Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sound that tears me from the depths isn't a scream. It's a gasp so sharp it feels like shards of ice ripping up my throat. I jackknife upright, lungs burning, sweat plastering my thin tank top to my skin. Like I've been dredged from the Mariana Trench.

Again.

God, not again.

It wasn’t a nightmare, not exactly. There were no monsters you could name, no frantic chases, no sensation of falling. Just pressure. Immense, crushing pressure, as if I were buried beneath the weight of dying stars.

At the center of it all was a stillness. A silhouette, darker than the void between galaxies, stood unmoving--radiating a loneliness so vast, so absolute, it pressed in around me like a hand closing around my heart. It wasn’t just sadness; it had weight. Presence.
And just before I woke, a name brushed the edges of that silence.

...Dr...

It vanished before I could grasp it. Gone like smoke. But the feeling lingers -- the crushing isolation, the impossible architecture, the terrifying sense of scale. It feels… foreign. Not my dream. Like I was… tuned into someone else's frequency. A broadcast from someplace impossibly vast and impossibly sad. What do you even call that?

“Fuuuuck,” I rasp, my voice a dry croak in the heavy silence of our shared Brooklyn apartment. Outside, the relentless July heat is already pressing against the windows while our ancient AC unit rattles pathetically. The city’s low thrum is just starting – garbage trucks, distant sirens, the bassline of another sleepless night bleeding into dawn.

A disgruntled mrroooow vibrates the mattress. Malka, my ancient, perpetually judgmental tortoiseshell, glares at me from the foot of the bed. Her golden eyes gleam reproachfully in the sliver of streetlight sneaking past the blinds. My existential crisis has disturbed her royal repose. Again.

“Sorry, Malks,” I whisper, the apology automatic, grounding. I shove the damp sheets aside. The worn wood floor is cool and blessedly solid under my bare feet. Five steps to the door. I fumble for the knob.

The hallway light is blinding after the gloom. I blink, squinting towards the other bedroom door. Still closed. Good. Chloe, my roommate, needs her sleep. She’s pulling double shifts at the hospital this week. The last thing she needs is me babbling about void-shaped loneliness and psychic broadcasts at 4:45 AM.

The walk to our galley kitchen feels like running a familiar gauntlet. I pass the overflowing shoe rack, filled mostly with Chloe’s sensible clogs, and then the tiny living room, which is completely overtaken by her anatomy textbooks and my sketchpads—each one filled with half-finished, slightly unsettling charcoal figures. The fridge hums its usual monotonous lullaby, and the greasy scent of last night’s shared Thai takeout still lingers faintly in the air. The microwave clock glares at me in harsh green digits: 4:47 a.m. I know sleep isn’t coming back. Malka appears at my feet, purring like a tiny engine and weaving figure-eights around my ankles. Her message is clear: feeding her is now my top priority.

The mundane ritual of scooping kibble into her chipped fish bowl helps a bit. See? Normalcy. I'm Cassie Clarke. Twenty-eight. Chronic insomniac with increasingly weird brain glitches. Stressed. Maybe finally cracking under the pressure of rent, crappy tips, and the gnawing fear that my art will never be more than a hobby.

I fill a glass with tap water, the cold shock momentarily scattering the clinging tendrils of that vast, strange sadness. Leaning against the counter, I take a long gulp, willing the chill to seep into my bones, to banish the phantom pressure on my chest. My reflection stares back from the dark window above the sink – pale face, dark circles like bruises under my hazel eyes, messy dark hair escaping its braid. Exhaustion etched deep. Just tired, I tell the ghost in the glass. Stress. Too much caffeine. Maybe low blood sugar? Need to eat better.

I raise the glass for another sip, my eyes catching my reflection again.

And my blood turns to ice.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, it wasn’t me.

Impossibly ancient. Profoundly sad, a sadness that felt older than mountains, deeper than oceans. Eyes that held not just exhaustion, but the weary light of extinguished suns and forgotten languages. Features sculpted with an ethereal, alien grace that was terrifyingly, heartbreakingly familiar. Like a face from a dream I couldn't quite recall.

The glass slips from my suddenly nerveless fingers. It hits the linoleum with a sound like the world cracking open. Ice-cold water and glittering shards explode across my feet and ankles.

I don’t feel the cold. I don’t feel the potential sting. My entire being is locked onto the window. Now it shows only my own familiar, wide-eyed, bloodless face, mouth agape in pure, silent terror, and the reflection of Malka cautiously sniffing the edge of the sparkling, watery wreckage.

My breath hitches, trapped in my throat. The city’s hum vanishes, replaced by a high-pitched whine drilling into my skull. The images from the nightmare – the crushing pressure, the breathing library, the silhouette radiating cosmic loneliness – surge back with violent force, colliding with the horrifying, impossible glimpse in the glass.

The thought is cold settling into my marrow. Something is very, very wrong.

Before I can process further, a door creaks open down the hall. Chloe’s sleepy voice, thick with exhaustion, cuts through the ringing silence.

“Cass? You okay? Sounded like something broke.” Footsteps pad towards the kitchen.

Panic, sharp and immediate, slices through the cosmic dread. Chloe can’t see me like this. Wild-eyed, trembling, standing in a puddle of water and broken glass like I’ve seen a ghost. Or worse. She’s practical. Scientific. She’ll think I’ve finally snapped. Or that I’m on something. I can’t explain the impossible face in the glass. I can barely comprehend it myself.

I force myself to move. To bend down. To grab paper towels from the roll with shaking hands.

“Yeah! Yeah, sorry, Chloe!” My voice sounds too high, too bright, painfully false in the charged air. “I'm just so… clumsy! Dropped my glass. Go back to sleep!”

I start mopping frantically, avoiding her gaze, focusing on the sharp edges glinting in the overhead light. Mundane danger. Tangible. Real. Anything to avoid the terrifying void lurking behind my own reflection, the crushing loneliness whispering from a place I shouldn’t know exists, and the horrifying certainty that whatever this is…

It’s only just begun.

Chapter Text

The cloying scent of burnt beans and steamed milk hangs thick in the air of ‘The Wakeful Bean’, a bitter counterpoint to the relentless July heat trying to melt the grimy front window. I wipe a stray strand of dark hair, plastered to my damp temple, with the back of my wrist. Probably left a charcoal smear. My sketchbook lies open beside the register like a guilty secret, a chaotic mess where half-formed figures wrestle with impossible geometries and the lingering, crushing weight of last night’s… whatever it was. Trying to capture it feels like.

Exhaustion is a physical thing, a leaden cape draped over my shoulders, making my bones ache and my eyes feel like they’re full of grit. Every blink scrapes. I'm just tired, I chant silently inside my skull.

“Double-shot oat-milk latte for Mike!” My voice rasps, betraying me despite the lukewarm water I choked down earlier. The guy grunts, grabs the cup, and vanishes back into the city’s sweltering thrum. I sag against the counter for a stolen second, the cool stainless steel a tiny blessing against the small of my back. The pre-lunch rush is a predictable tide of harried faces and overly specific orders, a numbing kind of relief. Between customers, my fingers find the nub of charcoal again, hovering over the swirling vortex of darkness I started hours ago. It’s pathetic. It doesn’t even come close to what I saw.

“Deep thoughts, Clarke?”

The voice, too close and too cheerful, makes me jump. Leo leans against the counter beside me, flashing a grin that probably works on some people. His apron is suspiciously clean, unlike mine, which is a Jackson Pollock of espresso splatters.

“Just trying not to pass out before my break,” I mutter, snapping the sketchbook shut.

“Rough night?” Leo pushes, his gaze lingering a beat too long. He’s been doing that more lately. Nice enough guy, maybe, but right now his easy charm feels like sandpaper on my raw nerves.

“Just the usual insomnia ,” I deflect, forcing a tight smile that feels like it might crack my face.

He chuckles, leaning in conspiratorially. “Well, if you ever need a distraction… I’m off at four. There’s this new-”

“Leo! Order up!” Javier’s bark from the espresso machine is a welcome interruption. Leo winks – actually winks – and saunters off to grab the drinks.

Fuuuuck. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. The air feels thick, charged. The buzzing fluorescents overhead seem suddenly louder, harsher. The sketchbook taunts me from the counter. I need… something. More beans for the grinder. Anything to get away from Leo’s vibes and the oppressive weight of my own failing attempts to draw the undrawable.

“Cover me for two secs, Javier?” I call out, already moving before he grunts his assent.

The relative gloom of the back room is a relief after the harsh front lights. It’s cramped chaos: sacks of beans stacked like sandbags, boxes of cups and lids, the industrial dishwasher chugging steam. The air smells of damp cardboard and stale coffee grounds. Sanctuary.

I head for the shelf where we keep the reserve beans, my steps heavy with fatigue. My brain feels like it’s full of static, the image of those ancient, sorrowful eyes flickering behind my own eyelids. Not mine. Not mine. The mantra does nothing. As I reach up for the heavy sack on the top shelf, my foot catches on the uneven edge of a loose floor tile I’ve cursed a hundred times before. I stumble forward, throwing out a hand instinctively to catch myself against the metal shelving unit.

Sssssk-

A sharp, bright pain lances through my palm. I yank my hand back. A thin, crimson line blooms across the fleshy pad below my thumb where it caught on a rough, protruding edge of the shelf bracket.

“Damn it!” I hiss, more annoyed than hurt. Stupid shelf. Stupid tile. Stupid exhaustion making me clumsy.

I fumble for the roll of paper towels near the sink, ripping off a sheet to press against the cut. The pressure stings. I close my eyes for just a second, leaning my forehead against the cool metal of the shelf unit, breathing through the minor shock. Just a scratch. Just clean it up. Get the beans. Get back out there. Be normal, Cassie. Just be-

The world tears.

Like reality itself is a thin film of ice, and I’ve just plunged through it. The damp cardboard smell vanishes, replaced by something utterly alien – dust older than stone, the ozone tang of distant lightning, the sweet decay of forgotten libraries, and beneath it all, a deep, resonant hum that vibrates in my very marrow. The cool metal against my forehead is gone. The oppressive heat vanishes.

My eyes fly open.

I’m not in the storeroom.

I stand on an impossible balcony carved from obsidian or night itself, overlooking a landscape that defies reason. Towers twist like petrified smoke towards a sky swirling with nebulae in colors that don't have names. Rivers of liquid starlight flow through valleys of crystalline trees that sing in a faint, haunting chorus. The scale is terrifying, vast beyond comprehension. This place breathes. It thrums with a life both ancient and immense.

I don’t have time to panic; he’s already here.

Not looking at me, sadly. Standing at the balcony’s edge, maybe thirty feet away, gazing out over his impossible realm. Tall, impossibly slender, clad in darkness that seems to shift and swirl like living ink. His hair is black as the void between stars, wild and framing a face of stark, inhuman beauty – sharp cheekbones, a blade of a nose, lips pressed into a line of profound, ancient melancholy. He radiates power, yes, a gravity that bends the very light around him, but it’s overshadowed by an aura of such crushing, absolute loneliness it steals my breath. It’s him. From my... Well from my dreams.

Dream.

The name echoes silently in the vast space, not my thought, but a truth resonating from the stones, the air, the swirling sky itself. Lord Morpheus. King of this impossible, breathing place.

He hasn’t turned. Doesn’t seem to sense me. Or perhaps I am less than a mote of dust in his perception. But I feel him. That vast, sad presence presses against me, familiar and terrifying. The cut on my palm throbs in time.

Then, like a rubber band stretched too far and snapping back--the smell of damp cardboard and stale coffee grounds slams into me. The industrial dishwasher’s steam hits my face. The fluorescent light buzzes overhead, painfully bright. The cool metal shelf is solid beneath my forehead. My hand is still pressed with the paper towel.

I gasp, staggering back, bumping into a stack of bean sacks. My legs feel like water. I stare wildly around the cramped, mundane storeroom. The obsidian balcony, the singing trees, the swirling nebulae – gone. Like a snuffed candle. Only the lingering scent of ozone and ancient dust in my nostrils feels real, and even that’s fading fast, replaced by the familiar staleness.

But the feel of him… the crushing weight of his loneliness… that lingers like a phantom limb. More real than the shelves, the beans, the cut on my hand. It was real. It was REAL.

“Cass? You okay back there?” Leo’s voice, laced with casual concern, drifts from the doorway. He’s leaning against the frame, watching me. Did he see me stumble? See the blood? Or just me standing there, pale and shaking like I’ve seen a ghost? Which, technically…

“Fine!” The word comes out too loud, too sharp. I look down at the blood-soaked paper towel clutched in my hand. Proof of the mundane injury that somehow became a portal. “Just… caught my hand on the stupid shelf. Again.”

He frowns, stepping closer.

“Ouch. Looks nasty. Want me to grab the first-aid kit?”

“No!” I snap, then soften it. “No, thanks, Leo. Really. It’s just a scratch. I’ll wash it out. Gotta grab these beans.” I grab the sack I came for, using it as a shield between us. My mind is reeling. The Dreaming. Lord Morpheus. It wasn’t a dream. It was a place. He’s real.

And somehow… connected to me.

Leo shrugs, unconvinced but apparently deciding not to push.

“Suit yourself. Don’t bleed in the espresso, yeah?” He flashes another grin and disappears back towards the front.

I lean against the sacks, closing my eyes for a second, trying to steady my breathing. The image of the Endless King is burned onto my retinas. The sheer scale of him. The feeling that somehow, impossibly, I recognized him. Or he recognized something in me? The thought is ice down my spine.

No more hiding, I think. No more pretending it’s insomnia. Whatever this is… I have to know. I look down at the cut. A tiny, mundane wound that opened a door to the impossible. Tonight. When I sleep. I have to find out tonight. I have to go back. The thought is terrifying. Thrilling. Utterly insane.

I take a deep breath, shoving the tremor down deep. I wash my hand quickly under the tap, slap a bandage from the kit over the cut, grab the beans, and head back to the front. The harsh light and noise hit me like a wall. Normalcy. A fragile illusion.

The line has dwindled. Just one customer waiting patiently at the counter. As I approach, dumping the beans near the grinder, I get my first proper look at him.

He’s… striking. Tall, impeccably dressed in a summer-weight linen suit the color of coffee, contrasting sharply with his skin. His posture is relaxed, confident. But it’s his face that holds attention. Handsome, certainly, with sharp cheekbones and a strong jaw. But it’s the smile that’s truly strange. Warm, wide, effortlessly charming, reaching eyes hidden behind sleek, dark sunglasses despite the shop’s interior gloom. There’s an easy charisma radiating off him, a magnetism that feels almost tangible. He could be a model, an actor, a very successful con artist. He leans slightly on the counter, completely at ease.

