The First Dream: The Warden
He stands in a room without walls. The floor is wet sand, the sky—if it is a sky—reeks of copper.
Before him, a figure he knows and does not know. A woman in royal garb, yet her face is... wrong. As if someone pieced together a portrait from memories that do not belong. Blurred, as though the dream itself refuses to render her clearly. A woman of high rank—this he senses. Melandor—this he knows. But her name lies behind a veil he cannot lift.
She speaks, yet her mouth moves out of sync with her words. Her voice comes from behind her. From the shadow that looms too large for her body.
"I have seen you," she says. Or does the shadow speak? "In my dream. Before you even knew you would fall."
Elandor tries to speak, yet his tongue is heavy as lead.
"You believe I am your nemesis," the figure continues. Her eyes—were they ever so hollow? "But I knelt, Elandor of Kaelon. I knelt before the same terror as you. Only I have not yet fallen."
The shadow behind her stirs. Not merely ash and mist. Something that breathes.
"Do not ask who sent me," she whispers, and now her voice trembles, the real one, the human one. "Ask why it chose me. Why it chose you. Why it always chooses those who—"
The shadow devours her words before she can finish. Elandor watches as the silhouette of her mouth dissolves into darkness before the final sound escapes.
"—love."
Then she is gone. Only the shadow remains, and it is vast. Not powerful. Not demonic. Vast as an emptiness that has forgotten it was once full.
Elandor tries to flee. But the dream consumes him.
The Second Dream: The Hunger
The same room. But now it is filled.
People. Dozens. Hundreds. They stand motionless, lined up like cattle, their eyes open yet empty. They do not breathe. They wait.
Elandor knows this state. He has lived it himself, in the days after the pact, when hunger still surprised him.
But here, he is not the hunter.
He is the room itself.
He feels his body—his true body, the Noctusborn—expand, taking a shape no flesh should bear. He is ash, he is mist, he is teeth, and he is ravenous.
The first screams come while he still believes he can resist.
He cannot.
He feasts.
Not in the sense of killing. Killing would have been mercy. He devours—slowly, deliberately, while the victims live and scream with full agony. He feels every bite within himself, as though he consumes his own flesh. The blood is not sweet. It is hot, burning, as though it extinguishes him from within.
And still, he drinks.
A woman looks at him. Her eyes—Lysandra's eyes? No. Only the same color. The same shock. The same betrayal he never saw in his beloved's gaze, because she never had the chance to witness what he has become.
"Why?" the woman whispers.
He does not know.
He feeds on.
The voices merge into a chorus that forms no words, only sound. The sound of pain. Of tearing flesh. Of swallowing blood. Of hope choked before it can become prayer.
And then—silence.
He stands alone in a room full of bones. The cleanest bones he has ever seen. No blood clings to them. No flesh. As if something else fed here besides him.
Or as if he consumed something along with them that he did not notice.
Something that lived in the bones.
Awakening
Elandor opens his eyes.
His claws are clean. His breath is steady. No blood on his chin, no flesh between his teeth.
A dream, he tells himself.
But the taste. The taste remains. Not of blood. Of ash. Of something that once burned and now merely is.
He sits up. The darkness of his chamber is not absolute—a strip of moonlight falls through the shutters, and in this light, he sees his hands tremble.
Not from fear.
From memory.
The vision of the woman. The shadow behind her. The words she was not allowed to finish.
Why it always chooses those who—
What? Those who what?
He does not know. But he knows he should. That this knowledge lies somewhere within him, beneath layers of hunger and guilt and the constant, gnawing loss.
And the second dream. The hunger. The hundreds he—
No.
He did not devour them. It is a dream. A dream.
But if it was a dream, why can he remember every single bite? The resistance of the flesh. The temperature of the blood. The moment when life does not end but transfers—from them to him, like a gift he never asked for.
He rises. Walks to the window. Inhales the night air, scented with pine and distant fire.
And begins to speak.
They call it cruelty.
Because they possess no other word for decisions
they themselves would never dare to make.
I have spilled blood.
More than one lifetime should bear.
But blood is honest.
It does not scream for meaning—it flows when something ends.
He presses his claws against the windowsill. The wood splinters.
They speak of morality as though it were a law of the world.
Yet it is nothing more than an agreement among those
who hope never to have to decide.
