10 #4
Raelion’s red smoking eyes found mine. His lips curled back as he licked his teeth.
I continued to crawl, making progress inch by inch.
I felt so weak. Why was I so weak? Don’t touch him.
Get away from him. My hand found Erebus’s arm.
His sweat-slicked skin was hot under my touch, almost as if it was burning from within. Then suddenly my hand was burning.
Flames.
I was touching flames.
The vision disappeared as I hastily drew my hand back, but the damage had already been done. My skin was bubbling, peeling off. Hundreds of dreamers had also succumbed to their tormenting visions, limbs burning.
None of this is real.
I closed my eyes, forcing my breathing to slow, centering myself.
“None of this is real,” I thought again, this time to the dreamers.
Then my eyes flashed open, and I sent a wave of shadow across the dreamers, lapping at their wounds and sifting around their injured legs.
I could feel the darkness in the shadows pulling at the darkness in their hearts. Coaxing, grounding, healing.
Finally, the flames receded.
Erebus—the real Erebus—tried to reach for me, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. If I did, I’d shatter.
Not yet.
With renewed determination, Erebus and I resumed our pace.
We counted our steps, shouting them so loudly my throat felt raw.
At last, the corridor opened into a darkened chamber, free from the oppressive heat.
I turned to face the dreamers, nervous at what I’d find.
Were they angry with us? Disappointed we’d failed to protect everyone?
But instead, I found eyes brimming with the embers of bravery.
The water and fire had tested us. Forced us to confront our deepest fears.
But we survived. And the exit—a wide archway that revealed our castle just beyond it—was so close.
We did it.
Without warning, the air grew thick.
It pressed down on us as if the room itself sensed the end was near.
Erebus and I stood together, the dreamers standing firm behind us.
There was a tremor, a deep shuddering shift that rattled the stone beneath our feet.
The elements burst into life again, sudden and inescapable, surrounding us like a death trap.
Towering waves crashed into flaming vortexes, sending scalding steam spiraling through the air.
Everything was soon obscured in swirling mist.
“Get to the exit!” Erebus commanded, voice slicing through the chaos.
“We’re nearly there!” I shouted. “Go!”
We urged the dreamers ahead of us, watching in dread as several slipped on the wet stone. The elements were converging, closing in with relentless fury. Fire surged along the water’s surface, consuming it, and the steam thickened, searing our skin with each breath.
“They’ll never make it,” I gasped, running shoulder to shoulder with Erebus as we spurred the dreamers forward. “We have to shield them.”
Without a word, he grabbed my hand. Together we extended our arms, channeling our shadow magic into a barrier, wrapping it around the dreamers as their own shadows urged them forward.
The strain hit me instantly—a deep, biting ache that made my bones feel like stalks of wheat.
It was like being underwater and desperately needing a breath, like running with weighted shoes.
Still, I poured everything I had into it.
Erebus did the same, his energy intertwining with mine, reinforcing the barrier as steam and flame crashed against it.
We halted in place, huddling together as the last of the dreamers ran toward safety.
“They’re almost out,” he said excitedly, as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “Just a little longer. You’re doing so well.”
His hopeful words hit me hard, nearly crumbling what remained of my outwardly calm demeanor.
It was impossible to not imagine him in chains, flames licking up his body as Raelion sat poised to sink his teeth into his neck.
I wanted to hold him. To search his skin for burns and make sure he was truly okay.
But the room gave us no mercy; the elements around us spiraled faster, collapsing inward as the chamber itself shuddered and cracked.
Keep it together, Esmer. It’s almost over.
“At my cue, we need to run,” Erebus urged, his voice tense but calm. “The shield might break, but don’t stop moving.”
For one breathless, fleeting moment, we stood rooted in place, everything unsaid hanging thickly between us.
Chests heaving, straining to keep the barrier alive.
Then, with a final fierce nod, we turned and ran as the barrier quivered—and slowly dissolved.
The last few dreamers scrambled ahead of us, forms disappearing into the mist. Behind us, the chamber imploded, a wall of boiling steam and flames swallowing the space we’d just left.
Bursting into the open air, Erebus and I stumbled forward, drenched in sweat, our breaths ragged. We’d both grown stronger in the fire, in the darkness we had woven together to survive.
“Your dreamers are growing stronger,” crooned the voice in my head, “but you crave more.”