated stare. “If I were its lord, then why would I be hiding in a bush? You’re a foolish creature.”
“I’m no more foolish than you,” I shot back. He made a logical point, but his tone irritated me. I wasn’t a foolish child—I wasn’t something to be ignored or thrown aside. And I had a name. “I’m nineteen. Stop talking to me as though I’m not.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Age does not beget maturity.”
“That’s interesting, considering you’ve been alive for centuries and are still a—”
“Time doesn’t exist when you’re a ghost,” he said angrily. “It stopped for me the day I was sentenced to rot in my castle.”
“I see,” I said, biting my tongue against another retort.
“If you wish to prove your worth, Esmer , then call out your sword and give it to me. I have a demon to kill.”
“Use your own sword,” I snapped, bristling. If I gave my sword away, my only weapon in the demon-infested Realm, I wasn’t sure I’d get it back. And I really didn’t want to find out. “It’s mine.”
“Somnus stole my power. Not yours.” He moved closer. “Give it to me.”
“I don’t think so.”
His scowl twisted up a bit, revealing the edges of his teeth. From the angle I was at, they looked more akin to fangs. “Am I to strangle the demon with my bare hands?”
“I’d love to see it. I’m sure you’d fare just fine.”
I backed out of the thicket. My palm was tingling, thrumming with power and urging me that the sword underneath wanted out. Gritting my teeth against the discomfort of burning skin, I willed the sword to return to the depths of its original resting place.
But the sword fought back.
It sprang to life in my hands, gleaming wickedly, and the Bringer pounced, making to pry it from my fingers. Except the sword resisted, slamming him hard on the ground with a blast of light.
He gaped at me from where he was thrown.
“You willed it to attack me,” the Bringer spat, thumbing a bit of dirt from his mouth.
“I warned you first. It listens to me, not you.” Except I wasn’t sure why the sword exploded like that, throwing him back with monstrous force, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Do you want to fight the demon all by yourself, then? Because that is about to be our immediate reality.”
I frowned. “No, but—”
The door to the cottage swung open, revealing the raven-haired boy. His face was red and splotchy, tears shining silver upon his skin, and the half-formed sounds of a violent argument followed him.
“You wretched beast!” screamed the man inside. From the window he had appeared handsome; now his face was skull-like and quickly turning grey. “You are a curse to all that know you. Filthy, filthy, filthy boy!”
The boy tried to speak. “I just wanted to help—”
“You are not our son,” the woman joined in, flinging her own words of condemnation into the night. She, too, had been beautiful, with black, flowing hair and fine, feminine features. Now her skin festered, sagging into deep, dripping wrinkles that opened into sores as they melted off her face. “Sons would not make their parents choose between their lives and the life of their child.”
“Sons would not dream when they should be working to provide.”
“Sons would not let their parents die! ”
Together, they screamed at the boy for stealing their food and leaving them to starve. They blamed him—damned him—for everything . Their hunger, their poverty, their pain, and even their deaths.
It was all his fault. It would always be his fault.
The Shadow Bringer looked away, cursing low and deep.
Surely this man and woman were the Bringer’s parents. And if they were, this dream was terrible and cruel. It was the kind of dream I was warned about as a child—dreams of unimaginable terror, brought on by a demon who sought nothing but to devour souls. But this dream of a young Shadow Bringer from over five-hundred years ago was all wrong. Dreams like this weren’t supposed to exist back then.
They couldn’t .
Not before mankind’s betrayal and the rise of the Shadow Bringer.
Before the demons rose, dreams were crafted by the Weavers to educate and influence on the Maker’s behalf. They often contained lessons, memories, or visions of the future, but they never contained this level of darkness and hate. Evil served no purpose for the Maker; therefore, it did not belong in the Realm.
“Their food always disappears! ” the boy howled into his empty hands. Except they weren’t empty—not exactly. Two ugly, red welts bloomed across his skin, wrapping down his palms and up his forearms. “Why? Why does this always happen to me?”
The Shadow Bringer cursed again. “It’s coming.”
From the pond a creature began to emerge, a behemoth of dark, purpled skin. Its skull was distorted, its mouth a mass of long, curling fangs that bent all the way back into its spine. It lacked arms or legs, so it dragged itself to the shoreline in heavy, sliding pulls, and red, smoking eyes peered around, searching for something. It looked different than it had appeared in Elliot’s dream, but I knew in my soul that it was one and the same.
Demon.
Before the fall of dreaming, demons were locked in the Beyond. They didn’t exist in the Weaver-guarded Realm, and they definitely didn’t terrorize young boys as they delivered imaginary food to their parents. The existence of it here didn’t make sense, I realized.
Could the boy have summoned it, somehow?
“It never lasts,” the boy lamented, throwing his fists into the ground. He didn’t seem to notice the demon; the cottage started shaking, its dirt-covered walls leaking something dark and foul. “Why does nothing ever last? ”
The boy didn’t seem like a threat to humanity. He was regular, ordinary. Not the Shadow Bringer, not the Devourer, not an enemy of mankind.
But perhaps he had more power than he let on.
