Yorika
The dream starts as memory.
I'm in the training room again. Nezavek circles me like the predator he is, those burning eyes tracking my every movement. But when I raise my blades to fight, they dissolve into shadow.
"You don't need weapons," dream-Nezavek says, his voice reverberating through my bones. "You are one."
He moves closer, and I realize I'm naked. I should feel vulnerable, exposed, but instead I feel powerful. My skin glows with silver light, the same light I saw in that fragmented memory he shared.
"Show me," he commands.
I reach for him, and this time when my hands touch his shadow-form, he solidifies completely. Not the partial solidification I've witnessed before, but fully corporeal. His skin is pale as moonlight, marked with veins of darkness that pulse with his heartbeat.
"Is this what you wanted to find?" he asks, pulling me against him. "What makes me solid?"
"Yes," I breathe, but it's not about the mission anymore. "You're beautiful."
"You're lying to yourself." His hands span my waist, lifting me easily. "But not about this."
Tendrils manifest from his back, wrapping around my wrists, my ankles, spreading me open. They don't restrain. They support, caress, explore. One slides between my breasts, another coils around my thigh, and I arch into the sensation.
"This is what you really want," he says, lowering his mouth to my throat. "Not death. Not revenge. This."
When he enters me I come undone, the sound of my shouts strange to my own ears. The tendrils pulse with his heartbeat, stimulating every nerve ending while he moves inside me. I'm overwhelmed, consumed, claimed.
"Mine," he growls against my skin.
"Yours," I agree, and in the dream, I mean it.
The sensation builds, impossibly intense. The shadow tendrils tighten, his thrusts become harder, deeper.
I wake gasping, my body clenching around nothing.
My quarters are dark, silent, but my skin still tingles where his dream-tendrils touched. Did he feel that? Did he share the dream?
My skin bears no marks, but I can still feel everywhere the shadow tendrils touched. Between my legs, I'm wet, aching, empty.
"Fuck," I whisper to the darkness.
This is bad. This is very, very bad.
I can't want him. He might be my sister's killer. Even if he's not, he's my captor, my enemy, a monster who bought me like property.
But my traitorous body doesn't care about logic. It wants what it felt in that dream. Wants to know if reality would match fantasy.
I need a cold shower. I need to run until I collapse. I need to fight something.
Instead, I lie in the dark, trying not to think about shadow tendrils and burning eyes and the way he said "mine" like a promise and a threat.
Tomorrow will be harder now. Tomorrow I'll have to face him knowing he might have felt my desire through our connection. Knowing that my body's betrayal is no longer secret.
The door unlocks with its usual grinding sound. I dress quickly, choosing pants and a tunic. Armor against whatever this day brings.
Mikaere waits outside. His expression is unreadable as always, but something in his posture seems... amused?
"The library," he says.
P?ivi awaits, a book floating beside her.
"You look terrible," she observes.
"Didn't sleep well."
"No, I imagine not." She gestures and the book settles on the table. "Dimensional cascade theory, anchor bonds, and the nature of Void Walkers. Everything you need to understand what you've gotten yourself into."
"Why are you helping me?"
"Because ignorance is offensive to me, and your particular ignorance might get us all killed." P?ivi's form flickers, threatening to dissolve into a cloud of loose pages before her irritation snaps her back into focus. "Also, you were right about binary being a language. I checked. Irritating."
I pick up the book. It's heavier than it looks, the pages seeming to exist in more than three dimensions.
"Read it here in the library," P?ivi commands. "Do not attempt to take it to your quarters. Do not spill anything on it. Do not..."
"I get it. Treat it like a holy relic."
"Holier. Religious texts can be reprinted. This is unique."
She vanishes completely, leaving me alone with knowledge that might save or damn me.
I open the book and begin to read.
The text shifts between languages, but somehow I understand all of it. Void Walkers are beings of living shadow, consciousness given form through will alone. They exist between dimensions, anchored to reality by various means. Some use artifacts. Some use places of power.
Some use people.
An anchor bond is symbiotic. The Void Walker gains stability, substance, the ability to maintain coherent form. The anchor gains... various things. Enhanced perception. Resistance to void exposure. In rare cases, the ability to manipulate shadows themselves.
The bond strengthens through proximity, emotional connection, and, my face heats, physical intimacy. The book is clinical about this last point, but the implications are clear. Sex with a Void Walker fundamentally changes the anchor on a molecular level.
I think about my dream, about shadow tendrils exploring my body, and have to close the book for a moment.
"Interesting reading?"
I don't jump. I'm getting used to his sudden appearances.