“Afternoon,” he says, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. Pleasant. Like warm honey. “Looks like you’ve had quite the morning.”

I force a professional smile, my mind still half in that obsidian balcony, my palm throbbing under the bandage. “You could say that. What can I get started for you?” My voice sounds steadier than I feel.

“Just a simple black coffee,” he says, that charming smile never wavering. “Large, as large as you can make it.” He chuckles softly, a rich, inviting sound.

I manage a weak chuckle in return, turning to grab a cup. Standard order. Simple. But something prickles at the back of my neck. A faint unease beneath the charm. Maybe it’s just the lingering shock. Maybe it’s the sunglasses indoors, hiding his eyes. Or maybe it’s the way his smile, for all its warmth, doesn’t quite seem to reach the stillness behind those dark lenses. He feels… curated. Like a performance.

“Long night?” he asks conversationally as I pour the steaming brew.

My hand barely trembles. “Something like that,” I murmur, sliding the cup across the counter. “That’ll be three twenty-five.”

He pulls out a crisp bill, his movements economical, graceful. “Keep the change,” he says, his smile deepening slightly. “Consider it hazard pay. Looks like you could use it.” His gaze flicks, almost imperceptibly, towards the bandage on my hand before returning to my face, hidden behind the sunglasses.

A tiny chill, unrelated to the Dreaming, traces down my spine. It feels less like kindness and more like… observation. Like he sees more than he should. But that’s impossible. He’s just a charming customer. One of hundreds.

“Thanks,” I say, forcing another smile, taking the money. My fingers brush his briefly. His skin is cool. Unnervingly so. “Name for the order?” The question was automatic, shop routine.

He paused for a fraction of a second.

"Corin."

"It'll be ready right up."

"Thanks Cassie."

I stopped short. Did I tell him my name?

But when I turn to check, he’s already facing away, scribbling something in his notebook.

I shake my head. Maybe someone else told him. Someone who came before. My memory hasn’t been great lately.

Tonight, I thought again, the resolve hardening into a cold, sharp point amidst the swirling confusion. I turned back to the espresso machine. I have to find out what’s happening to me. Tonight.

Chapter Text

By the end of the day, I’m running on caffeine, bored of pretending I’m fine, bored of holding it together. Everything feels too loud, too bright, too much. I’m over it. Over the measured responses, the careful movements, the illusion of control. I stood in a dream that cracked the world open, and now I’m steaming milk like any of this is normal.

Leo tries talking. Again. Something about the heat, or the annoying customer with the oat milk latte, or maybe just the sound of his own voice. My answers are grunts, single syllables, eyes fixed on the espresso stream. I can feel his frustration radiating, but I don’t have the energy to care. Javier, bless his grumpy soul, just shoves a stale croissant towards me during a lull.

“Eat something, Cass. You look like death warmed over.”

I manage a weak grimace that might pass for a smile. Death warmed over is optimistic for how I feel. I feel hollowed out, scraped raw, vibrating with a terror that’s somehow tangled up with a terrifying, electric pull. Tonight. I'm finding our the truth, tonight.

Closing time crawls. The last customer, a woman who orders an iced tea with seventeen modifiers, finally takes her cup and vanishes into the sweltering dusk.

“Right!” Leo chirps, way too loud, already untying his suspiciously clean apron. “That’s us done. Night, Javi!” He flashes a grin at Javier, who just grunts, already buried in the cash register’s rhythmic clatter.

I grab a rag, attacking the already-clean steam wand with desperate focus. The heat on my skin, the repetitive scrubbing – tiny anchors. I just want to get out.

“Cass?” His voice is suddenly too close. Right beside me. I didn’t hear him move over the register noise. He leans against the counter, hip cocked, trying for casual. It feels like an invasion. “You sure you’re okay? You’ve been… quiet.”

The rag twists in my grip. “Just tired, Leo.” I don’t look up. Scrub harder. “Long day. Long week.”

"Yeah, tell me about it." He shifts closer, lowering his voice like we’re sharing some secret. My skin crawls.

"Look, about earlier..." he says, tone dipping into something softer. "My offer still stands. That new rooftop bar? I heard it has great views, solid drinks. Could be good for you, y’know? Shake it off, blow off some steam."

His fingers brush my forearm.

Did he offer that? Maybe. He talks so damn much I barely register half of what comes out of his mouth.

I jerk my arm back, nearly knocking over a bottle of caramel syrup. The contact scrapes every raw nerve I’ve got.

"Leo, no. Thanks, really, but no."

I finally meet his eyes, forcing steel into my voice while my pulse punches against my ribs.

"I appreciate it, but I’m just not… interested. And I really, really need to crash."

His easy smile cracks. Annoyance flashes in his eyes.

“Come on, Cassie. Don’t be like that. One drink? What’s the harm? You barely give anything a chance.” He takes a half-step closer. His cheap cologne, usually just background noise, floods my senses – cloying, aggressive. He’s in my space. “You’re always so wound up. Let me help you unwind.”

The dismissal bounced right off him. If anything, my refusal seems to harden something in his gaze. That prickle of unease blooms into full-blown alarm, adrenaline slicing through the exhaustion. I take a step back, my hip bumping the sink. Trapped.

“Leo, I said no. Please respect that.” My voice is tight wire.

His jaw clenches.

“Respect? I’m just trying to be nice, Cass. You’re always so… standoffish. What’s the big deal?” He moves forward again, his hand lifting, not quite touching me this time, but hovering. Possessive. “You need to lighten up.”

My breath hitches. The space behind the counter shrinks, walls closing in. Javier’s back is turned, absorbed in the till. The buzzing fluorescents scream.. I open my mouth, unsure if a scream or a whimper will come out.

“I believe,” a smooth, cultured baritone cuts through the tension like a knife through steam, “the lady said no.”

Leo and I snap our heads towards the front. He’s there. Just inside the door. It didn’t chime. Tall, impossibly put together in that coffee-coloured linen suit, sleek dark sunglasses hiding his eyes even in the shop’s dimming light. Leaning against the doorframe with unnerving stillness, a faint, pleasant smile on his lips.

Recognition hits me. That dude ordered a coffee earlier. What was his name? Corin something. It's the man who knew my name. Relief floods me for a nanosecond, instantly drowned by a deeper, colder wave of dread. He didn’t leave. He waited. Why?

Leo recovers first, puffing out his chest, his anger finding a new target.

“We’re closed, pal,” he snaps, jerking a thumb towards the door. “See the sign? We are having a private conversation.”

Corin’s smile doesn’t waver. He pushes off the doorframe and glides further into the shop.

He ignores Leo completely, his sunglass-shielded gaze fixed solely on me. A spotlight I don’t want.

“Closed? My sincerest apologies.” His voice is warm honey, dripping with a false concern that freezes my blood. “I merely observed a distressed young lady through the window and felt compelled to ensure her well-being.” He tilts his head slightly. “You seemed… distinctly uncomfortable, Cassie.”

Hearing my name from him, here, now, feels like a violation. Leo’s eyes narrow, darting between me and Corin.

“You know this guy, Cass?”

“He was a customer earlier,” I force out, my voice thin and strained. “Mr. Corin. We’re fine. Really. You should go.” Please go. Please just go.

“Ah, ‘Mr. Corin’. So formal.” Corin chuckles, a rich sound devoid of any real warmth. He stops a few feet from the counter, his presence sucking the air out of the room. “But as your persistent colleague seems congenitally unable to grasp the simple concept of ‘no’…” He tilts his head towards Leo, the smile turning glacial. “…perhaps my intervention is regrettably necessary.”

Leo bristles, stepping away from me towards Corin. Full alpha posturing. “Listen, buddy, I don’t know who you think you are, but this is none of your damn business. Cass and I are just talking. So why don’t you take your fancy suit and fuck right off?”

Javier finally looks up, his face hardening.

"Leo, that’s enough, don't get mad at the customer. Sir you should go, and now I need you to leave too—out. Now."

“He’s not a customer, Javi!” Leo shouts, jabbing a finger at Corin. “He’s just some creep hanging around! And he,” the finger swings wildly back towards me, “is being hysterical!”

Hysterical. The exhaustion, the terror of the Dreaming, the violation of Leo’s pushiness, the sheer, crawling wrongness of Corin’s reappearance – it all combusts into white-hot fury.

“Get out, Léo!” The snarl rips from my throat, raw and startling. "Can everyone just go the fuck out?!”

Leo’s face purples. Humiliation and rage war in his eyes. He takes a menacing step towards Corin, shoulders hunched. “You heard her! Get out before I make you!”

Corin sighs. A sound of profound, theatrical weariness. “Such tiresome aggression.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t tense. Just stands there, radiating unnerving calm. “Threats are so… inelegant. And rarely achieve their desired effect.”

“Oh yeah?” Leo lunges. Not at Corin directly, but towards the condiment station. He grabs the heavy ceramic sugar shaker, hefting it like a club. “Let’s see how elegant this is, asshole!”

“LEO! NO!” Javier roars, starting to move, but he’s too far, too slow.

Time stretches, turns syrupy. I see Leo’s arm draw back, muscles bunching, the shaker aimed at Corin’s perfect head. I see Corin’s pleasant smile vanish, replaced by an expression of utter, chilling indifference. Like watching an insect.

Then, Corin moves.

One instant he’s standing calmly; the next, he’s inside Leo’s guard, impossibly close. His hand shoots out – not a fist, but an open palm clamping around Leo’s wrist holding the shaker. The movement is too fast to track. Leo gasps, more shock than pain, his forward momentum freezing instantly. The shaker hangs uselessly.

“I did warn you,” Corin murmurs. His voice drops. The honey is gone, replaced by something cold and sharp as shattered obsidian. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

Leo struggles, yanking at his trapped arm, face contorted with rage and disbelief. “Let GO of me, you FREAK!”

Corin’s head tilts. A predator examining trapped prey. “Very well. Since you insist.”

He doesn’t release Leo’s wrist. With his free hand, he reaches up. Slow. Deliberate. Theatrical. He unhooks his sleek, dark sunglasses.

My breath stops.

Where eyes should be, nestled in the sculpted bone of his handsome face, are teeths. Tiny, sharp, gleaming white teeth. Like miniature, hungry jaws embedded in his skull. They glisten obscenely under the harsh, buzzing fluorescent light.

Leo’s scream isn’t human. It’s a high-pitched, animal shriek ripped from his very core. His struggle ceases instantly. He’s frozen, rigid, eyes wide and glued to the monstrous sockets. His mouth opens and closes, soundless.

Javier, frozen halfway around the counter, doesn’t scream. He just stares. His face is chalk-white, mouth hanging open, the till forgotten. Utter, paralyzed horror.

The world fractures. The buzzing fluorescents become a deafening, physical roar inside my skull. The smell of coffee turns acrid, metallic – the scent of terror. The image of those teeth-eyes – the impossible, visceral wrongness of them – burns into my retinas, searing through my mind. It overlays the haunting beauty of the Dreaming, twisting it into something grotesque, nightmarish. It’s not just the sight; it’s the wave that hits me. A palpable tsunami of predatory hunger, chilling amusement, and pure, wrongness radiating from Corin. It presses against my skin, my bones, my very soul.

My knees buckle. The last thing I see is Leo’s petrified face, slack-jawed, staring into those grinning teeth-sockets.

Then… nothing.

I feel an immense, silent pressure, like deep ocean water. Cold, but not unpleasant.

I open my eyes.

Not to the storeroom’s grimy floor. Not to Javier’s shocked face.

I’m lying on cool, smooth black stone. Obsidian. Above me, a sky swirls with nebulae in colours that have no names – impossible purples, aching greens, a blue so deep it sings. Towers twist like frozen smoke towards that impossible sky. The air thrums with ancient life.

The Dreaming.

I push myself up on trembling arms. Disoriented. Nauseous. The memory of Corin’s teeth-eyes is a fresh, acid burn in my mind. How…?

A figure stands at the edge of the impossible balcony, maybe thirty feet away. Tall, impossibly slender, clad in shifting darkness. Hair black as the void, wild. He gazes out over his realm, radiating power and an unfathomable, crushing loneliness.

He turns. Recognition, deep and unsettling, flickers within their depths.

Lord Morpheus. The King of Dreams.

And he’s looking directly at me.

"Ah sorry my Lord, I think I scared the daylight out of her," says a deep voice behind me.

I'm going to die. I'm so, so going to die.

Chapter Text

The cool obsidian bites into my palms as I push myself up.

The Dreaming. Again.

But this arrival wasn’t marked by blood this time around, it was terror. Pure, unfiltered terror of him. The memory crashes in: the smooth slide of sunglasses, the obscene reveal beneath, rows upon rows of tiny, gleaming teeth buried in the sockets of that handsome face.

Nausea surge.

My head snaps up, muscles screaming in protest. He’s there. Exactly where he stood before.

At the very edge of the impossible balcony, carved from night itself, overlooking a landscape that defies reason. Tall, impossibly slender, a silhouette of shifting darkness that seems to drink the ambient starlight. Hair like spilled ink, wild and untamed against the cosmic backdrop.

Lord Morpheus. Dream of the Endless. King of this impossible, breathing realm. He’s turned away from the vista, his profile stark against the swirling nebulae. Now, he faces me fully. Those ancient eyes, the colour of distant galaxies viewed through tears, fix on me.

"You returned."

His voice isn’t loud, it doesn’t need to be. It resonates like stone grinding deep in the heart of the world, filling the vast silence without effort. I feel it in my teeth, in the marrow of my bones.

Panic, primal and overwhelming, overrides awe. The image of the Corinthian’s teeth-eyes is seared onto my retinas, superimposed over the King’s regal form. Instinct screams: He’s coming! He’s out there! I scramble backwards, crablike, my bandaged palm scraping harshly against the rough obsidian. Pain flares, sharp and grounding, but it doesn’t stop me. Pure terror fuels the movement. I don't think.

I lurch behind Morpheus’s slender frame, pressing myself flat against the cool, unyielding stone of the balcony wall, desperately trying to make myself small, invisible. I put his imposing, dark figure squarely between me and this walking nightmare staring at us, amused. The absurdity hits me – hiding from one nightmare behind the King of all Dreams.

"Him!" The words tear from my throat, as I point to him. My voice cracks on the name. "Corin! He… he has teeth! For eyes! Rows of them! He saw me! He knew my name!" The panic makes the words tumble over each other, shrill and desperate. "He was waiting! He made me faint! He’s coming!"

Morpheus doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. Well, he doesn't seem panicked in the slightest.

"Corin?" The name hangs in the charged air, sounding absurdly small, painfully human, utterly inadequate for the horror it signifies. It feels like blasphemy spoken in this place, the lord looks at me, confusion and amusement on his face.