Every peace they revere
is built upon violence another committed for them.
A pause. His breath hisses between his teeth.
I simply stopped denying that violence.
Chose where others hesitated.
Killed where others would have bargained,
and every hesitation would have demanded more dead than my choice.
He turns from the window. The moon casts his shadow upon the wall—long, too long for a human form.
They want kings who remain clean.
Gods who stay silent when injustice occurs.
Saviors who do not dirty their hands.
That is no virtue.
That is cowardice wearing beautiful words.
His voice does not break. It breaks through, growing harder, sharper.
They condemn the blood on my hands—
and sleep soundly because it does not stain theirs.
I carry their guilt,
because I know it would shatter them.
I will never find redemption for this—
and no song will ever carry my name.
He laughs. A sound without humor.
If this makes me a monster—
then so be it.
Monsters are needed
when the world grows too ugly for heroes.
The Void
The words fade. The void remains.
It grows. Expands with every breath he does not need. His body is lead, his mind mist. Birdsong, music, even the wind—all interference. Even the blood tastes of nothing. Of emptiness.
He speaks through the nights. Alone. As though she could hear.
"Lysandra."
The name hangs in the air, heavy as wet wool.
"If you could hear me. If you could feel what I feel."
He touches his chest with his claws. Feels nothing and yet feels the entire world.
"I miss you. Elenya. Lyrielle. I wish..."
His voice breaks. Only now does he notice how his body trembles. All of it, beyond his will.
"Sometimes I cannot even remember your name. Let alone your voice. Your face. Your scent."
He clenches his fists. The claws dig into his palms. No blood.
"I am afraid. Afraid of forgetting you entirely. Sometimes there is only silence where your name should be."
And sometimes, in very rare moments, he can feel her.
A breath. Behind him. Too close, yet impossibly far.
A whisper of air carrying his name, before he can grasp it.
Then nothing.
He turns. The chamber is empty. No one to be seen.
But when the moon falls through the shutters and his shadow casts upon the wall—he sees a second shadow beside his own. Smaller. The outline of a woman he knows and does not know.
When he blinks, she is gone.
When he screams, no one answers.
When he falls silent, he hears sometimes a sob. Not his own. From the direction of the shadow. From the direction where no one stands.
He has stopped reaching for it. The shadow retreats when he approaches. The sobbing silences when he seeks it.
But in the moments between waking and sleep, when his pain is greatest—
There, he hears something.
"Elandor..."
The voice is a breath, an echo, a knife between his ribs.
"Elandor, my beloved."
"Can you hear me?"
He freezes. Does not breathe. Cannot.
"I love you too. Above all."
"You are my sun."
"Through you, I can feel safe even in darkness."
Tears. He does not notice them.
"If you can hear me..."
A pause. Too long, yet too brief.
"...then you must let go, my beloved!"
"Let go at last..." A smile in the voice.
"We shall meet again in the next life!"
"This I promise you."
"Fortis mea tibi est."
"In virtute et fide te semper eligam."
The Pain
Whenever he hears his wife's voice, this infinite pain burns in his chest. Burning and suffocating at once. His claws grasp at empty air, as though reaching for her hand that is no longer there. Breath catches. Tears fall without his noticing.
But his heart beats again. Again. And again.
Though he should no longer possess one.
If it is not his—whose then?
And was this truly Lysandra? Or only the last remnant of himself?
He does not know.
Yet even when he hears his wife's voice and his heart begins to beat anew, this moment lasts only briefly. For every time he surrenders to his dark craving for flesh and blood, another part of him dies. He knows he has not much time left before his humanity finally expires.
He feels it. The loss. With every bite.
The mere thought makes his breath catch.
He gasps for air. Screams. Screams his fear and his pain, as loud as he can, into the room.
He knew he would one day lose his humanity—only when that moment would come, he did not know.
The Resolution
The void grows. The pain becomes unbearable. The longing consumes him faster than hunger.
So he reorders his craving.
No longer flesh. No longer blood.
Them.
Lysandra. Elenya. Lyrielle. The longing for them becomes the only drive that halts the decay.
But the clock ticks.
He feels it in his bones, in the ash that flows through his veins. A race against time, against himself, against the monster he becomes.
The thought will not release him.
Again and again, he returns to it.
And if time turns against him—
"Then I will tear the world to pieces."