Page 103 of Cursed By the Dawn

If the rest of Dream Realm was the absence of nothing, the Beyond was the absence of everything.

I woke up in a grave of darkness; I couldn’t so much as see my own hand in front of my face. Choking back a sob, I tried to scream—only to realize that my voice wouldn’t carry. It sounded as though I were underwater, as though my words were a faraway whisper.

No.

No.

No.

I stumbled forward, hands outstretched, legs jerking with every step. I wasn’t walking on the earth; I was walking on smoke, on water, onbones. The ground shifted substances every few feet, and I was close to hyperventilating from the shock of it all. I couldn’t see—the darkness was suffocating, laying thickly over my face like a living shadow—so I couldn’t tell what would be next. One step might land me knee-deep in a river of icy slush. Another step might deliver a heap of beetles or mud or warm coals or sharp rocks. From what I could tell, I wasn’t wearing much in the way of clothes. My hands, legs, and feet were starkly bare, and only a thin dress covered what it could.

Everything else was left exposed to the elements.

I took another step, letting loose a cursedly muffled scream when my foot slipped on a rock covered with something furred and slimy. I landed hard on my back, twisting and turning to avoid what felt like sharpened sticks or bony fingers.

Where were the other dreamers? The thousands of Noctis citizens who’d been banished to the Beyond, too? Where were the other Weavers? Where was Erebus?

I walked for what felt like hours, days, months,years.

Searching for someone.

Searching foranything.

Slowly, a light twinkled weakly in the distance, so softly that I was certain I was imagining it. The flash was just a pinprick of white, no larger than a grain of sand, but it wasn’t difficult to spot amid the all-consuming dark. The light grew steadily brighter as I continued walking, illuminating a thin stone path that rose above the mire. It took all my strength to heave myself atop the raised platform, so weak was my body in this depraved pocket of the Dream Realm, but I didn’t allow myself to rest. I shoved myself upright and started running across the platform, sprinting toward the light as if it was my final lifeline.

And perhaps it was.

I nearly reached the source of the light at the same time I stumbled into a body.

Cold hands skated up my arms, then finally grasped my face with desperate fingers. Strong, beautifully shaped hands I’d recognize even in total darkness.

“Erebus?” I sobbed, the sound finally finding purchase. “I’ve been wandering forever. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

He crushed me into his arms, stroking my hair even as his chest trembled against my cheek.

“Are you real?” he whispered. “Or a ghost made to torment me? Are you merely a beautiful illusion?”

“I’m real,” I answered seriously. “I’m here.”

He was openly crying, unable to stop. I returned his embrace, hands shaking as they gripped the back of his shirt. I used a small wisp of shadow to caress his face; it was all I could muster, but it was enough to tell him it was trulyme. For a few quiet moments, that was all we did. Merely breathed each other in. Thumbed away each other’s tears. Held each other so tightly that nothing could separate us again.

“What happened?” I finally managed, refusing to let go of him even as I leaned back to meet his eyes.

The growing light made it possible to see him. Like me, Erebus was clad in only the simplest of clothes: black pants and a matching open-necked shirt. His feet were bare, as were his hands, and his eyes, thankfully, were a beautiful, brilliant silver, swirling with the echoes of a few shadows. No longer was there any red lurking within their depths.

There was only him.

“This must be the Beyond. The birthplace of demons, despair, and every other sin that festers within the dregs of the Dream Realm,” Erebus noted, glancing around at the darkness that sought to swallow us. He wrapped his hands around mine, holding me close. He wasn’t ready to let me go anytime soon, either. “We aren’t meant to be here. Raelion was planning to make us into his puppets; he didn’t intend for us to atrophy here in this wasteland with the rest of Noctis’s citizens.”

I shuddered. “I haven’t come across any other dreamers.”

“I’m not surprised. The Beyond is said to be immeasurable. Endless. It is a miracle we found each other.”

Itwasa miracle we’d found each other. But now we’d simply fester in a pit of nothingness for eternity, helpless as the world spiraled into utter chaos and destruction.

Keeping our hands firmly intertwined, we made our way toward the source of the light.

Strangely, the glow felt familiar—like the faint pull that had drawn me into these depths from the start. At first, only a small pool of gold was visible, a faintly shimmering oval adrift in a sea of darkness. We stepped from the raised path, moving into the shadows as theycoiled around our legs. It was like wading through a warm stream. Small threads of light drifted from the golden pool, melting into the void.