Chapter Three
I thought the nightmare was over.
I thought wrong.
Sleep dragged me down like a riptide, and when I opened my eyes, they weren't mine.
They were hers.
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Small. Weak. Trembling.
I stumbled barefoot across a street of burning straw and collapsing timber. Screams ripped through the night, but none answered mine. Smoke clawed down my throat, every cough knives in my chest.
Men in rust-stained armor stormed the village, blades dripping, boots crunching over bodies as though they were nothing but twigs. Their helmets glowed orange in the firelight—faceless, inhuman, monstrous.
I wanted my mother. My father. Anyone.
But no one came.
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Time blurred. Hunger hollowed me out until my ribs felt like knives beneath skin. Scraps were tossed my way as if I were a stray dog, their eyes sliding past me as if I were already gone.
When the soldiers returned, I tried to run.
I didn't get far.
Hands like iron clamped around my arms. Chains gnawed my ankles until blood slicked my skin. I was dragged until my voice broke, swallowed by the chorus of captives sobbing into silence.
Nights were cages that stank of filth. Days were labor. Fingers split and bleeding. Throat burning for water I was never allowed to drink.
And when I faltered—the blows came. Wood. Fists. Boots. Pain was the only language spoken here.
I stopped crying. Crying did nothing.
But in the dream, I felt the tears anyway. Not hers. Mine. Carter's.
Because I wasn't her, not really. Just trapped inside her skin, suffocating on her suffering.
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Sometimes the torchlight outside the cages lingered too long. Shadows stretched. Stares clung. My stomach knotted. The dream never showed what followed—didn't need to. The silence in her body, the way she stiffened, said enough.
It was worse than pain.
It was erasure.
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She wasted away.
Hollow cheeks. Cracked lips. Eyes dulled to glass. She no longer begged. No longer reached. Just waited.
And then—
Her head jerked. Slowly. Too slowly.
Her eyes, dead and empty, lifted toward mine.
I froze. Because for the first time, it felt like she wasn't just me. She was looking. Seeing.
But no.
Her gaze slid past me. Beyond.
And in their reflection, I saw him.
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A knight.
Once, his armor must have gleamed ivory. Now it was ruin—cracked, blackened, heavy with soot and blood.
The girl's reflection shivered in his helm, fragile as ash.
And suddenly, I wasn't her anymore.
I was him.
The weight of steel bent my spine. Chainmail clinked at my chest. A sword's grip rested in my palm, worn smooth by years of blood.
I looked down at her.
Not with pity. Not with sorrow.
With disgust.
The thought wasn't mine, but it crawled through me like poison:
Astarián.
The word seared itself into my mind, venomous, alien.
Less than human. Filth. Vermin.
I tried to recoil, but the knight's contempt pressed harder, colder, until it felt like my own.
The girl trembled in her chains, frail, ruined.
My hand tightened on the sword. Not to shield. Not to save. But to strike.
And in that moment, I didn't know what terrified me more—her suffering, or the whisper inside me that agreed with him.
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The dream did not end.
It only sank deeper.
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