Corin figure steps forward. Predatory grace defines every movement. .

"Ah, yes." The figure purrs, the voice the same smooth, cultured baritone, but resonating differently here. Deeper. Fuller. Laced with an underlying hunger that vibrates unpleasantly in my chest. He executes a bow, more a tilt of the head and shoulders, directed towards Morpheus’s back. "My Lord. Forgive the… informality, it is the name I gave her."

He straightens, tilting his head slightly, the blank lenses of his sunglasses seeming to focus unerringly on me, cowering behind the King’s dark form. A shiver races down my spine. He knows I’m there.

"Our charming guest seems to have abbreviated me." The smile widens, showing a flash of perfect, disturbingly human teeth. "I am the Corinthian, darling. I am a nightmare"

The King hasn't moved, hasn't acknowledged the Corinthian's presence beyond that initial, silent reception. He remains a dark pillar between us.

"Well, duh," I choke out from behind Morpheus, the sarcasm a thin, desperate shield over the raw terror threatening to consume me. My voice shakes violently, betraying me completely. "Teeth? For eyes? Yeah, ‘nightmare’ kinda covers it. Big time. Understatement of the fucking millennium."

I force myself to stare at the blank, reflective lenses of his sunglasses, the horrifying image beneath them burning fresh and acid-bright in my mind. His predatory amusement radiates from him, a palpable wave of cold menace delight that thickens the air, making it hard to breathe.

The Corinthian laughs.

"Perceptive. And refreshingly… blunt. Hey my lady, you and I are going to be great friends I think." He takes another casual step forward, stopping just inside the balcony proper, well within striking distance if he chose. He folds his arms loosely across his chest, the picture of relaxed menace. "Though the fainting? A tad dramatic, even for my admittedly theatrical tastes. Mortals truly are such fragile things. One little peek beneath the surface…" He makes a dismissive gesture with one elegant hand. "...and the whole structure just… collapses."

Morpheus remains still as a carven idol. t thickens, grows colder, charged with a silent, gathering storm. The faint scent of ozone, previously just a background note, intensifies sharply, stinging my nostrils. The deep hum of the Dreaming seems to drop in pitch, becoming more resonant, more present. His gaze, fixed on some distant point beyond the Corinthian (or perhaps focused inward), hasn't shifted. But the slight furrow between his dark brows deepens, almost imperceptibly.

"You brought her here." The words are flat. Devoid of inflection, yet carrying the weight of an anvil dropped onto silk. It's an accusation.

The Corinthian spreads his hands wide, a pantomime of wounded innocence.

"Me? My Lord, I protest. She fainted, quite spectacularly, I might add. In the waking world. "

He shrugs,fluid, practiced-insincere.

"Her terror… it simply tore a little seam in the fabric. A consequence of her unique sensitivity, perhaps?"

His sunglass-shielded gaze flicks toward me again, though I’m still hidden.

"I merely observed the transition. Call it scholarly interest, wanted to ensure the lady landed safely within the realm."

His smile returns, all teeth and threat.

"Wouldn’t want our intriguing little mystery damaged before we unravel the why of her, would we? She seems… connected."

Before I can scream that he’s lying, that he caused it, that he stalked me, Morpheus speaks again. His voice hasn't risen, but the pressure in the air increases tenfold. The swirling nebulae overhead seem to churn faster.

"Her connection is not your concern, Corinthian." The name is a whip-crack. "I told you to watch over her, not interact with her."

"Ah, apologies my Lord."

"Leave us."

"As my Lord commands." The smooth baritone holds a new edge, a sliver of ice.

Morpheus doesn’t deign to reply.

The Corinthian holds the gaze for a heartbeat longer than is wise. Then, the charming mask snaps back into place, brittle as glass. He takes a deliberate step back, then another, melting smoothly into the deeper shadows pooling near the archway. He doesn't vanish, but recedes, becoming a watching silhouette, a sense of focused, hungry attention still radiating from him.

"See you soon, Cass."

The immediate pressure in the room eases—but not by much. The King’s attention shifts back to me, full force. I’m still pressed against the wall, shaking. The encounter with the Corinthian has left me scraped raw, nerves frayed, every sound registering too loud, too sharp. I’m painfully aware of the nightmare still lingering, just beyond sight.

Morpheus takes a single, silent step toward me. It’s not a large movement, but the space between us collapses. The castle around us holds its breath.

"You do not appear surprised," he says, voice low, even.

I blink at him, heart pounding.

"I’ve been here before."

His head tilts slightly. "How?"

"I… I don’t know. Dreams, I thought. I never remembered much. But sometimes I’d wake up with the shape of this place still in my bones. The arches. The sky. That door." I motion faintly toward the towering entrance behind him. "I thought I was just imagining it. That it was a… dream of a dream."

"When?"

"I don’t know. A few times. Over the years. More lately. I thought it was just recurring dream logic."

He studies me—quiet, still. Then, softly: "Humans come to the Dreaming every night. But they do not come inside my palace. Not without purpose. Not without invitation."

I say nothing.

"Do you know why you're here?" he asks.

There’s something behind the question. Expectation.

"I don’t," I admit. "I really don’t."

For a moment, he says nothing. But something subtle changes in his expression. The weight in the air doesn’t lift—it just flattens. Less anticipation now. More… disappointment?

He takes another step closer. The rest of the Dreaming seems to fall away.

"What did you see," he asks, voice grave, "before the cut? Before the nightmare intruded upon your waking world?"

The shift rattles me. I flounder under the weight of his focus.

"See? I…" I search for the scattered pieces. "It was… dark. Not just absence-of-light dark. Thick dark. There were shapes moving in it, impossible shapes. Geometry that hurt to look at. Angles that folded in on themselves, wrong in a way I couldn’t explain."

I close my eyes. The sketchbook lines flash across my vision, chaotic, desperate attempts to capture something uncapturable.

"A weight pressing down. Like the whole sky was collapsing. Or something vast was breaking. Or… being born." I shake my head. "It felt ancient. And… sad. Profoundly, unbearably sad. Like grief carved into the foundation of everything."

I open my eyes, meeting his. I want him to understand. I need him to.

"I tried to draw it. For weeks. Maybe longer. It always came out as scribbles. Terrified, furious scribbles."

"Why draw it?" he asks. His gaze flicks, almost imperceptibly, toward my bandaged hand.

"Because I had to!" I say. "Because it was there. Behind my eyes, all the time. In the silence. In the noise. I couldn’t ignore it." My voice is shaking. "Because it felt real. Realer than anything else in my life. More real than my own name. More real than the heat outside. Like a message. A wound. Something… important."

I meet his gaze. "Even though it scared the hell out of me. Because it scared me. I had to try to understand it."

"Important to whom?" he asks, quieter now. The words slide in like a knife beneath the ribs.

"I… I don’t know!" I burst out, my voice cracking under the pressure. "To me? To whatever was pressing in? To something out there!" I throw my hands out at the balcony, the sky, the impossible realm that pulses with quiet, ancient power. "I just felt it. Like gravity. Like something I was being pulled toward without a choice."

He takes another step.

Now he’s close enough that I can feel the Dreaming itself bending around him.

I look up into his eyes—those endless, star-strewn depths—and feel the weight of his expectation settle on me like gravity. He’s not asking all of this because he doesn’t know.

He’s asking to see if I do.

The silence stretches, suffocating. Then, a new sound. Soft, deliberate footsteps on the obsidian. Calm. Practical. Cutting through the cosmic tension like a knife through fog.

Neat, dark robes that whisper against the stone. Close-cropped hair, tidy. Spectacles perched on a nose that speaks of meticulous attention to detail.

She walks forward, her steps measured and quiet, stopping a respectful distance from Morpheus. She dips her head in a gesture of deep respect that transcends mere formality.

"My Lord," she says, her voice clear, like the turning of well-ordered pages.

Her intelligent gaze sweeps past the King, landing on me. Concern, deeply assessing, flickers in her eyes behind the spectacles. She takes in my pallor, my trembling, the way I seem frozen under the King’s gaze and the lingering terror of the shadowed nightmare.

"Forgive the intrusion, my Lord," she says, her voice calm, laced with quiet concern. She turns to me with a small nod. "Hello, Cassie. I’m Lucienne, the Librarian of the Dreaming."

Right, make sense.

"She’s in shock," she says. "With your permission, my Lord, I’d like to move her to one of the quiet chambers. The Gardens, perhaps. Somewhere she can rest."

He looks at me once more, then nods.

"Take her away."

Chapter Text

Lucienne’s steady grip on my elbow is the only thing keeping me from collapsing face-first onto the path beneath us, something that looks disturbingly like compressed moonlight.

“Steady now, my lady,” Lucienne says, her voice calm and reassuring. “It’s just a little further.”

We step through an archway woven from vines thicker than my arm, dripping with star-shaped flowers that smell like… well, nothing on Earth. The air shifts instantly, it's like stepping into a perfect spring morning after months of Brooklyn winter.

And then I see it.

“Holy shit,” I breathe, stopping dead.

The landscape unfolds around me, so breathtaking it makes parks and botanical gardens feel like a joke. Crystal trees scrape a sky swirling with colors that almost hurt to look at, while flowers the size of dinner plates pulse with their own inner light. Rivers of pure, liquid silver wind lazily through moss so soft it practically begs to be napped on.
Lucienne adjusts her glasses. A tiny, almost smug smile touches her lips.

"Yes. He thought you might appreciate it.”

He. Morpheus. He thought about what I’d like? A weird shiver runs down my spine – half leftover terror, half something else entirely.

“Yeah,” I say. “I really do appreciate it.”

She gives a soft, polite chuckle.

“This way, my lady. Somewhere quieter, so you can recover,” Lucienne says gently, guiding me down the pearlescent path. Her explanations about the Dreaming are maddeningly vague, delivered with the poise of someone reciting ancient law. “The Dreaming offers sanctuary to those who find their way here,” she tells me. “Its boundaries are respected by all who dwell within.”

“Boundaries?” I echo. “Does that means Teeth-for-Eyes McSunglasses won't come here”

Lucienne’s expression softens with something close to regret.

“I’m sorry he frightened you, my lady. I’m sure he meant well, or thought he did. He wanted to help.”

I glance sideways at her, incredulous. “You know him?”

“Well… yes, he is one of us. He’s not all that bad. I swear. You're as safe as you can be here, Lord Morpheus protects his guests.”

“Safe,” I mutter, unconvinced.

We stop before a small pavilion, tucked just off the path. It doesn’t look built so much as grown, as if the entire structure had been coaxed from a single, enormous pearl. There’s a natural elegance to it, smooth and curved like water-worn stone, simple yet impossibly refined. Weirdly calming, in the way dreams sometimes are without needing to make sense.

Inside, there’s a low table set in the center, and beside it, a single cushion that looks suspiciously comfortable. And on the table...

“My sketchbook?” I lunge for it before I can stop myself. The familiar, battered cover. My half-used charcoal sticks. Beside them sits a small, unassuming clay pot. "What is this?"

“For your hand, my lady,” Lucienne says.

I look down. The jagged cut from the coffee grinder is still hurting under my bandage.

“The salve,” she explains patiently, like talking to a slow child, “apply a little. It'll help.”

“Magic cream. Got it.” I scoop out a tiny bit. It smells faintly of mint and cold stone. Rub it onto the marked skin. Instantly, a wave of icy calm washes up my arm, numbing the ache.

Lucienne nods.“Take some time to rest and draw,” she says as she turns, already moving with quiet composure, “I’ll return shortly to check on you.”

“Lucienne?” The question blurts out before I can stop it. She pauses, looking back.

“Why? Why the sketchbook? Why the cream? Why… any of this? Why am I even here?” The ‘He thought you might like it’ isn’t cutting it anymore for me.

She considers me for a long moment. Her gaze is kind but impenetrable.

“You are here because the Lord Dream willed it.”

The deep quiet of the place wraps around me, I hear nothing, no sirens, no Chloe’s snores, no Malka’s judgmental stare. Just... silence. My nerves are still buzzing beneath the salve’s chill, but sketching is second nature, my strange little therapy, the thing that always makes everything better, and sometimes much worse. Classic Cassie.

I flop onto the cloud-cushion and flip open my sketchbook, forcing myself to ignore the urge to draw nightmare teeth or galaxies for eyes. My fingers itch for the familiar scratch of charcoal, so I grab a stick and focus on a nearby crystal branch. Its angles are all wrong, fracturing light in ways that shouldn’t be possible, but I start to map its lines anyway.

The branch twitches. Just a fraction. Like it subtly adjusted its angle towards me.

I freeze.

“Okay, Cassie.” I shift my focus to a glowing flower nearby, shaped like a delicate blue lantern. Start sketching its weird, overlapping petals.

I look up. The flower is completely closed. Tight shut. Like a fist.

I look back at my half-finished sketch. Look up again. Still closed.

“You little weirdo,” I mutter, a reluctant grin tugging at my lips. On impulse, I stare hard at a different flower, big and velvety purple like royal robes. It sits there, indifferent. I drop my gaze, focus on capturing its lush folds on the paper. Quick glance up.

The damn thing has turned. Subtly, but undeniably and is now presenting its absolute best side to me.

A laugh bursts out of me, sharp and sudden in the profound quiet.

“Seriously? Are you posing?” I wave my charcoal stick at it.

The garden just hums softly in response, alive, and somehow reacting to me and my stupid scribbles. It’s not scary anymore, at least not right now. It’s… bizarrely flattering, and completely insane. The icy calm from the salve sinks deeper, dragging a heavy wave of exhaustion with it until my head feels like lead. I lean back against the cool, smooth pearl wall, eyes drifting shut before I can stop them.

The silence around me thickens and suddenly I’m not just remembering. I’m there. The Dreaming is showing it to me, rebuilding the moment with terrifying clarity, like it's peeling it from the back of my mind and laying it bare around me.

I’m seven years old again, lying stiff under too-thin blankets in a room swallowed by darkness. Mom’s gone. The hallway light is off. The silence is crushing, heavy enough to press against my ribs, there is something outside, lurking, coming for me. But I know it will not reach it, nor harm me.

For it's here.

It sits beside my bed, imagined with perfect clarity and held together by the weight of the dark, carved from shadow. Perfectly still, watching with quiet attention. The presence is calm, grounding, as if it’s meant to be there, woven into the silence like a constant I’d always known.

I remember it clearly, every detail etched into me. I kept it to myself, never shared it with Chloe or anyone else. It felt real in a way that defied explanation, like putting it into words would strip it of its weight, make it feel smaller than it was.

I remember whispering into my pillow one night, clutching my threadbare teddy bear with both hands, absolutely certain: He keeps the bad dreams away.

