30
If the rest of Dream Realm was the absence of nothing, the Beyond was the absence of everything.
I woke up in a grave of darkness; I couldn’t so much as see my own hand in front of my face. Choking back a sob, I tried to scream—only to realize that my voice wouldn’t carry. It sounded as though I were underwater, as though my words were a faraway whisper.
No.
No.
No.
I stumbled forward, hands outstretched, legs jerking with every step.
I wasn’t walking on the earth; I was walking on smoke, on water, on bones.
The ground shifted substances every few feet, and I was close to hyperventilating from the shock of it all.
I couldn’t see—the darkness was suffocating, laying thickly over my face like a living shadow—so I couldn’t tell what would be next.
One step might land me knee-deep in a river of icy slush.
Another step might deliver a heap of beetles or mud or warm coals or sharp rocks.
From what I could tell, I wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothes.
My hands, legs, and feet were starkly bare, and only a thin dress covered what it could.
Everything else was left exposed to the elements.
I took another step, letting loose a cursedly muffled scream when my foot slipped on a rock covered with something furred and slimy. I landed hard on my back, twisting and turning to avoid what felt like sharpened sticks or bony fingers.
Where were the other dreamers? The thousands of Noctis citizens who’d been banished to the Beyond, too? Where were the other Weavers? Where was Erebus?
I walked for what felt like hours, days, months, years.
Searching for someone.
Searching for anything.
Slowly, a light twinkled weakly in the distance, so softly that I was certain I was imagining it.
The flash was just a pinprick of white, no larger than a grain of sand, but it wasn’t difficult to spot amid the all-consuming dark.
The light grew steadily brighter as I continued walking, illuminating a thin stone path that rose above the mire.
It took all my strength to heave myself atop the raised platform, so weak was my body in this depraved pocket of the Dream Realm, but I didn’t allow myself to rest. I shoved myself upright and started running across the platform, sprinting toward the light as if it was my final lifeline.
And perhaps it was.
I nearly reached the source of the light at the same time I stumbled into a body.
Cold hands skated up my arms, then finally grasped my face with desperate fingers. Strong, beautifully shaped hands I’d recognize even in total darkness.
“Erebus?” I sobbed, the sound finally finding purchase. “I’ve been wandering forever. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
He crushed me into his arms, stroking my hair even as his chest trembled against my cheek.
“Are you real?” he whispered. “Or a ghost made to torment me? Are you merely a beautiful illusion?”
“I’m real,” I answered seriously. “I’m here.”
He was openly crying, unable to stop. I returned his embrace, hands shaking as they gripped the back of his shirt.
I used a small wisp of shadow to caress his face; it was all I could muster, but it was enough to tell him it was truly me.
For a few quiet moments, that was all we did.
Merely breathed each other in. Thumbed away each other’s tears.
Held each other so tightly that nothing could separate us again.
“What happened?” I finally managed, refusing to let go of him even as I leaned back to meet his eyes.
The growing light made it possible to see him.
Like me, Erebus was clad in only the simplest of clothes: black pants and a matching open-necked shirt.
His feet were bare, as were his hands, and his eyes, thankfully, were a beautiful, brilliant silver, swirling with the echoes of a few shadows.
No longer was there any red lurking within their depths.
There was only him.
“This must be the Beyond. The birthplace of demons, despair, and every other sin that festers within the dregs of the Dream Realm,” Erebus noted, glancing around at the darkness that sought to swallow us.
He wrapped his hands around mine, holding me close.
He wasn’t ready to let me go anytime soon, either.
“We aren’t meant to be here. Raelion was planning to make us into his puppets; he didn’t intend for us to atrophy here in this wasteland with the rest of Noctis’s citizens. ”
I shuddered. “I haven’t come across any other dreamers.”
“I’m not surprised. The Beyond is said to be immeasurable. Endless. It is a miracle we found each other.”
It was a miracle we’d found each other. But now we’d simply fester in a pit of nothingness for eternity, helpless as the world spiraled into utter chaos and destruction.
Keeping our hands firmly intertwined, we made our way toward the source of the light.
Strangely, the glow felt familiar—like the faint pull that had drawn me into these depths from the start.
