“Again, make sure!” the leader shouted angrily, but as the man who still had her bow trained on Dio prepared to fire an arrow into his head, a vine shot up from the ground, yanking the weapon from his hand and smashing it into thousands of splinters with a crash.

  Dio barely noticed. His stomach felt disturbingly full, and blood now rose into his mouth, warm and bitter, triggering a choking gag reflex.

  “Leave him alone! You can’t just come here and murder our friends! We will never allow this!” Des shouted, but it sounded distant.

  Dio had never seen him this angry.

  “Heretic, heretic, a Lucid! He’s attacking!” the intruders screamed over one another, and lying on his side, Dio could just barely see the hostile men and women retreat as vine-like thickets burst from the ground everywhere. They crackled as they tore through the soil like oversized worms.

  Des, no. Please, run. Run away…

  He could barely move, still, he had to muster his strength.

  “RUN, DES, RUN!” Dio finally screamed, the pain nearly stripping him of consciousness.

  “I should have stayed a farmer, shouldn’t I, Dio? Why did I have to want more?” Des suddenly shouted, sweat standing on his brow.

  Dio fought, trying to push himself upright, but the intruders had already regained their composure.

  “Save Brela, Dio. By the Sun… PLEASE, SAVE BRELA! ALL OF YOU!” Des shouted, looking back at them as the vines slowly sank to the ground and uselessly stilled their movements.

  His features looked strangely young, yet he was still the same person. And so, to Dio, Des would always remain the old-looking, thoughtful man who trudged out to the fields every day, tending them, caring for them, harvesting them. The man who sat with him on a fallen tree trunk every evening and smiled when Brela made a joke, or gave a thoughtful answer when Dio once again asked one of his overly curious questions. The man who had welcomed him here ages ago and offered him a dwelling beside his own.

  With a whistling sound, a crude axe struck the back of his head, and two arrows burst from his chest. No scream tore from his lips, no howl, only a silence that this one terrible time was not born of contemplation, but because the Dream released him. He dissolved into whirring spirals that formed horrific patterns and gave off a dooming sound and no scent. They filled Dio with a terrible fear that would have driven him mad, if his mind had not already been flooded by pain that drowned out everything else and hurled him into a state of pure suffering.

  Inside him, the warmth that he had felt so close for so many hundred days was gone, the warmth that had reminded him of the beauty of everyday life and its small moments. The void Des left behind felt infinitely deep, and the blindness fed on it.

  Dio screamed, louder than he had ever screamed before. He almost forgot his own wound, because the pain in his mind was all that still existed for him.

  Somewhere far away, he dimly sensed someone hauling him up, trembling and shaken by sobs.

  Then chaos erupted. Screams echoed across the square, screams of pain and rage and agony and hatred, of fear and… courage.

  “PROTECT BRELA! HONOR HIS LAST WISH, AS HE WOULD HAVE HONORED OURS!” the people shouted again and again as they surged forward.

  As Dio was dragged away, flung from the square like a wet sack, he saw the others rush into the final fight without hesitation, unarmed and with resolute faces. The intruders charged as well, storming forward with loud shouts and tirades. Their archers hastily nocked new arrows and fired

  “HERETICS, WAKE THEM ALL, WAKE THEM! THEY ARE POSSESSED!” the leader screeched, struggling not to fall from her muldi before finally drawing a rusted blade and spurring forward.

  And the lights inside him went out, one after another, yet each of them seemed to flare brighter than ever before fading.

  “I… have to fight… I have to as well…” Dio rasped, heat burning in his forehead.

  “We have to get to Brela. Dio, we have to save her. Honor Des,” Yorm gasped from somewhere distant.

  But Dio barely noticed anymore. Inside him, nothingness spread, left behind by the torn connections as his friends were awakened.

  “Let me… go…” Dio coughed so weakly that Yorm could not possibly hear it over the screaming and the chaos.

  A jolt ran through him, and the arrow still lodged in his stomach drove deeper into his body, threatening to force its way further into his insides. Dio knew that if he gave in to the pull of rest now, it would be the last time, at least in this present existence. He already had no strength left. The blood warmed him in a sickening way, and his limbs were limp, slamming against the ground repeatedly.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Blurred, through a wall of despair and absolute panic, he saw people dissolving beside him as some of the intruders broke through and began to pursue him. There were not many of them, but in his current state, even one would be enough.

  Maybe… maybe this is better this way. Quickly. Then this feeling will be over, this ugly abyss opening up everywhere… Dio thought.

  Suddenly, he was released, but he barely noticed, as another connection tore, then a second one, this time far more devastating. They had been warmer, more familiar, some of the brightest stars in the night sky of his mind.

  Wes… Reab… farewell…

  “No, NO!” Yorm shouted as he scrambled back up. He must have fallen.

  “We almost have them, no one will get away!” a filthy voice called out from not far away.