My eyes snap open in the present, the garden spinning back into place around me, and a sickening realization hits.

My voice comes out shaky, barely more than breath. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

Because I now recognize that shape, I saw him less than ten minutes ago. Lord Morpheus.

I scramble to my feet, sketchbook clutched to my chest.

Thrum.

Before I can say or do anything a vibration starts deep in the pearl floor beneath me. My heart jackhammers against my ribs.

Outside the pavilion, Lucienne stands frozen. She hadn’t gone far, just paused near one of those impossible singing trees. Now, she’s still. Her head isn’t tilted towards the tree, or the sky, or me. It’s tilted down, intently, towards the pearly stones of the path. All her librarian calm is gone, replaced by a sharp, focused alertness. Her lips are pressed into a thin line. She doesn’t look scared, exactly. More… deeply, professionally concerned. Like a head librarian who just heard the unmistakable, ominous crack of a foundational support beam deep in the stacks. She doesn’t glance my way.

“Lucienne?” My voice comes out thin, strained. “What… what was that?”

She finally turns. Her expression is carefully schooled back into calm, but the tension around her eyes remains.

“Nothing important I'm sure. Please, try to rest.”

“Nothing important?” I stare at her, incredulous. “That felt like the planet burped!”

“The Dreaming is vast and ancient,” she replies, evading smoothly. She starts walking back towards me, her pace measured. “Its structures are complex. Sometimes, our Lord makes adjustments.” She stops just outside the pavilion entrance.

Lucienne watches me for another moment, her expression unreadable.

“I will return soon,” she repeats, softer this time. Then she turns and walks away, her sensible shoes silent on the luminous path. She doesn’t look down again, but her shoulders are stiff.

I’m alone. Again.

I stare at the blank page. The tremor’s echo still vibrates in my bones, a counterpoint to the salve’s artificial chill. Lucienne’s evasion hangs in the air, thick as the garden’s perfume. Resonates. What the hell does that mean? Am I some kind of tuning fork for cosmic indigestion?

My gaze drifts back to the Velvet Petunia. It’s still angled perfectly, oblivious to the existential shudder beneath us.

“Okay,” I murmur, forcing my charcoal stick towards the paper. My hand’s still shaky. The first line is wobbly, capturing the curve of a petal. I glance up. The flower hasn’t moved. Good. Maybe the garden’s as freaked as I am. Or maybe it’s just waiting.

I focus harder, blocking out the lingering dread, the memory of the Corinthian’s teeth, the thrum. Just the line. The shape. The absurdity of drawing a sentient flower in a sentient garden while sitting in a giant pearl after meeting the literal King of Dreams. A hysterical giggle bubbles up in my throat. I squash it.

Then, the faintest tremor. Not from below, but from the paper.

I freeze. Look down. The charcoal line I just drew… shimmers. Just for a fraction of a second. Like heat haze off asphalt. I blink. It’s solid again.

I risk another glance at the flower. It’s still there. Still posing. Unconcerned. Maybe I imagined the shimmer.

I go back to the drawing, attacking it with more force. Less observation, more exorcism. The lines get darker, messier. I capture the ruffled edge of the petal, the way it seems to drink the light. Scratch, scratch, scratch.

Thrum.

Deeper this time. Longer. A low groan that seems to rise up through the cushion, into my spine. My hand jerks, dragging a thick, ugly smear across the page.

“Dammit!” I hiss, staring at the ruined petal.

Outside, Lucienne is nowhere to be seen.

I look back at my ruined sketch. The smear is dark, chaotic. And then… it moves, the thick charcoal line seems to sink into the paper, spreading like ink in water, darkening the area around it. Tendrils of shadow seep out from the central smear, creeping across the page towards the other, carefully drawn elements.

“What the actual…” I whisper, recoiling.

The slammed book echoes in the quiet. Too loud. The humming silence of the garden feels brittle now.

The memory of the shape in the dark crashes back, amplified by the fresh fear. Not just a comforting shadow now. A silhouette linked to this. To the King who banished nightmares, whose realm just groaned like a living thing in pain. My imaginary friend. Morpheus.

‘He keeps the bad dreams away.’

A child’s desperate belief. But what if it wasn’t just belief? What if he did? What if that silent presence beside my seven-year-old self wasn’t imagination, but… duty? Protection? Why? Why me?

I open the sketchbook again, slowly. The page is calm. The creeping shadow is gone. Just my messy drawing of a flower and one ugly charcoal smear. It looks Normal. Well, as normal as anything gets here.

I push myself up, legs still wobbly but fueled by fresh panic. The pavilion suddenly feels less like a sanctuary and more like a gilded cage. I need to move. I need to know. Staring at the swirling sky isn't cutting it.

I step out of the pavilion.

"Lucienne?" I call out, my voice swallowed by the immense space. No answer. Just the watchful stillness. "Hello? Anyone?"

Silence.

Right. Plan B: Find the Librarian. Or find a way out. Or find something that doesn't make my skin try to crawl off my bones. I start walking, choosing a path at random – one leading away from the pavilion, deeper into the impossible foliage. The pearly stones are cool under my feet. I realize I'm still in my stupid Wakeful Bean apron and coffee-stained jeans.

Ahead, the path forks.

My feet stop. Every survival instinct screams turn around, go back to the shiny pearl room, wait for the nice librarian, but I need to know, I need to see.

"Stupid, Cassie," I mutter under my breath, taking the first step down. "Really, monumentally stupid."

But I keep walking. The air cools noticeably. The scent shifts from floral sweetness to damp earth and something else… metallic? Like old blood and ozone. The pearly path stones give way to smooth, dark rock that feels strangely warm. The glowing flowers vanish entirely. Only faint, phosphorescent lichen clinging to the rocks provides any light, casting long, distorted shadows.

The thrum comes again. A deep, resonant pulse that vibrates up through the soles of my feet, rattling my teeth. It feels… closer. Hungry. I stop dead, pressing a hand against the warm rock wall beside the path. It vibrates under my palm.

Is it resonating with me? Is this thing under the garden… answering me?

Panic claws at my throat. This was a mistake. A huge, potentially fatal mistake. I need to get out. Now. I turn to scramble back up the path.

A figure blocks my way.

And they are stunning.

Golden skin gleams in the low lichen-light, smooth and flawless as if lit from within. Their clothes, if you could even call them that, cling like molten silk, red as a cut vein, draped and tailored to suggest more than they hide. Their lips curve in a slow, amused smile, eyes the color of honey and ash glinting with something ancient and far too amused.

“Oh my,” they purr, tilting their head, voice a sultry blend of silk and danger. “Look at what we have here.”

I freeze. “Um… hi. Are you also a nightmare?”

Their smile widens, flashing white teeth that somehow feel more dangerous than the Corinthian’s.

“By the gods, not,” they say, hand pressed lightly to their chest in mock horror. “Some might say the opposite, actually.” Their eyes sweep over me again, lingering like a slow caress. “Though I do leave destruction in my wake. Just… not the dream kind.”

I take a cautious step back. “Cool. That’s comforting.”

They laugh, low and throaty. “You really are as deliciously odd as I’d hoped. Dream’s little mystery girl. He never lets us visit the interesting ones.”

Before I can ask what the hell that means, a new presence coils into the air like a sudden shift in gravity.

The temperature drops. The shadows still.

And then, he’s there.

Lord Morpheus. Tall. Pale. Wild dark hair.

“Desire,” he says flatly, and I can hear the control in his voice like a blade being kept sheathed.

“Oh, don’t burst our little party, big brother,” Desire sighs, pivoting lazily to face him, all grace and mock-innocence. “I just wanted to meet her. You always stop us from saying hello. It’s terribly rude.”

Morpheus doesn’t blink. “If you wish to visit me, or speak with me, you will use your gallery.”

Desire pouts, resting their chin on one perfectly manicured hand. “So formal. But very well.”

They glance back at me, eyes bright with something that sends a shiver down my spine.

“Until next time, my lady,” they whisper with a wink and vanish like smoke caught in a gust of wind.

I exhale like I’ve been holding my breath for hours.

Morpheus doesn’t look at me.

He simply says, quiet and cold: “You should not have come this far alone.”

Chapter Text

The cold words hang in the air like frozen blades. You should not have come this far alone.
An icy judgment that slices through the fading adrenaline of Desire’s departure and the bone-deep tremors still echoing in the stone beneath my feet.

He doesn’t look at me. Lord Morpheus stands a few paces away, a silhouette carved from night and starlight against the impossible, shifting vista beyond the gallery’s vast windows. His back is rigid, radiating a fury so controlled it makes the air itself feel brittle. The temperature hasn't risen since Desire vanished; if anything, the chill has deepened, seeping into my marrow. The silence isn't empty; it's charged, waiting for a spark.

And I am that spark. Fury, flares through the cold fear. It’s been building since the Corinthian’s teeth, since Leo’s hands, since the first terrifying crossing. It erupts now, I do fear him, this realm and this situation, but I need answers.

Something about this whole thing is bothering me.

“Big brother?” I echo what Desire called him.

“There are seven of us. We are… siblings, in the way gravity and time are kin.”

“Are you a god?”

He shakes his head and steps past the place where Desire stood moments ago, as if scrubbing away their scent.

“Each of us is an aspect of existence,” he says, voice low and certain. “Not gods. Not exactly. We did not begin with belief, and we do not end when it fades.”

I blink, trying to absorb that. “So, what… you’re, what, concepts? Embodied metaphors with sibling rivalry issues?”

That earns me a flicker of a look. Almost dry amusement.

“We are function made flesh and occasionally… unfortunate in our interactions.”

“And you’re Lord Morpheus.”

“Did I not introduce myself to you?”

Why does he look so amused by this interaction?

“As a matter of fact, no you didn’t.”

“I’m Dream of the endless. The shaper of stories, the keeper of sleep, the Lord of what is imagined and what lies beneath imagining.”

Something about the way he says it makes my skin ripple.

“Right. And Desire is…”

“Desire,” he says, and there’s an edge now, something hard. “Desire does not believe in boundaries. Nor in consequences.”

Silence.

“Now what are you doing so far? I thought the garden would please you, why are you alone?”

"Alone?" My voice cracks. “I had to see what was going on! I don’t understand anything that is happening! And the ground shook, did you notice?’

“I did.”

He doesn’t add anything. I’m starting to understand that Dream of the Endless is not a man of many words.

“Is that all? Why did Desire come to me? I have so many questions.”

"Your presence here is… disruptive," he states, his voice low, devoid of inflection, yet carrying the weight of continents. "It draws attention. Unwanted attention." He finally turns his head, just enough for one fathomless eye to pin me in place. The swirling nebulae within seem darker, storm-tossed. "Attention like Desire’s."

The accusation stings.

"So it’s my fault Desire showed up? Because I dared to exist in your precious realm after being kidnapped by your psychotic nightmare? Maybe if your security was better, none of this would be happening!" The sketchbook in my hands feels like a shield, the only solid thing in this surreality. I clutch it tighter.

He turns fully then, a slow, deliberate pivot. The full force of his gaze hits me, ancient and utterly alien. There’s no anger in it now, just… an unfathomable weariness, layered over a profound, unsettling intensity.

"You dreamt of the Gates," he says, ignoring my outburst, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that resonates in my bones. "Of the Library spire. Of landscapes that defy waking geometry. Long before the Corinthian found you."

Well long before he sent the Corinthian after me, but I don’t have the strength to point that out right now.

"Since I was a child," I admit, the fight momentarily draining out of me, replaced by a familiar, aching confusion. "I felt you then," I whisper, the memory vivid, raw. "When I was scared. Truly terrified of the dark. There was… a calm. An anchor. Was that you? Or just another dream?"

He doesn't deny it. He doesn't confirm it. He simply regards me, that ancient weariness deepening.

"It is my function to be present in dreams," he replies, the words carefully chosen, deliberately sterile. "Even those born of fear."

"Function?" The ember of anger sparks again. "Is that all it was? That’s not what it felt like.” I take another step closer, defying the chill radiating from him. "It felt like being seen, protected."

A flicker, almost imperceptible, crosses his eyes. A ripple in the endless night. He doesn't deny that either. He looks away, his gaze drifting towards the towering, shifting landscapes beyond the windows, but I sense his focus remains entirely on me.

"You speak of memory, Cassie Clarke," he murmurs, the name sounding strangely intimate on his lips, laden with meaning I can't grasp. "Do you possess none? Truly?"

Is he mad?

"I have plenty of memories," I retort, defensive, clinging to the tangible, I start naming them: “art school rejections, Leo’s disgusting coffee breath, the smell of Brooklyn rain on hot pavement, my first sketch that sold for a pathetic twenty bucks, even scraping my knee when I was five, falling off my bike. I remember plenty.”

He shakes his head. "Not those," he says.

"I… I don't understand," I stammer, my voice small. "What are you talking about?"

He doesn't answer directly. A profound sorrow, deep as the void between stars, settles over his features.

"Something is fraying," he confesses, the words heavy with an ancient dread that makes the earlier tremor feel insignificant. "Here. In the Dreaming's heart."

The tremor. Lucienne’s unease. The ground did feel like it was dying. This isn't just about my unwanted vacation anymore. This is about his realm. His foundation. Fear pricks at my heart.

"Is it…" My voice is a thread. "Is it me? Am I… causing this? By being here?" The thought is horrifying. That my mere presence is unraveling the fabric of dreams.

He turns his gaze back to me, intense, searching, stripping me bare.

"Not the cause," he states, each word deliberate, measured, falling. "But perhaps…" He pauses. "Perhaps the key."

The key. A key implies a lock. A problem. A solution. Me? Cassie Clarke, insomniac barista with sketchbook stains on her fingers? A key to something fundamental in the Dreaming? It’s ludicrous. Terrifying.

"To what?" I demand, closing the final distance between us, my eyes locked on his. "What am I the key to?"

"That," he says, a flicker of something like resolve hardening his impossible features, "is what I intend to find out."

As the final syllable resonates, the air shatters.

The very stones beneath our feet hum with a profound, undeniable acknowledgment. The light streaming through the colossal windows dims, pulses once – a heartbeat in time with the deep, sonorous vibration that fills the space.

Morpheus stiffens. Every line of his body becomes taut wire. His head snaps upwards, not towards the windows, but piercing the vaulted ceiling itself, as if seeing through stone. A profound weariness wars with sharp annoyance on his face. Resignation wins.

"Not now," he murmurs, the words thick with reluctance, almost lost beneath the fading resonance.

The chime fades, leaving a silence deeper and more charged than before. Morpheus lowers his gaze to look at me. His eyes, usually pools of distance,are focused with an intensity that pins me in place.

