Bruce's room was a sanctuary of shadows. The moonlight, cut into neat squares by the old windowpanes, painted the floor. It was 3:14 AM, the dead, silent, suffocating heart of the night.
He was asleep. And for the first time in his life, he was truly asleep.
The amulet Anah had given him was a cool, heavy weight on his chest, a physical anchor. The hum—the frantic, lifelong, bone-deep static—was gone. The silence in his head was a vast, peaceful, empty country. He was not dreaming. He was just... resting.
Until he wasn't.
The peace began to curdle. The comfortable, warm darkness of his sleep began to... expand.
He wasn't in his bed. He wasn't in his room.
He was floating.
He had no body. He was a single, cold point of awareness in a void. There was no up, no down, no sound, no light. It was a vast, starless, endless black, a silence so profound it was a pressure against his... his mind.
He was alone.
And then he wasn't.
THUMP-THUMP.
It wasn't a sound. It was a pulse. A vibration that shook his very essence, a ripple in the fabric of the nothing.
He saw it.
At first, it was just a pinprick of red light, galaxies away.
THUMP-THUMP.
It was bigger now. Brighter. Not a pinprick. A beacon.
THUMP-THUMP.
It was close. It was huge. It filled his vision. It was a vast, swirling, blood-red nebula, and it was alive. It was a heart. A heart the size of a mountain, the size of a planet, pulsing with a slow, cosmic, undeniable rhythm. It was the only living thing in the void, and it was beautiful.
It was calling to him.
He felt a pull. A deep, gravitational ache. A sense of longing so profound it felt like grief. It was a feeling of homecoming. He had been lost, and it had been waiting. He was cold, and it was warm.
He was moving toward it, drawn by an irresistible, invisible tide. He didn't want to resist. He wanted, more than anything, to be home.
The closer he got, the vast, red, pulsing light filling his entire reality, the longing... it began to change.
It sharpened. It focused. It got teeth.
This wasn't longing. This wasn't a desire for home.
It was hunger.
A ravenous, primal, ecstatic hunger. The most terrifying and joyful thing he had ever experienced. He didn't just want to be near it. He wanted to consume it.
He wanted to tear into its light. He wanted to drink its power. He wanted to unmake it and make it part of him. The hunger was a new, cold, clear thought, just like the one he'd had with Dickson, but a thousand times stronger. Make it stop. Make it yours.
He opened his "mouth"—he had no mouth—to scream, or to roar, or to feed.
S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S!
Pain.
Searing, blinding, white-hot pain.
Bruce woke up with a strangled gasp, his whole body jackknifing off the bed. He was here. He was in his room. He was drenched in a sweat so cold it felt like ice water.
The pain... it was his chest.
He clawed at his shirt. The amulet. The cool, heavy amulet was gone. In its place was a brand. It was searing hot, a circle of pure fire against his sternum. It smelled of burning wood and ozone, the same smell from Anah's kitchen.
"Ah—ghk!" He ripped the leather cord, the material snapping. The amulet fell to his lap, hissing against the sweat on his cotton pajama bottoms. He scrambled away from it, his back hitting the wall.
It lay on his sheets, a small, dark piece of wood, glowing with a dull, angry, internal red light. It had tried to stop the dream. It had failed.
He was gasping for air, his heart trying to hammer its way out of his chest, as if in answer to the one from his dream.
And the hum...
It was back.
But it wasn't a hum. It was a roar. It was a triumphant, furious, starving roar, unleashed from the cage the amulet had built. It was screaming in his bones, filling the new, clear silence of his mind with its rage.
And his shoulder...
He cried out, his hand flying to his left shoulder blade, his nails digging into his own skin.
His birthmark was itching.
It was not a normal itch. It was a deep, burning, crawling sensation, as if the darkness coiled there was alive and thrashing, awakened by the dream, enraged by the amulet that had tried to chain it. It was a nest of spiders, all skittering under his skin at once.
He stumbled out of bed, collapsing against his desk, knocking books to the floor. The dream was gone. The red light was gone.
But the hunger was not.
It was still here. A living thing, inside him. It was a coppery, metallic taste in the back of his throat. It was a terrible, hollow emptiness in his chest, right where his own, frantic heart was beating.
He wanted... he wanted...
He didn't know what. But he knew it was red, and it was pulsing, and it was out there.
He doubled over, his stomach heaving, and was violently sick on the old, wooden floorboards. He was shaking, cold and terrified. But the hunger remained.