At first, only a small pool of gold was visible, a faintly shimmering oval adrift in a sea of darkness.
We stepped from the raised path, moving into the shadows as they coiled around our legs.
It was like wading through a warm stream.
Small threads of light drifted from the golden pool, melting into the void.
But as we reached the source, Erebus and I froze.
Mithras—not Raelion, but Mithras—floated in the middle of the golden pool, limbs slowly dissolving into light as it trickled from his skin.
His skin was gray, his blond hair nearly white in its pallor.
Mithras’s eyes cracked open, and when he finally spoke, it was like a dried-out skeleton speaking for the first time since the end of its mortal life.
“You came,” Mithras said hoarsely. Tears slipped down his face, disappearing into the shimmering liquid. He did not move his body—merely tilted his head to better observe us. “You must first know I never intended for this to be our fate.”
Erebus’s face was contorted in a riot of emotions: cold fury, abject disgust, and also something shockingly close to devastation.
“‘Never intended’?” Erebus bit out. “You speak as if you had no choice. You made this our fate. You betrayed me, banished me for five hundred years, locked an innocent person in my tomb—then you willingly allied yourself with a demon so powerful and so cruel that he tore an entire world apart.”
Mithras looked shattered. “Erebus—”
“You were the only person who could have made a difference.” Erebus waded forward. “You had the world in your hands, Mithras, and you chose to extinguish every good and beautiful thing. For years, all I craved was your death. Do you know that? Surely you know that.”
“I do,” Mithras whispered, tears continuing to trickle down his face.
“But then Esmer showed me that there was more to life than revenge. That there was purpose in the darkness we shared.” He held himself rigidly—too perfectly straight—as he looked down upon the man who had once been his friend.
Who had once been his brother. “You and I could have righted this world centuries ago. Instead, you threw me into a cage and expected me to contain demons that weren’t demons at all. ”
“I know,” Mithras said simply, his voice becoming difficult to hear.
“How do you know?” Erebus demanded, grabbing Mithras by the shoulders. Mithras didn’t so much as flinch; instead, he slowly placed a hand upon Erebus’s left wrist. “If you knew—if you knew and yet still chose to damn thousands of innocents, then why…?” He trailed off, overcome with anguish.
“Was it for glory? Greed?” I asked, still holding on to Erebus’s arm. I refused to let him go, refused to even take that chance. “What riches are possibly worth the demise of an entire world?”
“And look where it got him,” Erebus bit out. “Disintegrating into a void. How fitting.”
“I did it for you, Erebus.” Mithras’s face contorted in grief. His cracked mouth tensed. “Everything I did was to keep you safe, Shadow Weaver. And Esmer, too, once I knew her purpose.”
“Lies. Utter lies,” Erebus spat. “You’re the villain of this story.
And don’t you dare say that Raelion tricked you.
” His silver eyes were a storm, his hands like vises upon Mithras’s frail shoulders.
“Tell me, damn it. Tell me why you did this so I can use your corpse as a light to find the other dreamers.”
Mithras groaned as something began to play out in the void around us.
Echoes of memories from a different time.
Mithras’s lonely childhood as heir to the throne.
The moment he met Erebus, the king’s newly appointed dream interpreter, who quickly became his one true friend.
His time with Erebus at Citadels Firstlight and Evernight, honing their abilities.
Their shared plan to save the Dream Realm from the demons.
And then the moment everything unraveled—King Gabriel, infected by Raelion, confronting Mithras beneath the castle in a shocking betrayal.
Raelion rising from the king’s corpse, turning his hunger toward Erebus.
Mithras distracting Raelion, begging to be claimed instead.
And more.
So much more.
505 Years Ago: Theia’s Domain in the Dream Realm
Mithras sprinted down a narrow hall, its numerous windows open to the elements.
If it was cold, he couldn’t feel it.
His head throbbed with excruciating pain. He cursed, loud and angry. If he didn’t find her, and find her soon, he’d—
He slammed to a stop.
Delicate curtains, airy as clouds, framed a floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the hall. Beyond was a brilliant landscape of snow and ice, the Weaver’s preferred element.
Theia.
She was sitting on the windowsill, partially hidden by one of the gossamer curtains.