He looks away from me, to the sketchbook clutched in my white-knuckled hands, to the echoing grandeur of the gallery around us. His expression is unreadable, yet the deliberation is a physical force.

Finally, his gaze settles back on me.

"You may stay here," he declares, his voice regaining its customary coolness, but underpinned by absolute, undeniable authority. "Until I return." He pauses, the next words settling over me and the gallery like an unbreakable ward. "You are under my protection."

Relief wars with fresh frustration. Stay? Trapped in this gilded, terrifying cage? Safe, but passive. A prisoner under guard while he seeks answers. And he’s leaving. Again. Just when the ground feels like it’s crumbling beneath me, metaphorically and literally.

"What am I to you, exactly?" My voice is raw, scraped bare. It’s not just about the Dreaming, the fraying, the key. It’s about the look in his eyes when he shielded me. It’s about the confusing, profound yearning I feel – a pull that seems to echo back from him, buried under eons of ice. "Why does this matter to you? Why protect me? Why watch over me, even then? What am I?"

I half expect him to ignore me but he doesn’t look away. The vast, ancient loneliness I sensed earlier seems to deepen in his gaze, a chasm I could lose myself in. For a fraction of a heartbeat, the imposing, eternal King of Dreams looks… uncertain. Vulnerable. Just a flicker. Then it’s gone just as fast, shuttered behind the mask of Endless power. He looks at me as if seeing layers beneath the surface, depths even I am blind to.

"That," he says, the faintest ghost of something resembling human perplexity touching his tone, "is what I intend to find out as well."

“Please don’t leave me alone again.”

He turns, his coat swirling, and strides with deliberate grace.

"Come."

He doesn’t wait for an answer. I scramble to follow we reach the palace quite quickly and surprisingly, we don’t mean anyone or anything else.

We arrive in a room and I see towering, impossibly high bookshelves carved from dark, ancient stone stretch endlessly into shadowed vaults above. They line the vast, straight pathway we traverse, filled with countless identical, heavy-bound volumes. Dust motes hang suspended in the shafts of pale, sourceless light that pierce the gloom like accusing fingers.

Finally, we reach the end of the seemingly infinite corridor.

Constructed of the same dark, ancient stone as the room itself. It stands stark and unadorned against the wall of bookshelves, a deliberate void in the endless knowledge.

Within its frame is only darkness.

Morpheus stops before the arch.

"We are being summoned," he states. He turns his head just slightly, his profile stark and severe against the featureless blackness framed by the stone. "Destiny has called."

“We?”

Chapter Text

There’s no answer, only the faint shift of air around him, the strange sensation of the ground no longer entirely beneath my feet. Shadows fold in on themselves, closing like the covers of an unseen book, and the blackness deepens until it feels solid enough to touch. My breath catches as the space between one blink and the next stretches, elongates, then tears.

When my eyes open again, the world has changed.

The oppressive stillness of Destiny’s garden presses down, thick as wet wool. Pale gravel paths stretch in every direction, winding between hedges so high they seem to cut the sky into narrow strips of muted grey. There is no wind, no birdsong, just the muted crunch of footsteps swallowed by the hush.

What I assume to be Destiny stands at the center where the paths converge, robed in grey that might once have been white. A massive book is chained to his wrist, open to a page I can’t see. His hood shadows most of his face, but I feel the weight of him all the same, not looking at me so much as through me, as though I were just another line in the text he carries.

Morpheus is a stark silhouette before him, all black coat and bone-pale skin, hair falling like ink into the hollow planes of his face. I hang back a step, my sneakers crunching too loud in the hush, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the still air.
And then I see them.

Desire leans casually against the base of the plinth, gold eyes gleaming under the flat light, their smile sharp enough to draw blood. They are as I just saw them, impossible beauty sharpened to a weapon, every inch deliberate and dangerous.

“Dream, darling,” they purr, the words curling lazily in the heavy air. “You certainly didn’t dawdle. Summons from big brother Destiny, and you come running… with a human how fun!”

Their gaze slides to me.

“Well, well, Cassie Clarke. We meet again. Quite the family reunion, isn’t it?” Their lips curve, the expression all teeth and no warmth. “Though…” they tilt their head toward the edge of the plinth, where a slight figure sits cross-legged, “…I didn’t peg you for the type to keep pet dreams, big brother. Then again, little sister does have her dog. Is yours house-trained?”

The girl they indicate can’t be more than twenty-five by appearance, with hair like a tangle of fire and flowers, mismatched eyes that catch the flat light, and an expression that flickers between curiosity and distraction. She’s barefoot, tracing patterns into the pale gravel with the neck of a chipped green bottle. She looks up when she notices me watching, and smiles in a way that feels like it belongs somewhere else entirely.

A pet? Are they talking about me?

Heat flares in my cheeks, warring with a chill of humiliation. Before I can even sputter, Morpheus moves. He turns his head, just enough to fix Desire with a gaze that could freeze hellfire.

“Do not.” The stillness deepens, charged with lethal intent. “Insult her.”

The emphasis on Her is absolute. Not it. Not the mortal. Her.

Desire’s smirk falters, replaced by a flicker of genuine surprise that quickly melts into something darker - and far more dangerous. They’re intrigued. They raise a sculpted eyebrow, feigning wounded innocence.
“Touchy, touchy. My apologies… Cassie.” My name drips from their lips like poisoned honey.

Perched precariously on the plinth’s edge, humming a melody that seems to twist in on itself like a Möbius strip, Delirium pauses. Her hair today is a cloud of iridescent blue smoke threaded with tiny, glowing fishhooks. She blinks mismatched eyes — one a swirling vortex of melted crayons, the other a perfectly polished brass doorknob and beams at me. She tilts her head suddenly, eyes narrowing like she’s focusing on a shape in the air.

“You were here a moment ago,” she says softly, as if correcting herself. “Only you weren’t, and I didn’t notice until now.”

Before I can figure out what that means, she stands, brushing pale gravel dust from her hands, and crosses the short distance between us in a slow, unhurried line.

“I’m Delirium,” she says, stopping just in front of me.

“I’m Cassie,” I answer automatically.

Her lips curve faintly. “We’ve met a couple of times.”

I frown. “Pretty sure we haven’t.”

Her gaze drifts past my shoulder, as though following something only she can see. “Every human visits my realm now and then,” she murmurs.

Something small and low to the ground pads into view beside her — a wiry little dog with uneven fur, one ear up, the other flopped, and eyes that seem far too knowing for an animal. He sits neatly at her feet, tail thumping once against the gravel.

“This is Barnabas,” Delirium says, looking down at him with complete seriousness. “He talks sometimes.”

The dog yawns.

Sure. A talking dog. Why the fuck not.

“Hello,” I greet him, fairly certain I’ve officially lost it.

“Enchanted to meet you, my lady.”

Morpheus ignores her, his glacial focus returning to Destiny.

“Brother,” he says. “You have summoned me.” His gaze passes over Desire and Delirium. “And chosen to do so before an audience. Why?”

“Pleasantries are unnecessary. There is an anomaly in the weave.” Destiny’s hooded face does not change. “A mortal walks my paths, unbidden and unwanted. He sleeps, but his dreaming self is not anchored in your realm, Dream. It lingers here, caught in a loop within my garden. A fault in the pattern.”

Morpheus frowns, a crease forming between his brows. “Why summon us all? The return of a dreamer is my duty.”

“Because this is where they must be,” Destiny says. “The sleeper does not belong here. You will return them to the Dreaming.”

As he speaks, a strange pull tugs at the edge of my awareness.

It isn’t a sound, but a feeling, a subtle warping of space near a particularly dense thicket of weeping vines that drip viscous, glowing sap.

Peering past Desire’s smirk, I catch sight of it: a smaller path, almost hidden, veering sharply off the main gravel walk. Three paces in, it curves impossibly back upon itself, forming a perfect circle of pale, smooth stones.
Something moves inside the loop.

I freeze. It’s me.

Not a reflection. Not a trick of the light. Me - standing in the circle, barefoot, dust streaking my calves, hair loose and wind-tangled. She - I - turns her head slowly, as if sensing me watching, then begins walking away down a narrow track that didn’t exist a moment ago.

Without thinking, I step into the loop.

The garden blinks out of existence.

Heat swallows me whole as white sunlight hammers down on cracked ochre earth. The horizon wavers with heat shimmer. Dust clings to my skin, grits between my teeth. Ahead, the other me trudges forward, her small frame stark against the glare.
She stops beneath the meagre shade of a gnarled olive tree. And that’s when I see him.

Morpheus.

Not here in the garden, not in his coat and pale composure, but impossibly tall and dark against the blistering world, his black robes rippling in a wind I can’t feel. His hair is wild, his face carved in stark planes of shadow and light, his eyes fixed entirely on her. On me.

The other me takes a step forward, bare feet silent in the dust. She doesn’t look afraid. And he… doesn’t move. Not until she’s right in front of him, tilting her face up into that unblinking gaze.

His hand rises, pale against the sunburnt world, fingers brushing her jaw with an almost tentative care. Then he bends, closing the space between them, his mouth meeting hers in a slow, deliberate kiss that feels… inevitable.

Heat flares in my cheeks, completely at odds with the dry air.

“What the-” The word rasps out before I can stop it, sounding far too loud in the shimmering silence.

Neither of them reacts. The other me only leans in closer, her hands curling into his robes like she’s done it before. And Morpheus… kisses her back.

My pulse is suddenly everywhere-throat, palms, ears-hammering so hard it drowns out the stillness. I’m staring at myself kissing Dream of the Endless. And somehow, that’s not even the strangest thing to happen to me today.

I hover just outside the tree’s shadow, unable to move, watching myself melt further into him. And I know, deep in my gut, that I’m witnessing something that already happened. Or is happening now. Or maybe both.

The scent of warm bread and apple blossoms vanishes, ripped away in an instant and replaced by the damp, metallic tang of Destiny’s garden. The crushing heat dissolves into a clammy chill that soaks through my clothes.

Who was I? Who had I been?

I look up, my vision swimming. Morpheus is still locked in whatever exchange he’s having with Destiny, his profile cut in stern, unyielding lines—but his hand, hanging loosely at his side, is curled into a fist, knuckles blanched against the black fabric of his coat. Desire’s smirk is gone, replaced by a sharp, calculating focus, their golden eyes narrowed like a predator scenting blood. Delirium has stopped talking to Barnabas. She’s staring straight at me, her mismatched eyes suddenly, unnervingly clear, filled with a sadness so deep it scrapes against something raw inside me.

The need to scream the questions is almost physical. To shove past them all, grab Morpheus by the arm, demand he tell me what the hell I just saw. I could ask now, here, with Destiny’s shadow pressing in, Desire’s gaze like a scalpel, Delirium’s impossible clarity fixed on me. But the words shrivel in my throat.

The vision has stripped me bare. Asking here would be like tearing my heart out with my own hands and offering it up to be picked apart. So I swallow it all, the scream, the questions, the ache clawing at my ribs and lock my trembling legs beneath me, forcing myself to stand under the crushing weight of it.

The conversation droned on, the logistics of finding the lost mortal I couldn’t care less about, the nature of the loop, Morpheus’s reluctant agreement to take the task—but the words meant nothing. All I heard was the thunder of my own pulse and that low, aching hum from the vision, vibrating through me like a string pulled too tight.

A shadow fell over me. I didn’t need to look to know it was him.

“We may return to the Dreaming,” Morpheus said, his voice pitched low enough to cut under the quiet exchanges still passing between the others.

“I’d rather wake up,” I said before I could soften it. “Go back to my life.”

His brow furrowed, faint but sharp. “You wish to leave the Dreaming. Now.”

“Yes. Why is that confusing?” The edge in my voice was deliberate this time.

“You would leave now?” he repeated, as though testing the shape of the words.

“Yes,” I bit out. “Why not?”

His answer came without hesitation, without even a flicker of compromise. “Because I want you here. Because you are safer here. And because I have not yet decided it is time for you to leave.”

I stare at him. “Decided? I didn’t realize my life was up for committee.”

“It is not,” he says simply. “It is mine to safeguard. Which you make difficult.”

“Nothing of mine is yours.”

His expression shifts almost imperceptibly, confusion, yes, but tempered with the faint heat of anger. It’s there and gone in a breath, replaced by that unreadable stillness. He inclines his head, extending a hand. “Come.”
The garden folds away, shadows closing like the cover of a book, replaced by the muted light and softer air of the Dreaming. I let out a shaky breath, only then realizing how tight my shoulders have been.

“What happened?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

His gaze sharpens. “Answer me.”

In this moment, he’s starting to scare me. I have no reason to believe Lord Morpheus would harm me, he’s stood between me and the Corinthian, come running when Desire was taunting me, and taken me to the garden simply because I hadn’t wanted to be alone. And yet his face is closed, and the anger I see there is unsettling.

“What did you see?” he asks.

My face goes hot before the memory even fully surfaces.

“Uh…” I glance anywhere but at him.

“Cassie.”

“It was… me. With you.” My voice keeps wanting to trip over itself. “We were… kissing.”

Something flickers across his mouth, not a smile, exactly, but close enough to feel like one. And in his eyes, unmistakable amusement. “I see.”

I stare at him. “That’s it? No denial? No ‘it wasn’t like that, Cassie’?”

“It was like that,” he says simply.

The flush in my cheeks turns molten. “And you couldn’t have told me that earlier?”

His gaze doesn’t waver. He doesn’t justify it, doesn’t apologize. Just regards me in that maddeningly silent way, letting the lack of an answer be the answer, like a mirror held to his own damnable habit of withholding until the last possible moment.
“Did you know I would see this in Destiny’s gardens?”

“I hoped.”

I fold my arms, half to hide my shaking hands. “I want to go home.”

“I cannot return you to the waking world,” he says, the words careful, deliberate. “Not now.”

My eyes narrow. “Why not?”

“Because my siblings and far worse things will come for you.”

I blink. “Come for me? To what-annoy me to death?”

“To harm you,” he says, unflinching.

I laugh once. “This is all so mental.”

“I shall like you to stay, so you will.”

I stare at him, pulse thudding in my ears. “Who do you think you are?”

“I am Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless,” he says without hesitation. “I have watched over you for all your life… and all your lives before it.”

What the fuck is he even talking about?

“You’ve been watching me?” My voice rises, brittle at the edges. “Will you explain to me what is truly going on?”

He says nothing, and that silence pours fuel on the fire.

“I have a life,” I go on. “It isn’t perfect, but it’s mine. My friends. My work. My bed. All the stupid little things that make up a life - my life - and you tear me out of it like it’s nothing. Like I’m nothing.”

My breath hitches. “You destroy my life.” I repeat. “And you stand there like it’s some noble sacrifice instead of the selfish, arrogant thing it is.”

