Chapter 7 — Nightmares and Reality
Arsanguir woke screaming.
His eyes stayed closed, the sun burning through his lids. His skin crawled as if the leeches from his dream still clung there, slick and cold, squirming across his chest. The more he clawed at himself, the worse it felt—until he opened his eyes.
The sensation bled away.
He lay curled inside the dragon's coils, the beast asleep, its breath rumbling through the ground. Each exhale was like a small quake.
Slowly, he slid free. His legs trembled as he crept to the river. He filled his waterskin, lifted it to his lips, and drained it before he even stopped to breathe. Water spilled down his chin. He fell back onto the bank, staring up at the sky. Rose light bled into the canopy. For a moment, he let it soak him.
Then the thought came: the Behel.
The fox's body still lay where the dragon had left it. A trickster beast, usually impossible to track, impossible to kill. And now it was his.
He hurried to it, knife in hand, grin pulling at his mouth despite the ache in his chest. He worked the blade slow, careful, peeling skin, easing bone apart, making sure nothing valuable was spoiled. This time he kept everything—fur, claws, teeth, even the gut. If he didn't know what was useful, then nothing should be wasted.
On the right side, beneath a lung, he found it.
A crystal.
Shaped like a heart, dark green at the surface, glowing faintly at the core. It throbbed with its own pulse.
He turned it in his hand. Its skin-smooth edges caught the sun. Light ran through its depths. His eyes stuck to it. His chest slowed, his mind unmoored.
He fell.
Not down. Not through air. But inward.
A slow sinking, as if his name and body were slipping away from him. Memory unthreaded.
The sky formed first: yellow, thick and sickly. Not a sky at all but a wound, raw and weeping, spilling poison into everything below. The weight of it pressed down, heavy enough to crush.
The ground shifted beneath him, flesh instead of soil. Every step gave way, soft and wet. When he paused, it began to climb his legs, as though the world itself wanted him swallowed.
Fog rolled in, viscous and stinking. Shapes moved inside it—shadows with too many limbs.
Eyes opened. Dozens. Hundreds. Wet, unblinking, fixed on him. They probed, as if peeling him open, scraping through thoughts he hadn't even formed.
He stumbled forward. His lungs dragged in air that stung like acid. His heartbeat filled his head.
And then, through the fog, titans rose. Bone spires, claws, limbs that bent wrong, tentacles shifting without pattern. Nothing stayed one shape long enough to name. Their growls were not sound but pressure, rolling through the ground and into his ribs.
Yet none touched him.
They circled. Moved with rhythm. A cadence so old it felt like the ground itself breathed with them. He slowed. The horror didn't fade, but it changed. They were not hunting. They simply existed. He was the intruder.
He wasn't here to flee. He was here to see. To understand.
Cold.
It cut up his chest, sharp as a blade, and the nightmare folded in on itself.
The dragon towered above him. Eyes green and gold, watching. One claw came down, pierced his ribs.
Pain exploded. His lungs collapsed. His scream caught inside him.
The dragon coughed into the wound. Black liquid poured in, burning through every nerve. His chest convulsed. New lungs grew—thick, dark, wrong. They dragged in air, each breath a knife, yet power surged with it, power that felt borrowed.
The claws dug deeper. His liver came free in a wet rip. His guts followed, coiled rope spilling onto the earth. The pain was white-hot, blinding, but he couldn't even thrash. His body no longer belonged to him.
One by one, replacements slid in. Slick organs that pulsed with alien rhythm, stitched with veins that burned against his insides. His humanity hollowed, filled with something else.
But his heart remained.
It beat fast, desperate, a bird trapped in its cage.
The dragon's eyes narrowed. Claws wrapped around it.
Every squeeze was agony. His vision blurred, blood roared in his ears, his mind shattered under the pressure. The claws pulled, and his heart tore free.
He felt it outside himself. Still beating. Slowing.
Then the dragon coughed again.
The heart swelled in its grip, rippling, changing. It pulsed once, twice, with a rhythm not his own.
The beast pushed it back into his chest.
His body seized, ribs locking around the new organ. Fire swept his veins. His breath came jagged, but the air no longer cut. The heart's pulse filled him, warped him, made him something else.
The dragon pulled back at last, watching. His skin knitted over his chest, seamless. No scar. No proof.
Arsanguir lay gasping. His body silent, but inside, every beat throbbed with something no longer human.