Chapter 6
Aurora
The nightmare pulsed around me like a wounded animal, its boundaries trembling with each labored breath.
The walls—if you could call them that—rippled with veins of darkness that hadn't been there moments before.
I felt her arrival in my bones before I saw her—a pressure at the base of my skull, familiar and revolting all at once.
A century trapped in this place, and still, the weight of her presence made my throat close.
"She's coming," I whispered, my voice fracturing against the thickening air.
Bell turned to me, her eyes bright with a defiance that broke my heart.
She didn't understand—couldn't understand—what we were facing.
To her, this was just another hunt, another curse to break.
But I knew better. This wasn't just a battle.
It was an ending. And I had been foolish enough to believe it would be mine to choose.
"Let her come," Bell said, her hand falling to the dagger at her hip. The gesture was so achingly human, so desperately inadequate against what approached us. Steel meant nothing here. Courage meant nothing here. Only power mattered in the nightmare, and mine had never been enough.
The air split open before us, not with sound but with absence—a void that swallowed light and breath and hope.
She stepped through, midnight silks shifting around her ankles like oil on water, her movements too fluid to be natural.
Her icy blue gaze locked onto me as if Bell didn't exist, as if there had never been anything in this realm but her and me, predator and prey, curse and victim.
Her lips curved, a cruel imitation of a smile. Something deep in my chest clenched, muscle memory of fear I thought I'd buried.
The ground beneath us cracked like brittle glass, spider-webbing outward from where she stood. Bell shifted her weight, adjusting her stance. The action was subtle, but the Sorceress noticed. Of course, she noticed.
"Did you think I would let you go?" Her voice slithered over my skin, each syllable precise, measured. I hated that it still made me shiver. I hated it more that Bell saw my reaction.
Bell moved closer to me, her shoulder brushing mine.
Heat radiated from her skin, a stark contrast to the unnatural cold that had seeped into the nightmare since the Sorceress's arrival.
Bell's fingers twitched toward her dagger again, a hunter's instinct.
I wanted to tell her how useless that was, how nothing forged in her world could harm something born from this one.
I needed her to run, to leave me and save herself, but I already knew she wouldn't. The stubborn set of her jaw told me everything. She would die here for me, and that was the one thing I couldn't allow.
"Stay behind me," I whispered, but she ignored me, just as stubborn as ever.
The Sorceress chuckled, a sound like glass breaking underfoot. Her gaze flicked between us, lingering on the narrow space where our bodies nearly touched. Something hungry flickered in her eyes.
"Oh, how sweet," she murmured, tilting her head. Her hair moved too slowly, as if suspended in water. "You think you matter, little hunter."
Then she struck.
The air around us froze solid, a shockwave of magic slamming into my chest. It ripped the breath from my lungs and sent Bell flying backward. She hit the shifting ground with a sharp gasp, the sound piercing through me like a physical wound.
I barely had time to register her pain before the Sorceress closed the space between us.
One moment she stood yards away, the next she was before me, close enough that I could see the dark veins pulsing beneath her too-perfect skin.
Shadows lashed around her fingers, curling like vipers preparing to strike.
"I made you," she hissed, her breath cold against my face. "Every nightmare, every fear, every moment of despair—they're all mine. You're mine."
I had no choice—I fought back. I reached deep into the fabric of the nightmare, into the place where my century of captivity had taught me to go. I tore at the boundary between her will and mine, wrenching reality apart with nothing but desperation and rage.
The ground buckled beneath us. The sky—or what passed for sky in this place—rippled with crimson light. For a moment, her composure slipped, surprise flashing across her features.
Then she laughed.
"You've learned," she said, sounding almost proud. "But not enough."
From the corner of my eye, I saw Bell surge to her feet, her breath ragged, fury sparking in her eyes. Blood trickled from a cut on her temple, black in the unnatural light. She was too close. Far too close.
That was when I understood. The Sorceress had felt our bond unraveling the nightmare. She had sensed the hairline fractures Bell's presence had created in her perfect prison. And she had let it happen.
I had played right into her hands.