I shake my head. “We’re done talking.”

So I do the only thing I can think of: I dig my nails into the inside of my arm and pinch hard, harder, until the pain flares white.

The Dreaming shatters.

I bolt upright in my own bed, gasping, my heart a wild, erratic drumbeat. My sheets are damp with sweat, my fingers still curled like they’ve been bracing for impact. The familiar outline of my bedroom swims into focus in the dark.
I don’t have time to take in the relief before a voice drawls from the corner.

“Well,” the Corinthian says, “you’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.”

Chapter Text

Malka’s purr is the only steady thing in the room, it’s a low, comforting hum coming from the corner where the Corinthian sits, one leg stretched out, the other bent. He runs his fingers idly along my cat’s back, and she’s draped over his thigh like she’s claimed it, tail flicking in lazy satisfaction.

I’m propped against the headboard, knees drawn up, the sweat still cooling on my skin. My sheets are damp. My heart hasn’t decided if it’s done sprinting.

The Dreaming. The garden. The kiss. Morpheus. All of it slams through me in jagged flashes, impossible to sort into a neat sequence.

He said he’d known me all my life… all my lives, as if that were just an ordinary thing to say. Multiple lives, the words keep circling in my head. Have I been other people? Other versions of myself? Was the girl in the vision one of them? And worse, I can’t shake the way he looked at her - at me.

I hate that it’s under my skin. I hate that part of me wants to believe it. I should be relieved to be awake, back in my own bed. Instead, everything feels wrong.

The Corinthian scratches behind Malka’s ear. She leans into him like they’ve known each other forever.

“You’re thinking quite loudly, my lady,” he says without looking up.

“I’m Cassie,” I snap, the words coming out sharper than I mean. It’s petty and childish, and I know it, but the anger is still there and I need to direct it at someone.

“Cassie, then.”

I shove my damp hair back. “What the fuck are you even doing here?”

He finally glances at me, still stroking Malka like she’s the only thing worth touching.

“Ah, well. The Lord wanted to come himself, but Lucienne talked him out of it.”

I blink. “So he sent a fucking nightmare instead?”

The Corinthian clicks his tongue, mock-offended. “Careful. You’ll hurt my feelings.”

“Why should I not be afraid of you? You hurt Leo.”

“Leo was hurting you.”

That stops me for half a beat. My mouth opens, then closes. “That’s not the point.”

“I’m no longer a serial killer, you know.”

I just stare at him for a long minute. “What the actual fuck is that sentence?”

He shrugs like it’s nothing. I don’t have the energy to unpack it.

Malka blinks slowly, her green eyes half-closed in bliss as he strokes the fur just above her head with the backs of his knuckles, in a delicate way, almost reverent. Here I am, unraveling at the seams over a connection to an Endless that spans lifetimes, and a literal nightmare is petting my cat.

All my thoughts circle back to Morpheus.

What am I to him? A curiosity? A plaything? A piece in a game? Or… something else?

“What am I to him?”

My question hangs in the air long a long minute before I hear him sigh.

“I don’t know much,” the Corinthian says, still watching Malka. “But I do know he sent me to protect you. And if he listened to Lucienne’s advice about you, I’d say he’s really trying.”

A reluctant huff escapes me. “He’s not very good with people, is he?”

“He’s not built for them. The Endless aren’t human, my lady, you’d do well to remember this.”

A beat.

“But if you have his attention, you have it for a reason.”

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” I ask eventually.

“Do you?”

I shake my head. “I’m starting to, yes.”

We fall quiet again until a knock breaks it.

The Corinthian’s hand stills on Malka’s fur as I push up from the bed and open the door.

Chloe fills the frame, still in her scrubs, curls escaping her bun. She’s halfway through a hello when her gaze slides past me. She gasps. “Cassie!”

“What?”

Her hand flies to her chest like she’s caught me in something indecent. “Oh my god, you didn’t tell me you had company.” She studies him for a moment. “He is way too old for you, Cassie.”

A thin, slightly hysterical laugh slips out of my mouth. Too old doesn’t begin to cover it.

“Chloe,” I say, stepping back so she can come in.

The Corinthian nods politely but stays silent.

“I came to check on you, then I’m going to bed,” she says.

“Where have you been?”

“Pulled a double. Two code blues, a wedding ring stuck on the wrong finger, and a kid who thought swallowing a quarter would turn him into a vending machine. What about you? You look like hell.”

I hesitate. “I… can’t even begin to tell you.”

She studies me for a second, then shrugs. “Fair enough. Just don’t end up in the ER. I am not charting my roommate.” She disappears into her room.

I glance back. The Corinthian hasn’t moved, Malka still sprawled across his lap.

“This went well,” he says dryly. Then, stretching, “I’m supposed to talk you into going back to the Dreaming.”

“I will,” I admit. “I need answers.” And maybe… I want to see Morpheus again.

“Well then-”

“Not right now.”

“No?”

I shake my head. “We’re going out.”

“Not right now,” he echoes.

“What is it with you Dreaming types thinking you can run my life?”

“Cassie, I need to bring you back-”

“No. I want to go outside.”

“Outside,” he repeats, tilting his head as Malka purrs.

“Yes. For a walk. Around the block. To breathe.”

He studies me, gaze, well teeths, heavy even behind the sunglasses.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Then will you go back to the Dreaming after?”

“Sure.”

“Well then.” He rises with that fluid, predatory grace, adjusts his jacket. “Lead on, Cassie. Let’s take some air.”

He doesn’t call it a bad idea, but I read it all over his face. Still, he follows me out of the apartment, down the creaking brownstone stairs, into the humid embrace of a New York dusk.
The city air is so comforting, the roar of traffic, the wail of a siren blocks away, the smell of hot asphalt, exhaust, and cheap pizza, and the underlying press of a million lives crammed together. Chaotic. Overwhelming. And mostly, for a fleeting second, blessedly real.

The Corinthian falls into step beside me, hands in his pockets.

“Ever been to New York before?” I ask, mostly to fill the space.

He glances at me. “Once or twice. I’m more of an England man myself.”

”I’ve never been to England.”

”Well, I’m sure our Lord will take you, should you ask.”

I laugh because the idea is absurd, but he stays serious. That thought makes my skin prickle, but I push on.

“So… you really are a nightmare. It’s not just a catchy title?”

“It’s not a job description I picked up at a career fair, if that’s what you’re asking.” His tone is smooth. “I was made for a purpose.”

“Which is?”

“Once? To teach mortals a lesson about their appetites. Now?” He shrugs, a lazy roll of one shoulder. “Apparently, babysitting.”

I snort. “Bet you miss the old days.”

“Not particularly,” he says, but I can’t tell if he’s telling the truth.

We turn down a narrower street, the noise of the avenue fading behind us. The light’s shifting now, sliding toward that strange in-between where the city looks both prettier and more dangerous.

He tilts his head toward a knot of stalls strung with flickering fairy lights. “This way.”

“Why?”

“Can you trust me for a minute?”

I shrug but I follow him when he turns. We round a corner, and I realise we’ve slipped into some kind of market. At first glance, it’s nothing unusual, knock-off electronics, racks of thrifted jackets, skewers sizzling over a portable grill. But the longer I walk, the more skewed it feels. The stalls lean at odd angles, like the street itself has been bent out of shape. The fairy lights above us stutter, throwing shadows that twitch in ways they shouldn’t.

I slow, my voice dropping. “This place is weird.”

“That’s one word for it,” he murmurs, scanning the gaps between stalls.

“What are we doing here?”

“I’ll tell you when I know.”

He stops right here, shoots me a look that even though I can’t see his eyes, well teeth, I easily read as We’re in trouble.

At this very moment she steps out from between a cutlery stand and a table piled with wilting flowers. Layers of mismatched clothes hang off her, faded almost to grey. Her face is a maze of lines, her eyes are sharp as they study me.
Two scruffy dogs trot at her heels, one limping slightly, the other missing an ear. They stop when she does, watching me with the same unsettling focus as their mistress.

I instinctively slow down, but the Corinthian’s hand closes around my arm, his grip is firm but not painful.

“Keep walking,” he says quietly.

“Who is she?” I whisper.

“That’s quite rude,” I hear behind us.

We both turn.

She’s stepping closer, skirts swaying around her ankles.

“Well, well,” she says, fixing on the Corinthian with a smile. “Didn’t expect to see you strolling about here, lovely. Thought you’d be skulking around the Dreaming, doing whatever it is you do.”

The Corinthian’s mouth twitches, but it’s not quite a smile. “Hettie.”

“That’s me.” She gives him a little mock curtsey, her dogs circling her legs. “And this?” She nods toward me, eyes glinting. “Not one of yours, I take it?”

“She’s a friend,” he says, and there’s enough weight on the word that I glance up at him. “Cassie, this is Mad Hettie. Hettie, Cassie.”

“Pleasure,” she says, and I’m not sure if she means it or if it’s just part of her odd rhythm. “Strange to see you both in the waking world. Things are usually simpler in the other place.”

“Who are you?” I ask before I can stop myself.

She tilts her head like I’ve just asked her why the sky is blue. “Oh, you’ll know soon enough, petal.”

The Corinthian steps in, his voice mild but edged. “We were just passing through, Hettie.”

She smiles like she knows more than she’s saying and with her, I’m guessing she does.

“We need to go,” he continues.

“Oh I’m sure you do. Sweet Cassie, let's meet again some time soon, yes? I have friends I’d love to introduce to you.”

“Hettie,” Corianthian says with a bit of warning in his voice. “We should be moving.”

“See you soon!”

The air between us splits. The darkness fractures like glass under a hammer blow, swallowing the light and replacing it with something hungrier, older.

From the jagged planes of shadow, things flicker in and out of existence: wet chitin, slick and glistening like oil; the curved arc of segmented limbs, sharp enough to sever bone; and eyes, dozens of them, blinking in erratic unison, scattered across brick and pavement and the air itself.

A voice seeps out of every shattered edge at once, threading into the marrow of my bones, scraping along my nerves.

“Little dreamer’s pet.”

The Corinthian’s stance sharpens. “Azazel,” he says.

He moves before I even register the threat, his hand clamps around my arm, the grip unyielding, and in the next breath I’m wrenched backward so fast my feet barely touch the ground. My hip clips the edge of a table piled with tarnished cutlery; then my shoulder slams into the stall’s wooden frame hard enough to rattle the hanging utensils. Pain jolts down my arm as I cry out.

By the time I catch my balance, his knife is already in his hand, drawn in one seamless motion, the steel catching what little light there is and turning it vicious. The blade looks wrong here, in this half-lit market.

“You smell of my jailer,” Azazel hisses, his words a mix of rot and malice. “He kept the key from me. I will take something from him in return and I’ve been looking for you for a very long time.”

I realise I’m the something.

The Corinthian moves like a predator unchained, dropping low in one smooth, lethal motion. His body flows with the strike as the blade arcs toward a cluster of eyes blooming near the ground. Steel meets something that isn’t brick, there’s a yielding give, a
sickening resistance, and the wet, muffled sound it makes turns my stomach. Black ichor bursts from the wound, flinging itself across the cracked pavement in hot spatters that steam as they hit, the air instantly thick with the sulfurous reek of rot.

“You can’t fight me,” Azazel’s voice coils out from the fracture, each syllable steeped in mockery. “But you cannot kill me here.”

A shadow-limb lashes for me, it’s impossibly fast. I barely have time to breathe before the Corinthian is already moving, stepping into its path, his knife flashing in a brutal upward arc. The blade bites into the darkness, which clings and stretches like molten tar around the steel before tearing apart in a hiss of smoke.

He doesn’t falter, but I can see it in the tight set of his shoulders, the exacting precision in every step, he’s not driving the demon back, only holding it at bay. Azazel knows it, too. This isn’t an attempt to kill, I realize, for if he wanted us dead he could easily do so. It’s a game.

And then, in the space where Hettie stood moments ago, the air wavers. The shimmer stretches, sharpening into a narrow vertical slit no wider than my shoulders, its edges pulsing faintly. Through it I catch a glimpse of familiar brickwork under the harsh yellow of a streetlight. Another street. Another way out.

“Corinthian!” My voice cracks as I point toward this. “There! Go!”

His hand clamps around my arm, the grip iron-solid, and he wrenches me toward the rift. Behind us, Azazel’s laugh unspools into the air — jagged, multi-voiced, and vibrating through my bones.

“Run, little pet!” he calls after us, the words swelling with hungry delight. “Let him know I’m coming for you. Let him know he will pay me my due.”

We hit the rift, and the world folds in on itself. Cold swallows me whole. Light and shadow shred into a static blur. The ground drops away, then slams back into me in a jolt of concrete and pain.
Solid ground hits hard. The Corinthian takes the brunt of the fall, breaking my landing. My lungs seize like I’ve been underwater.

I scramble off him, cold concrete pressing into my palms. My shoulder screams from where I hit the stall earlier, now compounded by the impact. My arm aches from his iron grip.
When I force my eyes open, I see brick walls.

The Corinthian pushes himself up, moving stiffly, favouring his left side. His sunglasses are crooked; he fixes them with a sharp motion. His knife is still in hand, the blade smeared with black ichor that swallows the weak light.

“Where…?” My voice is hoarse. I clear my throat. “Where are we?”

“Williamsburg,” he says, the word flat but laced with strain — anger and frustration simmering just under the surface. “We’re a few miles from your place, far enough to be out of his immediate reach. Safe enough… for now.” He finally turns to me, the lenses catching the dim light. “Are you hurt? Anything besides the obvious?”

I take stock, my shoulder throbs, my arm is mottled with fresh bruises, my head pounds, and the phantom scrape of Azazel’s voice still crawls along my nerves. “I’m fine,” I rasp, the lie tasting like dust in my mouth.

“Fine,” he echoes, dripping sarcasm. “Perfectly fine after a Duke of Hell decides you’re prime prey.”

The anger in me sparks. “I am. Bruised, freaked out, but standing. Breathing. So yeah - fine. Now take me home. To my home. Now.”

He stares at me, incredulous. “Back? To the exact neighbourhood Azazel knows you live in? Where that overgrown cockroach might still be sniffing around? That’s not fine, Cassie. We need to go into hiding.”

“He was after you too!” My voice sharpens, rising without my permission. “What’s stopping him from following us anywhere? Hiding isn’t going to work!”

“He can’t harm us in the Dreaming,” the Corinthian says.

“Why? Because Lord Morpheus is watching over us?” I drop my voice into a slow, grave impression of the Dream Lord on the last words.

“I hope you realize you’re being unreasonable,” he growls at me.

“Fuck you.”

I half expect him to get even madder but he just shakes his head and smiles.