The Bringer stiffened. “I think I remember what happens. I killed the demon myself.”
“Really?” I asked. The boy hadn’t even noticed the demon yet; it continued to drag itself to shore, working its fangs as it tasted the mist. Everything in me screamed in resistance, battling our silence. Our stillness. I wanted to say something, do something. The boy, alone and visibly helpless, didn’t stand a chance. “You don’t even see it yet.”
The demon was to the shoreline now, pulling its body from the water.
“I—” The Bringer paused, visibly working through something. “Any moment now.”
The young Bringer looked up then, finally aware of the monster in front of him.
“And what are you doing here?” he asked, grey eyes unflinching. “Are you here to mock me? I’ve seen you before. I am not afraid.”
“You should be afraid, human, ” the demon growled, rising up to show its full height. “Do you think me some feeble part of your imagination? ”
“Everything here is from my imagination,” the boy said simply. His face scrunched in concentration, almost as if he were willing the demon away. “It is time for you to leave.”
“How prideful. ”
The boy laughed. “Just wait. You will be gone before your next breath.” But as he stared, focusing on the beast’s every limb and distorted feature, nothing happened. The demon was still there. When the boy spoke again, his voice cracked. “You’re still here. Why are you still here?”
“From the lake I have watched you, observing your failures. You will never save your mother. You will never save your father.”
“Shut up.”
“They will starve, they will wither. ”
“I said shut up !” the boy screamed.
“They will die.”
“You don’t know that!” The boy ground his teeth, glancing at his mother and father. They pressed against the grime-stained windows; tears fell from their eyes, curving down their cheeks only to fall into their screaming mouths. “You know nothing of me or my family.”
A pit formed, heavy and horrible in my stomach. This dream was not intended for my eyes—this was private, fragile, raw. Dreams, Weaver-crafted or not, always held pieces of reality; their various parts might be fantastic or bizarre in nature, but the core of it, the very deep and innermost core, was tied to the dreamer’s reality. And if this dream was an indicator of the Shadow Bringer’s past, it indicated nothing but a life riddled with fear, poverty, and hatred.
And a hopeful, imaginative boy trying to tie its pieces together.
“They will hate you, even in your dreams. You will never be loved again.”
“You can’t know that,” the boy protested. But his words were weaker now—aching. Doubting. “How can you know that?”
“You have no purpose. What do you live for?”
“What kind of question is that?” The boy swiped a tear from his eye, the skin underneath blooming red with frustration. “And you never answered my question.” Behind him, the voices of his parents rose in anger and bite. “Why are you still here? Why can’t I erase you?”
“Because I am not of you, human.”
“Then what are you?”
“I am no one,” the demon divulged, “but I can become you. I will ease your hardships. I will right your injuries. ” The demon slid forward; the growl in its voice softened, contrasting with the violence pouring from the cottage. “Let me free you from your life. Come forth and I will gift you eternal rest. ”
Beside me, the Bringer cursed.
I whirled to face him. “You said you killed the demon. That’s a little different than letting it devour your soul.”
“I did kill it,” he insisted. “But I don’t remember when it happened. Or how.”
As the Bringer and I deliberated what was happening—and if we should do anything about it—the boy appeared to be considering the demon’s offer. His shoulders drew in, heavy with some unseen weight, and his eyes closed in concentration.
“Come to me ,” the demon purred, lowering its head so that it was level with the boy’s, “and never again will you feel pain or sorrow. Your loneliness will ebb into darkness. And in the dark is where you belong. ”
“Where I belong?” the boy echoed, lifting his eyes. Gone were their lively sparks of shadow; his eyes had flattened into something hopeless and sad. “The dark has followed me since before I can remember. I am tired of the dark.”
“That is only because you have resisted it,” the demon answered easily. “You are a part of the dark. And the dark is a part of you.” It twisted its maw into what resembled a smile. “It is your purpose.”
“I have never known a purpose,” said the boy. “What would I do with it?”
The demon began to move; wherever it slid, a piece of the boy’s dream fell into decay, and when it breathed in a deep, guttural inhale by the cottage, the voices inside were silenced. I twisted my hands in the grass, unable to watch any longer.
“Bringer,” I hissed, hoping that he would agree with what I was about to say. “Before you came back to the castle, Somnus showed me my brother’s dream. I saw this demon there, too—but I was able to reduce it into nothing with my sword.”
“What are you implying?”
“Well, if I can do that again, maybe I can save you.”
“This is a dream. A memory .” Still, something new dawned in the Bringer’s eyes, mingling with doubt. “We shouldn’t have the ability to alter it. Only the Maker can alter dreams in that way.”
“But what if we could? This is the past, but we’re from the present. The future . Maybe we were the ones who attacked this demon. You don’t remember how it happened. It’s not—”
“Impossible. The other Weavers would never allow—” In front of us, the boy froze, staring up at the demon as it coiled around him. Its mouth widened, revealing the abyss-like length of its throat. The Bringer snarled in disbelief. “Why am I not doing anything? Why am I letting it get so close?”
And then, with a delighted scream, the demon swallowed the boy whole.
