Riel stood on the training field, chain coiled around his arm like a serpent, striking again and again at the battered training dummy. Each swing cracked the air, each impact sent shreds of straw scattering. He wasn't training—he was venting. Every strike was a scream he couldn't voice, a wound he couldn't close.
He had been in the swamp again last night.
Same place. Same end.
The dream always began in silence—the kind that swallows everything whole. Then came the stench of rot, the feeling of his boots sinking into black brine that clung to him like tar. He'd look around, searching for movement, but before he could even see it, the pain would hit—tearing, cold, final. Then the world faded, and he woke gasping, heart pounding like a drum of war.
Now, under the dull morning light, his hair clung to his forehead with sweat. His body trembled—not from exhaustion, but from the ghost of that chill still gripping him.
He struck the dummy again, harder this time. The chain howled through the air and wrapped around the figure's neck. A savage pull, and the head flew off, rolling across the dirt. He didn't stop. Another strike. Another. The torso split open, straw guts spilling.
Kaelith's voice cut through the rhythmic thuds.
"Rough night?"
Riel didn't turn. His breaths came ragged, shoulders shaking.
Kaelith took a few steps closer, his boots crunching against the gravel. "You look like death warmed over," he said, trying for levity but finding none. The half-moons under Riel's eyes were nearly black, his skin pale enough to look bloodless.
Riel's gaze was unfocused, his pupils dilating as shadows flickered at the edges of his vision. Crawling things—spindly, formless—scuttled across the ground, across Kaelith's feet, across his own arms. He knew they weren't real. He told himself they weren't. But they looked real enough.
He clenched his teeth and struck again, the chain splattering mud from the shattered dummy.
"Riel," Kaelith said softly now.
Riel's grip tightened. He didn't answer. His anger rose like bile, mixing with fear and exhaustion until he couldn't tell them apart. He just wanted silence.
Kaelith began to speak again, but his words warped into static in Riel's mind.
The world bled gold. Every blade of grass, every shadow, every whisper of air shimmered with molten light. Riel looked up into Kaelith's face—and the eyes staring back were not Kaelith's. Black gold spilled from them, veins of shadow winding across his skin. A crown appeared on his head, crimson and dripping like blood.
Kaelith's face twisted, stretched, and morphed into his own. His blonde hair lengthened into a flowing river of light, a shining silk road spilling across the horizon of Riel's vision.
Then it erupted. Wings, three pairs, pure gold, burst from his back with violent grace, unfurling in impossible arcs that scraped against the sky. The stars themselves seemed to shiver at their brilliance, then twist into streaks of shadow and darkness, illuminating the terrifying figure standing before him.
Riel fell to his knees, hands clutching his head as pain lanced through him in wave after wave. The figure smiled—and the grin was everywhere. Mouths opened along its arms, its torso, its wings, all of them grinning at him in a maddening, endless loop. Each mouth stretched into a black void, a never-ending abyss that seemed to swallow space itself, devouring reality and light alike.
And yet, through the chaos, it was him.
His face. His hair. His wings. His crown.
And it was smiling.
The wings, the crown, the endless mouths—all of it dissolved in a blink. The gold and shadow bled away, stars retreating into the sky, leaving the training ground as it had been minutes before. The world snapped back like a photograph thrown into water—Kaelith's boots crunching against the gravel, the battered dummy at Riel's feet, the morning haze low and unremarkable.
Riel sank to his knees, chest heaving, fingers digging into the dirt as if holding onto the ground could keep him tethered to the waking world. His eyes stung; the black gold veins had vanished, leaving only the fatigue and the phantom weight of wings pressing against his back.
Kaelith crouched beside him, expression a mixture of concern and calculation. "Riel… what's going on?" His voice was steady, but there was an undercurrent of unease that even the Scion rarely let show.
Riel tried to speak, but his throat felt raw, his mind scattered. Words refused to form. Instead, he staggered to his feet, gripping his chain like a lifeline.
"I—I'm fine," he muttered, though even he didn't believe it.
"You're not," Kaelith said, rising, shadowed by the morning light. "You're shaking, your aura's—" He stopped himself, eyes narrowing. "Whatever just happened… you need to tell someone. Now."
Riel shook his head. "No. I need… I need to be alone."
Without another word, he turned and stumbled off the training field, each step unsteady. The world felt brittle under his boots, the air too thin, the wind whispering faint echoes of golden wings and grinning mouths. The further he went, the more reality seemed to resist him, as though it remembered the figure that had just existed and didn't want it here.
Kaelith called after him, "Riel!" but Riel didn't stop. He kept walking, down the winding paths of the Cradle, past the quiet halls and wards etched into the stone, until the distant sound of bells and the murmur of morning lessons faded behind him.
By the time he reached the small room he was allocated to, his legs gave out. He collapsed onto the floor, forehead pressed to the cold stone, hands trembling uncontrollably. The mark beneath his eye pulsed faintly gold, as though responding to the memory of the figure he had just glimpsed—and the terrible promise it carried.
He didn't move for a long time. Not until the sun had dipped just below the horizon to cast purple light across the room, and even then, he only dared to breathe.