Dreams that bleed
Caelan Reyes did not remember falling asleep.
He only remembered the cold.
---
The dream came hard and fast.
No drifting. No slow fade. One blink, and he stood in a world that was wrong.
A sky of silver moons, turning like gears. Blood-red light bleeding through clouds. The ground beneath his feet cracked like black glass, stained with ancient battle.
And ahead—
War.
Figures in obsidian armor clashed with creatures that howled like storms — shadows and flame and fang and steel.
He couldn't see their faces. But he could feel their pain. Their rage. Their history.
The battlefield stretched in both directions, endless.
And at the center of it all—
A throne.
No—two.
One carved of bone and obsidian, cracked down the center. The other, gnarled roots and melted iron, scorched by fire.
They were broken.
Empty.
Waiting.
---
Caelan ran.
He didn't know why — only that he had to get there.
He ran past dying warriors, through falling ash and embers that burned without heat. His feet left no trace.
And there, at the steps of the shattered thrones—
Lay a woman.
She was armored in pale silver, hair like moonlight, blood soaking the plates across her ribs. Her blade was broken beside her. One hand clutched her chest.
She looked up at him. Her eyes—not human.
"Late…" she whispered.
"I don't—" Caelan started, falling to his knees beside her.
"You must… wake them," she said.
Her gauntlet rose — touched the pendant over his heart.
And pain ripped through him like a brand made of memory.
---
He screamed awake.
---
Sweat drenched his sheets. The room was pitch dark except for the soft glow of his desk lamp.
He staggered to the bathroom.
Pulled up his shirt.
The mark was real.
A spiral bruise, sun and moon twisted together, just like the pendant's design — as if it had burned itself into his skin.
His breath caught.
"This isn't just a dream," he whispered.
The mirror behind him flickered.
And for a moment, she was there.
The armored woman.
Kneeling.
Watching.
Then gone.
---
Elsewhere, across the Veil, in the Citadel of Night, Kael Noctaryn stood before the Count Clans.
"The dreams bleed through," he said coldly. "He carries the mark."
Countess Viremont stepped forward, voice sharp. "The time is early. Are we to act?"
"He is waking," Kael replied. "If we do not reach him, others will."
---
In the Hollowfang wilds, Raen Wyrmholt listened to the fire crackle.
Shamans whispered around him, casting rites of vision and wind.
"He dreams the battlefield," one said.
"He bleeds in both realms," said another.
Raen stared into the flame, and his gold-ringed eyes narrowed.
"Send the first messenger," he said. "Let the boy see his blood walk."
---
The next morning, Caelan sat at his desk, hands shaking.
He had drawn the thrones from memory.
He had drawn the battlefield, the woman, and—most disturbingly—the symbol etched now into his skin.
Beneath it, three other symbols emerged as he drew, unbidden:
A crescent moon, bitten at the edge.
A crown cracked down the center.
And a drop of blood, falling into a spiral.
He didn't know what they meant.
But they felt like… pieces of a map.
Then someone knocked at the door.
Three soft knocks. Then silence.
He opened it.
No one.
Just a folded piece of paper on the floor.
He bent, picked it up.
Inside:
> 🌒⨁🩸
"You are not dreaming.
You are remembering."