The Dream Beyond the Flame
The beacon whispered.
It did not sing in words, nor hum in any melody known to the waking world. Instead, it pulsed in colors too ancient for the eye, in patterns etched into the marrow of stars. Mira had spent nights dreaming of it, and days running from its echo, but now—now she knelt before it in Ridgefall's sanctum, and it spoke.
Not to her ears.
To her soul.
The room was sealed. No torch, no window, no breath of wind. Just her, the shard, and the burning veil that separated sense from meaning. The beacon shard levitated an inch above the stone pedestal, its glow dimmed since its extraction from the creature's spine. Yet Mira felt its heartbeat match her own, and when she reached out—not with hands, but intent—it opened.
The dreamwalking trance was different this time.
No drifting descent. No slow severance from her body. This was a rending.
One moment she was kneeling in Ridgefall's sanctum.
The next, she was standing at the center of a broken sky.
Clouds parted in jagged spirals, the stars above bent into impossible constellations. The ground beneath her feet was made of bone and burning roots, and floating above a massive crater, the beacon hung—tenfold its normal size, pulsing with every color she could not name.
Mira breathed in—scentless air that tasted like silence.
And the sky answered.
"Mira of the Folded Path."
The voice was not a voice. It was gravity. Memory. The moment before waking and the instant after death. It filled her skull, pressed against her bones. It did not ask. It declared.
She turned. Across the crater stood a figure—not a person, not entirely. It wore a hooded cloak of woven dusk, and its hands held both fire and shadow. It had no face. And yet Mira recognized it instantly.
The First.
Or something that once knew them.
"You are the wound," it said, stepping forward. "The ache of what was cut, yet still clings. Why do you pull the veil?"
Mira fought to speak. The dream did not allow words at first. Her mouth opened. No sound. Then she willed it.
"I seek the truth."
The figure tilted its head. "Truth is a door with no wall. You walk through, and it becomes a cage. Still you enter?"
"I must."
"Then know what bleeds."
The crater flared.
Below, Mira saw Ridgefall—not as it was, but as it could be. Burning. Splintered. The bones of wolves and men alike scattered through its streets. She saw Caelen standing on a broken bridge, blood pouring from his palms. She saw Alaric—not in defeat, but in transformation. His form twisted mid-battle, something massive and blacker than night pouring from his eyes. Around him, allies fell, not by blade—but by memory stolen.
"This is a lie," Mira said.
"No," said the First echo. "This is the price of forgetting."
The dream twisted again.
Now she stood atop a monolith of howling mouths. Below, figures—hundreds, maybe thousands—marched in chains toward a gate of black light. Above, the Seed hovered. And beside it, Warrick.
Except it was not him.
Not anymore.
Warrick's body stood upright, skin scorched with glyphs and sigils Mira didn't recognize. His eyes had become orbs of screaming void, his hands too many, his voice like a chorus of dying stars. And beside him stood three others.
They wore crowns not of iron, but regret.
"Who are they?" Mira whispered.
The First's echo turned its faceless gaze to her. "What you call 'First' are only the vanguard. The ones who remain in the broken beyond are the True Lineage. They sent no generals. They sent concepts. They fed the Seed with purpose."
"And what is its purpose?"
The figure raised its hands.
"To undo."
Mira staggered back.
"No... we've prepared. Alaric has risen. The Vigil has rallied. We—"
"—forgot."
The figure pointed.
A new image shimmered.
It was before the fall. Before the First War. A hall of flame and gold. A woman stood at the center, her back to Mira, her voice low and heavy.
"I was their keeper," the woman said. "I knew their names. I bound them. And when the pact broke, I swallowed the sun to stop them from coming through."
"Who is that?" Mira asked.
The dream fractured.
The woman turned.
It was her own face.
The figure beside her chuckled, not unkindly.
"Dreamwalking is not vision. It is memory. You do not see the future. You remember your past. All of it."
Mira's knees buckled.
"I was one of them?"
"You were the key. The voice that bound the breach. But when you died, the lock fell open. You are no longer who you were. But the gate remembers."
Silence followed. Deep. Cold. Infinite.
Then, the figure extended a hand.
"If you walk further, you will not return the same. Your mind may fracture. Your soul may tear. But you will know."
Mira hesitated.
Then stepped forward.
The world inverted.
She fell, not downward—but inward. Past lives. Past names. Past every thread of every incarnation she had worn like clothing across time. She saw herself as fire. As voice. As sorrow. She remembered the name of the First Gate. She spoke it.
And the beacon, pulsing in the dream's core, flared open.
---
She woke on the sanctum floor screaming.
Caelen was there instantly, hands glowing with soothing runes, his voice low and panicked. Alaric stood behind him, eyes wide.
"Mira—what did you see?"
She looked up at them, eyes full of tears and flame.
"They're not coming," she whispered. "They're already here."