She didn't want to reclaim me—she wanted to end me. And she had found the perfect way to do it.
She would kill Bell.
The realization hit me too late. The Sorceress flicked her wrist, a gesture so slight it could have been dismissing a fly.
The air around Bell collapsed, crushing inward like an invisible fist. Her eyes went wide, her body locking up as if invisible chains had wrapped around her ribs.
Her breath choked off in a strangled gasp, her hands clawing at her throat.
"Stop!" The word tore from my throat, raw and desperate.
I lunged forward, my power lashing out instinctively. I poured everything into shattering the grip on Bell, into creating a barrier between her and the suffocating magic. The air split with a sound like tearing silk, and Bell dropped to her knees, gasping for breath.
The Sorceress clicked her tongue, her disappointment almost... affectionate. The sound made my skin crawl.
"Did you think I wouldn't notice?" she mused, watching Bell struggle to breathe. "You bound yourself to her. How careless."
The ground beneath us trembled again, more violently this time. The nightmare was screaming under our feet, reacting to the war between us. Reality frayed at the edges of my vision, the boundaries of the dreamscape stretching thin.
I gathered my power again, feeling the edges of the dream fracturing in my grasp. The Sorceress barely seemed concerned. Her eyes narrowed slightly, the only indication that she felt my resistance at all.
Bell was watching me now, still recovering, one hand pressed to her throat. There was something in her eyes—not fear, but something close to awe. I couldn't think about that. Not now. Not when every second might be her last if I couldn't find a way to get her out.
"You can't kill her without killing me," I spat, buying time, trying to think. "And we both know you're too much of a coward to risk losing what you built."
Something flickered across the Sorceress's perfect features—not anger, but something colder, more calculated. Her smile returned, a thin curve that didn't reach her eyes.
"You misunderstand me, love," she whispered.
She raised her hands, fingers stretching toward the sky. The nightmare trembled in response, as if it recognized her as its true master. Black veins spread across the walls, the ceiling, the floor… everything the nightmare had built to contain me.
"I don't need to kill you."
The shadows surged around her, coiling like black smoke. They spread outward, devouring everything in their path, consuming the fractured reality of the nightmare realm. The ground beneath Bell began to dissolve, darkness eating away at its edges.
Bell cursed, a sharp, colorful word that would have made me smile in any other circumstance. She stumbled to her feet and stepped in front of me, as if her presence alone could protect me from something this ancient, this inevitable.
"I just need to bury you deep enough that you'll never find your way out. You'll break for good when you realize you'll never see your pet again."
The nightmare shattered.
Reality broke apart like splintered bone, jagged shards of the dreamscape falling away into nothingness. Suddenly, we were falling, the solid ground beneath us vanishing. The weight of gravity returned all at once, pulling us into the abyss, the darkness stretching endlessly below.
Bell grabbed my wrist, her fingers burning against my skin. The heat of her touch was an anchor, but I knew it wasn't enough. We were losing.
Above us, the Sorceress stood at the edge of the fracture, untouched by the destruction.
She watched us fall with the calm patience of someone who had been planning this moment for longer than Bell had been alive.
This had been her design all along—not to keep me trapped in the nightmare, but to push me beyond it, into something worse.
I had spent a century trying to escape this place. And now, she was dragging me back to the beginning, to a darkness deeper than the one I'd known before.
Bell's grip on my wrist tightened. I looked at her face—at the fury and determination etched into every line—and felt a surge of something I hadn't allowed myself to feel in decades.
Hope.
The last thing I heard before the darkness swallowed us whole was the Sorceress's voice, soft and final.
"Goodbye, my love."
The void took us, cold and absolute. I held onto Bell, onto the burning heat of her skin against mine, and closed my eyes. If this was the end, at least I wouldn't face it alone.
But somewhere in the endless dark, I felt something impossible.
Bell's fingers intertwined with mine, squeezing tight. And deep within the nightmare—within me—something ancient stirred in response.
This wasn't the end.
It was just the beginning of a different kind of nightmare—one the Sorceress had never meant to create.
One she couldn't control.