  As Dio jerked his head around, he could see two young-looking men running toward them with makeshift spears and torches. They had burst out of one of the houses, one where they had likely just delivered what these beasts brought to everyone. A brutal awakening.

  They were close, far too close for Yorm and Dio to even come near Brela. He could feel that she had grown much weaker again, felt her light fading as well through the veil of pain that held him in a tight grip.

  “In… there…” Yorm gasped.

  Dio couldn’t turn around, and he didn’t know where he was. A few streets away from his hut, and Brela’s, and…

  Des…

  Please, save Brela…

  His words pierced up from the depths of Dio’s memories, cutting deeper than the arrow lodged in his insides. Des had trusted them. He had sacrificed himself to save Brela. And him.

  Now they would wake here, between the houses they had built with love and the gardens they had laid out with care. Beneath the Sun that Ray had made for them.

  “Dio, keep going, through the house, we have to…”

  Arrows whistled through the air, their hiss like that of an animal killing its helpless prey. Once again, Dio was yanked sideways, and something heavy and slack pressed down on him, stealing his sight.

  “Dio… I’m sorry, I couldn’t make it any farther. I had hoped I would. Thank you for everything. Thank you for making Daw what it was and for pulling us out of despair…” Yorm breathed beside his ear.

  Then the weight was gone, and an unpleasant tingling spread across Dio’s skin. He blinked, trying to make something out. But there were only swirling patterns, and the fabric jacket Yorm had been wearing just moments ago. The arrows lodged in its back clattered to the ground, still slick with the blood of the awakened. Less than thirty steps away, the two intruders charged toward him, with the archers behind them drawing again to finish him as well, trembling, fear in their eyes.

  Nausea welled up inside Dio, and his hand twitched uncontrollably against the house wall behind him. The wood was hard and uneven.

  Lot, I guess you didn’t sand it quite as well as you always said you did… Dio laughed inwardly as he began to retreat into his innermost self, even as he fought it with all his strength.

  The pull was powerful, but he wanted to be aware of it, to witness how he left the Dream. Des had stepped forward to face them, just like the others. In vain, in the end, but not cowardly. None of them had been cowards… never…

  His innermost self was almost as empty again as it had been when he first arrived here. Well, not entirely. Ray still shone brightly. He remembered her face and her smile, her golden hair and the gentle touch of her hand.

  “I promise you, I’ll wait here…” he slurred into the air.

  And he had waited…

  His hand felt cold, the wood lifeless. But… there was still warmth.

  There was Lot…

  Lot and Avee…

  Lot and…

  Dio blinked tiredly and turned his head.

  They were almost there, only ten feet away. Another arrow drilled into him beside the one already lodged in his stomach.

  Behind him on the wall, an intricate pattern had been worked into the wood. Flames and people, stories. Ambitions and ideas, all the thoughts and creations that had existed here, preserved in the house Lot had once built. The house where Avee had sewn her clothes.

  They were there in the wood. They were there, even though there was almost nothing left inside Dio now except exhaustion, endless exhaustion and pain. Their warmth showed Dio that they were truly somewhere else, but that they had left something behind here... in Daw.

  And the ground where he was lying on, slowly waking, barely holding on... He felt them, Lot and Avee. The others. All the shoes that had passed over it, always with the urge to get a new tool or with the joy that a dress was finished. He remembered, felt the people of Daw, who were now all gone and awakened, but who had left their wishes behind here.

  I always imagine that memories live inside clothes, Avee’s words echoed within him.

  But she had been wrong, Dio suddenly understood, as the blindness numbed him and slowly drowned the pain. He no longer had the strength to hold it back as well. And just as he had always felt, this house stirred the blindness. It was not just clothing that held and preserved the stories. It was everything.

  It was the house behind him, where Avee and Lot had preserved the things they understood, the things that mattered to them. It was the ground beneath him, drowning in his blood, the ground all the others had walked upon. It was the houses and gardens, the tools and animals, the grain fields and the nearby stretch of forest, the silos and the pens.

  The people of Daw had left their traces, and they would remain. Parts of them were still here, even if most of it was gone now. The people were Daw, and Daw was the people.

  A rage surged close by, trembling in the fabric of the Dream. Something terrible, vast and eternal.

  Brela. Brela had gotten up! Or what was left of her now that her greatest fears had become reality.

  “Why hasn’t he awakened yet?” a rough voice asked.

  “No idea, spear him,” another snapped, slightly panicked.

  They were unimportant. Small, insignificant beings who did not understand what a wonderful place this was. The impressions Dio had only vaguely sensed before suddenly crashed over him in full force. He felt someone lift a spear and aim it at him, but the blindness and the flood of impressions made it meaningless. Then he fell into the depths of what surrounded him, into what remained of the people who had been here.

  Daw plunged into him, and he plunged into Daw.

  And Dio understood.