The sky split open before dawn.
It wasn't a physical rending—not lightning, not storm. This was subtler, more insidious. A tear in the veil between the waking world and what lay beneath it. Not the Reverie—no, something older, something buried beneath even that dream-warped realm. Something that had been forgotten on purpose.
Sera felt it first.
Not through sight or sound, but pressure—like a hand pressing on the inside of her chest. Her breath caught, her fingers tightening on the dream-forged dagger always tucked at her side.
From her tent on the cliff edge overlooking Haven, she stepped out into the dim blue predawn and saw it: the stars quivering. Not moving. Not blinking. Quivering—as if they were afraid.
She was already moving before Lucian arrived at her side, boots scraping against stone.
"You felt it too?" he asked.
She nodded. "Something's coming. But it's not crossing over. Not yet."
Lucian looked toward the Heartstone, its tower of light pulsing steadily above the central square of Haven. "Do you think it'll hold?"
Sera's silence was answer enough.
They met with the others in the Hall of Binding. The walls there were etched with names—every soul who had died in the defense of dreams. The living had added more names lately, anticipating what came next. Some carved their own, as if to defy the coming dark by welcoming it openly.
"The Veil is thinning across three points," said Elyan, the Watcher from the Fragmented Shore, her silver eyes glowing softly. "One here. One in the ruins of Sylen. And one... one near the edge of the Fracture."
"The Fracture?" Sera frowned. "That's suicide. No one's crossed that and returned whole."
"Which is why something old might try there first," Elyan said. "To go unnoticed."
Kera, her voice cracking with age and memory, leaned forward. "It's not a question of when it comes through. It's how we greet it."
"We don't greet it," Lucian growled. "We kill it."
"No," said Sera quietly. "We understand it. First."
That earned a heavy silence.
They prepared anyway.
✦
Haven transformed in a single night.
Ward-runners drew protection circles at every entry point, their lines glowing faintly with ink mixed from dreamroot and ash. Children were relocated to the caves beneath the river cliffs. Watchers rotated in shifts above the walls, scanning not just for movement but for flickers in the weave of reality itself.
At the center, the Heartstone grew hotter. Sera spent an hour alone before it, kneeling with the Book of Embers open on her lap. The pages had stopped shifting. They'd resolved into one phrase, repeated over and over in dozens of ancient tongues.
The first fire forgets. The second remembers. The third consumes.
What did it mean?
And then—
Midnight.
The tremor came like breath drawn inward by the earth itself.
Every light in Haven flickered. Children woke screaming. The Heartstone roared—an explosion of white-blue flame that pierced the night sky like a beacon.
And from the far northern horizon, a figure approached.
It didn't walk.
It drifted.
Tall. Wrapped in tatters of light and shadow, its face a hollow mask carved with hundreds of shifting expressions. Its presence bent the air, made it hum.
Lucian stood on the gate wall with a bow drawn, string taut and humming with silver thread.
"It's not a beast," he said.
"No," Sera replied, joining him. "It's a memory."
The figure stopped at the ward-line, hovering just above the ground. Then, impossibly, it spoke.
Its voice wasn't a sound—it was a feeling. Regret. Fire. A lullaby sung in reverse.
"I am the First Flame," it said. "You have woken me."
Sera stepped forward alone, ignoring Lucian's hissed warning.
"We didn't wake you," she said, her voice even. "You never truly slept."
The figure tilted its head. "You lit the Heartstone. Fed it names. Fed it pain."
"Truth is not pain," she said. "Truth is what pain leaves behind."
A flicker passed across its mask—an expression like sorrow, quickly erased.
"You seek to remember," it said. "But not everything that burns should be kept."
"We decide what's worth keeping."
It drifted closer—still halted by the wardline. Fire licked at its feet but did not spread.
"You built your Haven on ash," the First Flame whispered. "On bones and echoes. And now you call it peace."
"Not peace," Sera said. "Hope."
It raised one arm, fire spiraling upward from its fingers. Behind it, the sky bent again. From the tear in the stars, others began to emerge.
Whispers with limbs.
Shadows with teeth.
Dream fragments, twisted by entropy.
Lucian swore and shouted to the archers. "Hold until I give the word!"
Sera didn't move.
Instead, she asked, "Why are you here?"
The First Flame paused. "To remember. To test. To burn what is false."
"We are not false," Sera said. "We are broken, yes. But we remember."
She stepped forward and unwrapped a small bundle from her belt—her mother's locket. Inside, two figures: a younger Sera, and the woman who'd taught her how to dream with courage.
"I lost her to the Reverie. But I kept her here."
She touched her heart.
The figure stared.
Then—slowly—it began to shrink. The flames folded inward. The mask crumbled. In its place stood a young man—no older than twenty—with eyes that glowed like coals at dusk.
"I was once a dreamkeeper," he said softly. "Before the Reverie. Before the war. Before I forgot my name."
Sera reached forward—and gently, carefully—touched his hand.
"You remember now."
The sky sealed itself with a thunderless boom.
The echoes faded.
The other creatures—those whispering shadows—vanished.
The boy collapsed into her arms, breathing shallowly, as if waking from a century-long sleep.
Lucian sprinted down from the wall, disbelief etched across his face.
"What did you do?" he demanded.
"I reminded him who he was," Sera replied, voice hoarse. "The First Flame wasn't our enemy. It was a warning."
Lucian looked at the boy, then the sky. "Then what the hell is coming next?"
Sera stood and looked up at the stars—now steady, but distant.
"Not flame," she said. "Not memory."
She closed the Book of Embers and felt the final page turn.
"Oblivion."