"Educational," I say without looking up.
Nezavek materializes fully, more solid than I've seen him since the training room. He's fed recently, on what, I don't want to know.
"You dreamed last night." Not a question.
My face burns, but I keep my voice steady. "Everyone dreams."
"Not everyone dreams of shadow tendrils."
Fuck. He did feel it.
"Stay out of my head."
"I'm not in your head. But the bond shares certain... experiences. Particularly intense ones." He moves closer, and I catch his scent…and something new. Arousal. "You were quite creative."
"It was just a dream."
"Was it?" He's behind me now, not touching but close enough that I feel the cold radiating from his form. He leans over my shoulder to look at the book, and when I turn to respond, our faces are suddenly inches apart.
His burning eyes drop to my lips. I can feel his breath, cold like winter wind, against my skin.
He leans in slightly. I don't pull back. My lips part without my permission. His hand rises to cup my face, shadow-solid and gentle.
"Yorika," he murmurs, and my name sounds like a prayer.
I tilt my head up. He tilts his down. The space between us shrinks to nothing.
A book falls from somewhere high above, landing with a loud thunk between us.
We both look up. P?ivi's voice drifts down from the upper levels: "Gravity mishap."
Another book falls. Then another.
A whole cascade of volumes tumbling from the upper shelves.
P?ivi's voice drifts down irritably: "Romantic tension disrupts the cataloging system. My apologies for the interruption, but physics here responds to emotional intensity."
Nezavek steps back slightly, but doesn't leave. "Perhaps we should let the library settle before continuing this conversation."
I nod, still feeling the heat of the almost-kiss. "Probably wise."
We sit in the chairs, the charged moment between us shifting but not disappearing. I pick up the book again, trying to focus, but I'm acutely aware of his presence just feet away. The way he said my name. The careful gentleness of his touch. The hunger in his eyes that matched my own.
"I want answers."
"You want more than that." His hand hovers over my shoulder, shadow tendrils manifesting and dissolving like they can't decide whether to reach for me. "But you're not ready to admit it."
I turn to face him, anger overriding embarrassment. "You're right. I want more. I want to know who killed my sister. I want to know why you're really keeping me here. I want to know what this bond means and why you chose me."
"I didn't choose you. The bond did. The moment you stood on that platform, it recognized you as compatible. Everything after that was inevitable."
"Nothing is inevitable."
"No?" He reaches out, his fingers stopping just short of my face. "Then why does your body lean toward mine even as your mind screams to run? Why does your pulse quicken not from fear but from anticipation? Why do you dream of me inside you when you should dream of killing me?"
I slap his hand away. "Because you're manipulating me. The bond, the proximity, all of it."
"The bond doesn't create feelings. It only amplifies what's already there." He steps back, giving me space. "You wanted me before the bond. From the moment you saw me in that warehouse, part of you recognized something beyond enemy or target."
"You're delusional."
"I'm honest. It's you who lies, to yourself most of all."
Before I can respond, he turns to a floating shelf and pulls down another book. This one is smaller, bound in what looks like starlight.
"The Bone Collector's journals. Copies I made before he went mad. Read them. See the pattern of his kills. Then tell me if you still think I'm your sister's murderer."
He sets the book on the table and starts to leave.
"Wait."
He pauses.
"The dream. Could you... control it? Influence it?"
"No. That was all you, Yorika. Your desire, your imagination, your need." He looks back, and his eyes burn brighter. "Though I must admit, you've given me ideas."
He dissolves into shadow, leaving me alone with two books and the uncomfortable truth that my subconscious has betrayed me completely.
The entries in the journal start rational, scholarly even.
Discussions of preservation, of beauty, of saving perfection from decay.
But as the pages progress, the tone changes.
Becomes obsessive. He describes his victims in loving detail, their final moments, their terror, the way their consciousness remains trapped as their bodies crystallize.
My blood runs cold as I recognize the pattern. Young women, all talented, all at turning points in their lives. All preserved at the moment when their potential was highest.
Like Melara.
The final entries are barely coherent, ranting about eternal beauty, about creating a gallery of living art. But one line stands out: The Shadow Walker hunts me, but he understands nothing. He would destroy my art to save the cattle. He cannot see that I am saving them from themselves.
Shadow Walker. Nezavek.
They're enemies. Have been for centuries.
Which means.
Which means I've been hunting the wrong monster for three years.
The book falls from my numb fingers, and I sit in P?ivi's library trying to reconcile this truth with my carefully cultivated rage. If Nezavek didn't kill Melara, if he's been hunting her real killer, then what am I doing here?
What have I done?