“I’m going home,” I say eventually. “I didn’t realise all of them would be coming for me like this, but I’m not running from my own life.”

The Corinthian’s head tilts, a faint glint catching in the sunglasses. “You think this is about your life? Cassie, this is about them. And if Azazel found you once, he’ll find you again.”

“Who is he even?“

“Azazel? A demon that hates our Lord…“

“Yeah I’m starting to realize all of my problems are thanks to your Lord.“

“The demon will come for you, that’s a fact nor a mere warning Cassie.“

“Then let him try,” I snap. “I want my bed, my walls, my space. I need-” My voice catches, but I push through it. “Hell, even my cat..”

He doesn’t argue, which worries me more than if he had. Instead, he simply says, “Fine. But when it goes wrong, remember I told you so.”

The walk back feels longer than it should. Every shadow looks like it’s waiting to peel open into another fracture. By the time we reach my street, my pulse is pounding.

My heart breaks as I open my door.

What’s left of my apartment building looks like something crushed it in a single, careless hand. The front wall is bowed inward, windows shattered, bricks scattered across the pavement like broken teeth. The air smells faintly of scorched metal and something worse - the sulfur-and-rot tang that still clings to the back of my throat from the market.

“Stay here,” the Corinthian says, already moving forward.

“Like hell.” I follow him up the cracked steps into the dim, gaping interior. My apartment door is hanging by one hinge. Inside, my things are overturned, broken, books torn from shelves, clothes flung out of drawers, my paintings ripped from the walls.
Chloe’s bag lies crumpled on the floor, the strap twisted like it had been yanked from her shoulder. Her phone sits beside it, the screen flashing with missed calls, buzzing once, then going dark. Near the doorway, a smear streaks across the wood — not blood, but something thicker, darker, with a faint metallic sheen that catches the light. The smell is wrong — acrid and alien — and the air hums faintly with it, a residue that clings to the back of my throat like bad smoke.

“Chloe?” I call, my voice too high, too sharp. No answer.

I shove past the Corinthian, skidding into the narrow hallway. My bedroom door is ajar. The sheets are rumpled the way I left them,.

“Chloe?” Louder this time, echoing off the walls.

I push into her room. The bed is unmade, her scrubs crumpled in a heap at the foot. Her shoes are still by the door, jacket tossed over the chair. The window is shut, but the curtains shift slightly in a draft I can’t place. My gaze snags on the mirror above her dresser, there’s a faint shimmer across its surface, so subtle I might have imagined it, and for a fraction of a second I swear something on the other side blinks.

My chest tightens. “She’s here,” I tell myself, because the alternative feels like stepping off a ledge. I check the bathroom, the closet, the tiny laundry room, anywhere she could possibly be. Nothing.

I come back into the living room. The Corinthian is standing in the same spot, his head tilted slightly, like he’s listening to something I can’t hear.

“She’s not here,” I say, and my voice cracks. “Maybe she-maybe she went to–”

“Cassie.” His tone stops me cold. He doesn’t raise it, but there’s no room for argument in the way he says my name. “She’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

His jaw flexes. “Taken. Azazel.”

The floor might as well have dropped out from under me. My hand shoots out for the counter, gripping the chipped laminate until my knuckles ache.

“He took Chloe…” The words feel foreign in my mouth, thin and hollow. “Because of me.”

The Corinthian doesn’t deny it.

I turn to him, the desperate edge in my voice sharper now. “You have to help me get her back.”

A pause. He lets it hang just long enough for hope to start curdling into dread before he answers. “Not without my Lord’s approval.”

Something hot and brittle snaps inside me. “You won’t play fair, will you?”

His mouth tilts in something almost like a smile. “No,” he says simply. “I won’t.”

Chapter Text

The shattered door of my apartment hangs crooked on its last hinge. We don’t look back as we take the stairs, the air thick with damp plaster and the burnt-metal tang Azazel left behind. It sticks to the back of my throat.
The Corinthian moves ahead of me, Malka clutched tight against his chest, her ears pinned flat and golden eyes wide. A low growl trembles through her small frame, vibrating against him as we descend, the sound trailing us into the dim stairwell like a warning neither of us needs.

I take the steps two at a time, gripping the railing hard enough to scrape my palms. Fury and fear run side by side, hot under my skin.

Outside, neon signs bleed across the wet asphalt, colors warping in the puddles at our feet. Sirens wind through the heavy night air, threading past the drunken laughter spilling from a stoop and the sharp cadence of a man shouting into his phone across the street. Life moves on in grotesque indifference. Somewhere above us, Chloe’s bag lies open on the floor, her phone buzzing with calls she will never answer.

“I’m going to find her.” The words come out rough.

“Good,” the Corinthian says, his voice smooth against my ragged one. “On that we agree.”

“How long?” My throat burns. “If Azazel took her… how long until he-” I stop. The rest is unthinkable.

He doesn’t look away. “He won’t kill her right away. Alive, she’s leverage. A pawn to force a decision.”

“Mine,” I say, and it lands heavy between us.

“Dream’s,” he corrects, his sunglasses catching fractured city light. “And, inevitably, yours.”

We cut across the intersection as the light turns yellow, a bike messenger swearing as he flashes past in a streak of neon and anger before disappearing into traffic. I keep moving because stopping means thinking, and thinking means collapsing under the weight of it all.

“You knew.” It’s an accusation. “You knew this would happen.”

He pauses for barely a heartbeat, then keeps walking. “I knew it could happen. Our Lord has enemies, Cassie. And you… you stand out. Word travels fast, especially to the wrong ears.”

“You should have told me!”

“I did.”

And fuck me, he did.

“Let me take you back,” he offers, already moving again.

“I’m not crawling to the Dreaming to hide!”

“No one suggested hiding,” he counters, stopping to face me. The streetlight catches the sharp planes of his face, the perfect teeth behind his neutral expression. “We go because that’s where the help is.”

“Help,” I echo. “You mean permission.”

“Both,” he concedes. “Preferably.”

Malka huffs and burrows deeper into his jacket. “You okay, girl?” I ask her, clinging to the brief, sane comfort of something that’s not him. She blinks slowly and presses her head against his thumb as it strokes her fur.

“Will you just breathe for a minute?” His voice is low, almost gentle.

“He won’t help,” I whisper, the tremor in my voice betraying me. “Your Lord will remind me of the price. He’ll relish the insult of me leaving. He’ll spin some story about balance and Endless law, and while he does, Chloe will be-” My voice cracks.

“He will help,” the Corinthian says. “Or he’ll give me permission to.”

“And if he says no?”

“Then I’ll hear him,” he says, “and I’ll help you anyway. Though I’d prefer not to have my tongue removed again this century.”

I stare at him, stunned. “You’re serious.”

“We won’t know until we go back.”

We reach a pool of shadow between two burnt-out streetlights, and he slows. I recognize the unnatural stillness now, the air thinning, cooling, like stepping into the deep end of a still lake.

“Not here,” I protest, the memory of Azazel’s violent rift still raw.

“Here,” he says at the same time.

A wind stirs, carrying the scent of ancient libraries and the clean mineral tang of rain on marble. For a heartbeat, terror grips me: Azazel again, the world tearing like rotten cloth. But this is different. The Corinthian extends his free hand, palm up.

“I can walk,” I insist, pride flaring.

"I know," he replies. "This isn't for you."

I look at his hand, pale, strong knuckles marked with dried blood that isn’t his, then back at his obscured eyes. Swallowing hard, I place my hand in his.

It isn’t the violent dislocation of the alley. It’s seamless, a long blink where the city’s cold anxiety dissolves into a cool, steady stillness. The stench of garbage and overheated pavement is gone, replaced by the layered scent of the Dreaming: old paper, beeswax, stone dust, and the faint metallic tang of starlight.

We stand in an impossibly long gallery under a night sky dense with unfamiliar constellations. Stars hang low and bright, telling stories I can’t read. Pale columns line the walkway, smooth as bone. I realize my hand is still clasped in the Corinthian’s and pull away, the coolness of his touch lingering.

“Do not run,” he murmurs, eyes fixed ahead, as if he can sense the tense of my body. Malka is a tense bundle against his chest, her tail twitching against his lapel.

A soft footfall echoes across the stone. Lucienne steps out from between two pillars, a heavy ledger tucked under one arm. Her spectacles catch the starlight, and her calm expression is undercut by the faint tightness around her eyes as she takes in my scraped skin and disheveled clothes.

“Miss Clarke,” she says, her tone even but edged with unasked questions. “You look-”

“Please don’t say tired,” I cut in.

"-hurt," she finished smoothly, her gaze dropping pointedly to the scratches on my arms. "And… may I inquire… why is there a cat?" She peered at Malka, who flattened her ears further but remained silent.

I glance at my feline companion. “She’s mine. We weren’t leaving her alone in… what’s left.”

“She cannot be permitted to roam freely within the palace,” Lucienne says, adjusting her spectacles.

“She’ll stay with me,” the Corinthian answers, his thumb resuming its slow stroke along Malka’s spine. “She’s far more agreeable than Cassie.”

“Hey!” I protest automatically.

Lucienne inclines her head in tacit agreement, then turns her attention fully to the Corinthian, her posture settling into something more official. “You were expected to bring her when the situation became untenable. I take it we’ve crossed that threshold.”

“Azazel,” the Corinthian says. The single word hangs heavy between them, steeped in history.

Lucienne’s lips press into a thin line. “I see.”

“He took my roommate,” I blurt, stepping forward. The polished floor chills through the soles of my sneakers. “Her name is Chloe. She’s gone. Because of… me.” The last words drop to a whisper, heavy with guilt.

“I am truly sorry, Miss Clarke,” Lucienne says, the sincerity in her voice a small, unexpected balm. Her gaze softens slightly as it moves back to Malka. “We shall do what can be done.”

“I need to see him. Now.” My throat is tight as I choke on the words.

“Would you not benefit from a moment’s rest? A chance to compose-”

“While Chloe is in Hell?” My voice echoes sharp in the quiet gallery.

Lucienne’s gaze shifts to the Corinthian, a silent question.

“She will not be dissuaded,” he says.

Lucienne exhales, the sound stirring the dust motes in the starlight. “Very well.” She closes her ledger with a decisive snap. “Follow me.”

We traversed the gallery. Our footsteps made no sound on the stone that should have echoed. To our right, the night opened into gardens I remembered sketching – flowers that held unnervingly still poses. An unnatural hush pervaded now, as if the Dreaming itself held its breath. The earlier tremors I’d felt seemed to have left invisible fractures in the air, thin cracks in reality only perceptible in peripheral vision.

“Is he alone?” the Corinthian asks.

“Destiny released him from counsel an hour ago,” Lucienne replies in the same low tone. “He awaits… you.”

We pass towering doors carved with ravens in flight, the relief so detailed the feathers seem to shift in the corner of my eye. A shiver runs down my spine, the sensation of being watched. I keep my eyes forward.

Lucienne stops before the entrance to the throne room. These doors dwarf the raven-carved ones, immense and dark, veined with cold light that maps constellations I don’t know.

“Miss Clarke.” Lucienne turns to face me fully, her gaze steady behind the lenses of her glasses. “You are about to petition a king. A king you defied and departed from against his wishes. You ask for something costly. It will serve you well,” her voice softens almost imperceptibly, “to ask for exactly what you want. Be clear. Be precise.”

I draw a slow, bracing breath and say, “I want Chloe back alive and unharmed, returned to her life whole.”

Lucienne gives a single, firm nod. “Good.” She studies us, the nightmare, the human, the cat, then raises her hand and raps once on the immense dark wood. The sound is small but final. The doors open without a sound, revealing the darkness beyond.

The throne room is a vast geometry of shadow, its darkness dense and deliberate, shaped into sweeping arches and cavernous depth. The throne rises as the central point where authority concentrates, its form drawn from the same shadows that fill the space. He sits within it as though carved from the stillness itself. His eyes hold light captive, turning it over in endless thought until it fades into silence.

His gaze falls first on the Corinthian. A current passes between them all exchanged without a word. Then his attention shifts to me. I force my chin up, refusing the pull of his presence.

“Cassie Clarke.” His voice drops into the room like a stone, sending slow ripples through the silence.

“Azazel has Chloe.” The words break free before I can stop them, propelled by the brittle courage holding me upright. My pulse hammers in my throat. I expect him to cut me down, to dismiss it as irrelevant but he doesn’t. He, also, doesn’t ask who Chloe is.

He freezes. Even the slow drift of his coat’s fabric settles, as if the air itself has gone still. This pause is the moment before the tide turns, and you can’t tell if it will pull you under.

“Explain,” he says at last.

“He came to my apartment, tore it apart, and took her, because of me.” My mouth is dry, but the words scrape their way out anyway.

The air grows heavier, each breath harder to draw.

“He took her because of you,” I correct myself. “Because being near you paints a target. Because there are things out there that would rather hurt you through someone else.”

“You are correct,” he says. “Azazel knows he cannot harm me. But he believes that by harming you, he can wound me all the same. That is why he came to you. Your connection to me made you visible to him and valuable. And now, by coming here, you have amplified your peril. You have led the threat directly to my gates.”

“I didn’t have a choice!” The cry rips from me, raw with desperation. I take an involuntary step forward, the polished floor cold beneath my feet. “I’m not here to demand you wage war on Hell for me. I’m here because this started with you. You owe me” - I spit the word - “at least the means to survive the consequences you set in motion.”

“You believe I bear responsibility.”

“I don’t believe it,” I say, meeting his gaze with every ounce of conviction I possess. “I know it. Deep in my bones, Dream. I know it, you owe me.”

He stands. The movement is deliberate, fluid, like a shadow detaching itself from a greater darkness. He descends the steps from the dais, each footfall a soft, resonant note in the cavernous silence. He approaches, closing the distance between us with an unnerving lack of haste. The temperature seems to drop further.

“What,” he asks, stopping barely an arm’s length away, his voice a low thrum that vibrates in my chest, “would you have me do?”

The proximity is overwhelming. I can smell the ozone-storm scent of him, see the impossible depth of his eyes up close. I force myself to hold his gaze.

“Give me something I can use – knowledge, a ward, a weapon, a way through Hell. Anything that keeps him from dragging me there, and keeps Chloe alive long enough for me to get her out. I’m not asking you to storm there or start a war. I’m asking”--my voice drops to a fierce whisper– “for your help to stop the ending he’s already written for her.”

He studies me, his gaze sweeping over my face, my injuries, the fear and fury warring in my eyes. The silence stretches. The weight of his regard is immense, pressing down, demanding truth.

“You will have my help,” he says finally. “But you should know I will not provoke open conflict with Hell, the consequences of such a war would serve him far more than they would serve you.”

