The world had changed.
Not with thunder or fire, but with stillness.
When the Gate collapsed and the Reverie unwound, it did not shatter reality as many feared. Instead, the world exhaled. The unnatural stopped moving. The silence lifted. People awoke in their beds without knowing they had been dreaming. Others, less fortunate, remembered—and wept.
Sera remembered everything.
She stood now in the ruins of the Citadel. But this time, it was not suspended in some timeless fold of the Reverie—it was in the waking world. Roots had cracked the marble. Wind sang through broken arches. It had once been the seat of a forgotten king. Now, it was hers.
Lucian sat a few steps below her, oiling his blade, though he had not used it in days. Daen was further off, carving a map into the ground with a stick. He refused to sleep indoors anymore. Said the walls whispered too much.
Sera could understand.
It had been three weeks since the First Dreamer passed into silence. She hadn't told the others what she'd seen in those final moments: the Dreamer's memories, the pain of endless eons spent holding the Reverie closed from within, not out of power but out of guilt. They had wanted to die. But more than that, they had wanted to be remembered.
And now, the burden of memory had passed to Sera.
"You've been up there all morning," Lucian said, joining her on the crumbling platform.
"Thinking."
"That's what you always say before telling me we need to leave."
"I'm not going to say that," she replied, her voice quiet. "Not yet."
Lucian studied her. "But soon."
"Yes."
He didn't argue. He only nodded.
Below them, a caravan of survivors—maybe a hundred—gathered in the grass. Some had come from cities that no longer existed on any map. Others had woken in burned forests or ruined temples and wandered until they found the trail of silver flame Sera had left in her wake. The Reverie had blurred the lines of time and space so much that many of them didn't know when they were from.
One child claimed to be from a kingdom that had fallen five hundred years before.
Another woman insisted she had met the First Dreamer in person—when he still had a name.
Sera didn't dismiss their stories.
The new world would need those stories. It would be built from them.
"What do we do with all of them?" Lucian asked, nodding to the gathering crowd.
"We remember them," she said. "And we listen."
Daen joined them, wiping his hands on his tunic. "The refugees are getting restless. They want answers."
"I don't have answers," Sera said.
"You have something better," Daen said, tone clipped. "You have authority. That symbol on your back still glows at night. It's magic they trust."
"I'm not a queen."
Daen narrowed his eyes. "The world doesn't need a queen. It needs someone who'll carry the weight of what was done."
Lucian chuckled. "Well, if you're looking for volunteers..."
But Sera's gaze didn't falter. "We're not here to rule. We're here to help them rebuild."
Daen shrugged. "Then give them something to follow. A name. A banner. You burned a hole in the sky. Might as well light a torch."
Sera sighed, rising to her feet.
She walked down the stairs of the broken Citadel, through the center of the crowd. The people parted around her not like subjects to a monarch, but like survivors around the only one still standing.
She climbed a stone pedestal and turned to face them.
"I am not your queen," she began. "I am not your savior. The Gate is gone because many died to see it closed. The Dreamer is gone. And the Reverie no longer claims us. But that doesn't mean we are safe. There are lands burned by madness. People still lost in dreams. And memories that cannot be buried."
Silence. Even the wind paused.
"I will not lead you," she said. "I will walk with you. And if you fall, I will lift you. If you forget, I will remember. If you doubt, I will speak. And when the time comes that we must rise again, not with swords or spells, but with our hands and hope, I will be beside you."
A man in the crowd shouted, "What do we call this place?"
Sera looked to the sky.
It was bright, open.
Limitless.
"We'll call it Haven," she said. "Not for what it is now—but for what we'll make it."
A murmur passed through the crowd. Then a cheer. Then a chant.
Haven.
It echoed like the turning of a page.
✦
That night, as stars blanketed the horizon, Sera sat beside the fire with Lucian and Daen.
"I don't know how to build a city," she said, almost apologetically.
"You built a rebellion," Lucian said. "Same thing."
"We didn't build it," she said. "We survived it."
"Then maybe survival is the first step to building."
She turned to Daen. "Will you stay?"
He hesitated. "I don't know. Part of me wants to go west. See if the Echo Wells are really dry."
"They are," she said. "I saw it in the Dreamer's mind."
"Well," he shrugged, "then I guess I'm staying."
Lucian raised a brow. "That easy, huh?"
Daen smirked. "Don't mistake stubbornness for commitment. But if someone's going to make sure this 'Haven' doesn't become a monarchy, I might as well keep watch."
Sera laughed. It was light, and strange, and real.
They sat in silence then, watching the stars.
Not for signs. Not for omens.
Just... watching.
✦
Later, alone, Sera walked the perimeter of the camp. Small tents had gone up. Families slept near fires. Some children had drawn runes in the dirt, imitating her markings.
She stopped near the edge of the forest.
Something shimmered between the trees.
She stepped forward.
There—faint—was the echo of the First Dreamer.
Not whole. Not sentient. Just a trace of their light, hovering in the air like a goodbye that hadn't yet been said.
Sera did not speak.
She only nodded.
The light pulsed once.
Then vanished.
She turned and walked back to camp.
She had a city to build.
A world to shape.
And for the first time since the fall of the Gate, she didn't feel alone.