When the candles were snuffed and the heavy silence of the dormitory took hold, sleep—usually a welcome escape—felt like a trap. The air in the long room was thick with the labored breathing of forty boys who were fighting a losing battle against their own exhaustion.
The reason for their vigil sat in the bed at the far end of the row, Erik had returned.
To the boys of the Liden City Orphanage, Erik Arshwic wasn't just a bully or an outcast, he was a phantom. They knew with a bone-deep certainty that the moment they crossed the threshold of consciousness, they would find him waiting for them in the dark recesses of their own minds.
It defied all logic. A dream was supposed to be a private sanctuary, yet Erik treated them like open hallways, wandering from one boy's nightmare to another's memory as if he owned the keys to their souls.
Erik lay perfectly still, his blankets pulled to his chin. He ignored the hushed, frantic whispers about the "Black-Lung Plague" creeping through the countryside or the upcoming festivities for Queen Abigail's sixty-fourth birthday. He had no interest in the gossip of the waking world.
He remained a statue, a predator in a trance, waiting for the heavy-lidded rhythm of their breathing to change. He waited for their defenses to crumble.
He knew they would eventually succumb. The human mind can only resist the pull of the void for so long.
By the time the Great Cathedral bell tolled midnight, the iron-heavy rings echoing through the stone walls of the orphanage, the chorus of snores had mostly taken over. Only two voices remained, flickering like dying candles in the dark.
Wilburn and Griffith.
"Are you still awake?" Griffith whispered, his voice cracking with the strain of staying conscious.
"I'm trying," Wilburn hissed back, his eyes darting toward the silhouette of Erik's bed. "I don't want to see him, Griff. Last time... he was just standing there, in my mother's house, watching me. He didn't say a word. He just watched."
Erik heard them. He didn't move a muscle, but a cold, invisible pull began to tug at the edges of his consciousness. He wasn't interested in Wilburn's memories or Griffith's fears tonight. He was looking for a different door—a door that led to Christabel.
Erik let out a long, weary sigh that cut through the frantic whispering like a blade.
"Just sleep, you idiots," he muttered into the dark.
The whispers died instantly, replaced by a suffocating silence. He had no intention of scavenging through their dull, repetitive subconsciouses tonight. Wilburn was the worst of them—a broken record of a mind. For years, the boy had retreated to the same crooked, sun-drenched cottage to sit at the feet of a woman he called 'Mother.'
Erik knew the truth; he had seen the woman's face. She was a composite of illustrations from old storybooks and the kindness of passing strangers. Wilburn was dreaming of a ghost made of paper and ink.
ELeven years of the same dust and the same porch swings, Erik thought, closing his eyes. It's a wonder he hasn't bored himself to death yet.
Then there was Griffith. Griffith's mind was a frantic, messy theater of inadequacy—always running from a faceless shadow, always failing a test he hadn't studied for, or falling through a floor that turned into water. It was exhausting just to witness.
A few minutes passed. The rhythmic, heavy breathing of the two boys finally signaled their surrender. The last sentinels had fallen.
"Finally," Erik whispered to the empty air.
He turned his gaze inward, away from the physical world of drafty floorboards and the smell of lye soap. He ignored the pull of the boys around him, those flickering candles of consciousness that tried to snag his attention as he passed.
He reached further, past the east wing, past the stone foundations of the orphanage itself. He looked for a specific vibration—a spark that tasted of smoke and silver.
Christabel.
He focused on the memory of her laugh, the way her presence always felt like a thunderstorm brewing just over the horizon. The darkness behind his eyelids began to thin, swirling into shades of grey and violet. The floor beneath his bed seemed to dissolve, leaving him suspended in the weightless void between thoughts.
"I'm coming, Gwen," he murmured.
Then, with a sharp pull at the center of his chest, the dormitory vanished entirely.
One moment, Erik felt the cold, scratchy wool of his dormitory blankets; the next, he was stepping into the weightless gray of the In-Between.
Thick, swirling mist clung to his ankles, smelling of damp earth and static electricity. It was the silent foyer of the subconscious, the blank canvas before a dreamer paints their world. But as Erik moved forward, the fog began to peel away in long, silver ribbons, revealing a horizon that defied the laws of the waking world.
The gray was swallowed by an explosion of color.
He stood at the edge of a vast, rolling sea of emerald—an endless meadow of grass so green it seemed to glow from within. There was no sun in this sky, yet the world was bathed in a soft, perpetual golden hour. There were no walls here, no orphanage gates, and no hushed whispers of "cursed" or "abomination."
In the center of this infinite green stood the Landmark.
It was a massive, ancient oak tree, its trunk so wide it could have housed a dozen men, and its canopy stretching upward like the lungs of the earth itself. Its leaves weren't merely green; they shimmered with a metallic luster, rustling in a wind that Erik couldn't feel on his skin, but could hear in his soul.
This was Christabel's sanctuary. While the other children dreamt of their pasts or their fears, Christabel built worlds that were too big for the Kingdom of Viremont to contain.
Erik walked toward the tree, his boots making no sound on the dream-grass. He knew exactly where she would be. She was always there, tucked between the high, gnarled roots, waiting for the only person who knew how to find her.
"You're late," a voice called out from the shadows of the low-hanging branches.