I hold his gaze in silence. Malka’s low purr in the Corinthian’s arms is the only sound in the vast chamber.

He takes one step down toward me, then another, closing the distance in slow, deliberate measure.

“You will help,” I repeat, barely believing how easy this was. "You... will help."

When he stops in front of me, he doesn’t speak. His gaze drifts over my face, my injuries, the unsteady set of my shoulders. The silence stretches, taut, until I can hear my own pulse in my ears. He studies me as if weighing something unseen, the distance between us narrow enough that the cool air coming off him prickles against my skin. I read assessment in his gaze, a quiet acknowledgement of exactly what I am and how easily I can be broken.

“You are correct,” he eventually tells me. “ Because Azazel’s interest in you is a consequence of my own, I will grant you what you need.”

“I’ll take it,” I answer, proud of how steady my voice sound

“Thank you, my lord,” the Corinthian says. “I’ll see her to whoever she needs to speak with to fix this and I will stay by her side through it.”

“No. You will not.” Dream’s gaze returns to me, steady as stone. “I shall take her myself.”

I blink, startled by the certainty in his tone.

The Corinthian’s mouth curves, but he says nothing.

I turn, the movement stiff. The Corinthian falls into step a pace behind, and the immense doors begin their silent, ponderous slide shut. Just before the gap narrows to nothing, his voice comes again:

“Cassie Clarke.”

His expression is unchanged.

“Do not vanish from me again.”

Chapter Text

The immense doors shut behind us with the weight of something that will not easily open again.

Dream turns without another word, his coat catching the faint starlight as he starts down a corridor I’ve never seen before. The Corinthian follows at my shoulder, Malka’s head peeking from the fold of his jacket. Her eyes track me as we move, and I realize I want her in my arms.

My gaze lingers on Dream’s retreating figure, the measured sweep of his stride, the way his silence fills every space it touches. There is a part of me that doesn’t want to follow the Corinthian at all. A part that aches to slow down, to stay behind, to catch the Endless before he disappears again.

I tell myself it’s foolish, dangerous, even. Yet the thought roots itself stubbornly: what if I stayed? What if I asked him the things I’m not supposed to? The questions that have been gnawing at me since the first time I saw him?

My steps falter, just enough for the Corinthian to glance back at me. I force myself forward, but the desire doesn’t loosen. It coils deeper instead, a quiet, undeniable truth: I would rather turn toward Dream than away from him.

“Give her to me,” I murmur.

The Corinthian shifts her over without hesitation, the cat’s warm, familiar weight pressing against my ribs. Her tail coils into the crook of my arm, and I feel her purr rumble against my chest.

I glance at him, my voice low. “I’ll see you soon.”

The corner of his mouth lifts. “Count on it.”

Then I turn, falling into step beside Dream.

Malka shifts in my arms, her tail flicking against my wrist. She smells faintly of the Corinthian’s jacket Dream does not look at me, and I don’t know if that is deliberate or simply the way he walks, gaze forward, steps soundless, coat trailing like the shadow of a thought.

My feet falter, and the word is out before I’ve decided to speak.

“Dream,” I start. “Could we… talk?”

He turns. There’s the faintest flicker at the corner of his mouth, amusement, as if he’d already guessed.

“Talk?” His voice is a low echo in the corridor. “About what?”

I hesitate, heat rising in my chest. “Well… this whole situation. All of it.”

His gaze softens, though it’s still impossible to read. “I told you already,” he says. “I will take full responsibility for Chloé being taken to Hell.”

“That’s not all I meant.” The words slip out and I bring the cat closer to me.

For a moment, the profound silence of the corridor reasserts itself, stretching taut between us. Then Dream tilts his head, a minute gesture that stirs the air. A trace of genuine curiosity, like a ripple in a dark pool, appears in his fathomless eyes.

“Are you going to send me away?” I ask as the reality hits me, I have quite literally broken back into the throne room of an immortal being.

He pauses, frowning slightly, as though the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“No,” he says at last. “Never. What would you like to talk about?”

Just as fast as it came, my courage goes out.

“Are we going to Hell now?” I ask eventually, when I can no longer endure the silence.

“Are you eager to go?”

“I want to help Chloe,” I say, tightening, if it’s even possible, my hold on Malka.

He inclines his head slightly, but doesn’t answer me, and I wonder if I’ve insulted him, my gaze darts around the impossible corridor, seeking an anchor.

“The palace is beautiful,” I blurt out.

“Beautiful?” he echoes, as though testing the word.

“Well… many things in this realm are,” I say.

“I do not know about beauty.” He doesn’t break stride. “They serve a purpose.”

I slow, forcing him to stop too. “You don’t believe something can be both?”

For a long moment, he studies me. His head tilts slightly, the starlight catching in the depths of his dark eyes, turning them into fractured mirrors of the cosmos. Then, unexpectedly, he steps closer. The space between us narrows until I can feel the subtle displacement of air as the fabric of his coat stirs, the faintest brush of it against my arm. My breath hitches, catching in my throat. The air crackles. He is going to touch me–

But his hand passes me entirely. He bends with a strange, unexpected gentleness, his long, pale fingers reaching not for me, but for Malka’s head where she peers cautiously from the shelter of my arms. His touch is feather-light on her fur. Instantly, the little cat’s purr amplifies into a deep, resonant thrum, and she leans shamelessly into his caress, butting her head against his knuckles.

“I love cats,” he says.

The laugh bursts out of me before I can stop it.

“You love cats?”

“ Is that surprising? I have always been a cat person.”

“Well, that explains a lot,” I murmur, still amused, though my heart hasn’t quite slowed from the way he leaned in a moment ago.

His hand lingers a moment longer on the cat before he straightens, gaze returning to me. “Come,” he says quietly. “There is something I would show you.”

I fall into step beside him, and together we pass through an archway of stone so tall it seems carved out of night itself.

We enter a high-ceilinged chamber lined with shelves of objects that are neither weapons nor books. Each is kept in its own alcove, labelled in a script I cannot read.

“This is where you give me the thing I asked for,” I say.

“You will have it,” he says. “But you will not go to Hell.”

My pulse jumps. “I don’t need your permission–”

“You will not go,” he repeats, voice low but absolute. “Azazel’s realm is not one you could walk and return from unaided. And I will not give him what he seeks.”

“What does he seek?”

His eyes meet mine. “A reason to draw me into open conflict.”

I swallow hard. “Then what’s your plan?”

“You will remain here,” he says.

“That’s not enough–”

“It is enough,” he says, with the kind of finality that feels carved into stone. Then, softer: “You will see Chloe returned to you.”

Something in my chest loosens and twists all at once.

“And what if I refuse to stay here?” I ask.

His gaze doesn’t move from mine. “You will not.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I can,” he says, and there’s no arrogance in it—only certainty. “Do you imagine I would see you injured?”

The question stops me cold. It isn’t gentle. It’s not even framed as care. It’s fact, laid down with the same weight as his earlier decree, and it lands somewhere I don’t want him to see.

“You don’t get to decide what I risk,” I say, though it comes out quieter than I intend.

His voice stays low, but there’s an edge under it now. “In this matter, I do. Azazel seeks to wound me through you. I will not give him cause.”

The way he says through you makes my skin prickle.

“Then you’d better tell me the plan,” I press. “Because doing nothing is not—”

“I am not doing nothing,” he interrupts, and there’s enough steel in the words to make the space between us feel smaller. “You will remain here. I will call him to me.”

“You can do that?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

A faint inclination of his head. “Here, I am not at his mercy.”

My fingers tighten on Malka without meaning to. “And if he doesn’t come?”

“He will,” Dream says.

The steadiness in his tone is unshakable, and for some reason, that calms me more than the words.

We stand close enough now that I can see the faint starlight caught in his eyes, the cool air between us thinning until I’m not sure I’m breathing at all.

His hand lifts, unhurried, as though even time itself bends to his intention. I brace for him to stop short, as he always does, but this time his fingers reach me. The brush of his palm against my cheek is cool, impossibly gentle, and it steals whatever words I thought I had left.

Something in my chest loosens and twists all at once.

I don’t trust myself to speak. For the first time since stepping into his realm, I let myself believe him.

“If it should appease you,” Dream says, his voice a low vibration that resonates in my bones, his hand still resting with cool lightness against my skin, “I can summon Azazel here. Now. In your presence.” His dark eyes hold mine, offering a terrible kind of witness. “You will see the bargain struck.”

The word tears from me, raw with need. “Please.”

A subtle shift occurs in the atmosphere around him. “Do not be afraid,” he murmurs, though the words feel less like comfort for me and more like a command directed at the very substance of the Dreaming, a reassurance to the realm itself.

The chamber plunges into absolute darkness. Not merely the absence of light, but an active, swallowing void that extinguishes even the faint internal glows of the artifacts. Dream raises the hand not touching my cheek. The air before him doesn’t tear; it fractures like glass under immense pressure, a jagged wound ripped open in reality. From the rift spills pure, suffocating shadow and the acrid, gut-churning reek of sulfur and burning flesh: the stench of Hell.

From the impossible blackness, Azazel unfurls. Not a form, but an abomination: an endless, shifting curtain of gnashing mouths and lidless eyes, each orifice dripping viscous shadow or burning with infernal light. The mouths snap and snarl in a cacophony of overlapping voices, shrieks, whispers, grating laughter, a sound that scrapes against the mind. Eyes of every size and hue blink and swivel independently, their collective gaze a crushing weight that crawls over my skin like insects. Malka flattens herself against my chest, a low growl rumbling in her throat.

“Dream of the Endless,” Azazel hisses. “To call me here, into your realm. I should be flattered.”

Dream does not flinch. He stands before the horror, radiating a cold, ancient power that makes the demonic presence seem momentarily contained. His voice, when he speaks, is clear and resonant, cutting through the demonic cacophony like a blade of ice. “You have taken a mortal. One not yours to claim.”

Azazel laughs, the sound like teeth grinding stone. “All mortals are mine to claim. They stray, they fall, they beg at the wrong door. Their souls are mine by custom and right.”

“She is not yours,” Dream counters, his form beginning to shimmer faintly at the edges with captured starlight, defining him against the consuming darkness of the rift. “You hold what belongs to me. Release it.”

A cluster of eyes, large and burning like coals, swivel away from Dream and fix upon me. The weight of their regard is a physical pressure, cold and invasive. “Ah,” a single, syrupy voice croons from the mass, dripping with false sympathy. “This one, then? The pet of your pet?” The eyes gleam with cruel understanding.

Dream’s gaze flickers to me, a brief, unreadable glance, before returning to the demon. “Her name,” he commands, his tone dropping to a dangerous whisper that vibrates in the stone beneath our feet. “Tell me.”

“Chloé,” I manage, my throat constricted, the name a talisman against the suffocating evil. “Chloé Martin.” Speaking it feels like defiance.

Dream turns fully back to the seething mass. “You will return Chloé Martin.” His voice is no longer ice, but iron striking iron, ringing with absolute authority that makes the fractured air tremble. “Unharmed. Now.”

Azazel’s multitude of mouths split wider in a horrifying mockery of a grin. Shadows writhe.
“Now this is interesting,” a chorus of voices grates. “The aloof King of Dreams, losing his composure… over a mortal? How… human.”

“You will return her,” Dream interrupts, his voice cracking like a whip, the command echoing with such force that the nearest artifacts hum in their alcoves.

Azazel’s mouths curl, amused. “And if I refuse?”

Dream takes a step forward, and suddenly the air is razor-sharp. “Then I will come for her. Not here, not summoned—but in your own domain. And you know what it would cost you if I crossed that threshold.”

The threat hangs in the charged air, vast and terrible. The implication isn’t just violence; it is entropy. Chaos. The potential dissolution of Azazel’s own power structure. The mass of eyes and mouths stills. The cacophony dies to a low, sullen hiss. The ripple of unease is unmistakable now.

“You would bargain, then,” a single, grudging voice emerges from the tumult, stripped of its earlier mockery.

“I will bargain,” Dream replies. “You will return her now, and you will keep your reach from those under my protection. In exchange, I will not trespass in your pit.”

The silence stretches, thick with the reek of Hell and the thrum of immense, opposing powers. Azazel seethes, a dark storm contained by Dream’s will and the laws of the Dreaming. Finally, a sound emerges – a wet, tearing hiss that could be fury, reluctant acceptance, or both. “So be it. A bargain struck, Dream of the Endless. Remember it.”

The rift gapes wider, a maw of purest darkness. A figure tumbles from its depths, landing with a sickening thud on the cold stone floor. Chloé. She lies crumpled, impossibly pale, her clothes torn and singed, but whole. Her chest rises and falls in shallow, rapid breaths. Unharmed.

The rift seals with a sound like the slamming of a cosmic vault, abrupt and final. The consuming darkness vanishes, replaced instantly by the chamber’s normal, faint ambient light. The stench of Hell dissipates, leaving only the dry, metallic ozone smell. The oppressive weight lifts, leaving the vast room feeling strangely hollow, echoing with the aftermath. Chloé lies on the stone, a small, vulnerable shape against the immensity.

“Chloé—” The word tears from me, ragged and raw, before conscious thought can form. I stumble forward, my legs weak. Malka squirms free as I drop to my knees beside Chloé’s still form, my hands trembling violently as they reach for her. Half of me expects her to dissolve like smoke, a cruel illusion. The other half is desperate, clawing need to feel her solid, to feel the life pulsing under her skin.

My fingers brush her arm. She stirs faintly at the touch, a low moan escaping her lips. Relief crashes over me with the force of a collapsing star, so violent it steals my breath, leaving me gasping, tears blurring my vision. I gather her limp form towards me, cradling her head, feeling the frantic beat of her heart against my own.

“You’re okay,” I choke out, the words thick. “You’re safe. You’re safe now.”

I lift my head, blinking back tears. Dream stands a few paces away, unmoved, watching us. The captured starlight still burns faintly in the depths of his eyes, a lingering ember of the power he wielded. His expression is unreadable, yet the usual impenetrable mask seems… thinner.

“Thank you,” I manage, my voice breaking on the words, heavy with an emotion too vast for them. “Thank you.”

For the first time, his gaze softens – not into anything as recognizable as kindness, not quite – but the harsh lines around his eyes ease infinitesimally. Something in it shifts from detached observation to… understanding. Acknowledgment of the raw, human relief before him.

“As promised,” he says quietly, his voice resonating softly in the stillness. “She cannot stay here. The Dreaming is not her place. I will send her to the Waking World. She will be safe. She will remember only a bad dream.”

But it isn’t just enough. Not to me. Not when I know what it cost him to summon a lord of Hell into his own realm.

And for one dizzying heartbeat, I wonder if he did it only out of responsibilities or if, in some impossible way, he did it for me.