Rina watched him sleep,her heart softening as she studied the peaceful lines of his face. All the tension and grief had finally eased, leaving behind a serene vulnerability. She reached out, her fingers gently tracing his cheekbone.
"He's so incredibly cute when he's asleep," she whispered to the silent room, a soft smile gracing her lips. "I could look at him like this forever."
Rina wasn't ready to sleep. Instead, she settled into the chair beside the bed, content to simply watch over Leo as he rested. The peace on his face was a small comfort.
That peace, however, was a lie.
Just minutes after the sleeping pill pulled him under, Leo's world dissolved. The first sensation was a sickening lurch, his body plummeting through a vacuum of endless, lightless space. He flailed, grasping at nothing, the air screaming past him as he fell for an eternity, only to land with a silent, bone-jarring impact.
The darkness coalesced into a landscape of ruin. He stood in a wasteland, but one he recognized with dawning horror. This was the Roschild estate. The grand mansions were skeletal remains, the gardens were ash, and the air was thick with the smell of smoke and iron. Everywhere he looked, the sightless eyes of corpses stared back at him. He saw the maid who always saved him sweets, his old nanny who sang him to sleep, the stern butler who taught him to stand straight—all of them, familiar faces contorted in a final, silent scream.
"No... no, no..." The words were a choked whisper, torn from a tightening throat.
He began to run, his breath ragged, stumbling over debris and the fallen. "Why?!" he screamed into the suffocating silence, his voice breaking with a sob.
His desperate flight ended at the skeleton of the main villa. There, impaled upon the shattered family crest, was his mother. Her eyes were wide open, frozen in a moment of terror and betrayal. Something deep within Leo's psyche snapped. A silent scream locked in his chest, air refusing to come.
His gaze swept downward, and he saw his sister Skye's head, her fierce eyes dulled. A few steps away lay Rina, her hand outstretched as if she had been calling for him.
And standing over them all was a figure wreathed in impenetrable shadow, a dripping sword in its hand.
A voice, cold and resonant, echoed from the darkness, "All of this happened because of you, Leo."
His world went utterly gray. Lifelessness flooded his eyes as the shadows surged forward to claim him.
But then, a single point of warmth bloomed in the cold. A gentle touch, like a mother's comfort, but deeper—the touch of a soulmate. It was an anchor in the storm.
Outside the nightmare, Rina saw his body thrashing, his arms flailing against unseen horrors. Her heart clenched. She was profoundly grateful she had stayed awake. Leaning over him, she began to hum a soft lullaby, her fingers gently stroking his temples and running through his hair.
"Shhh," she whispered, her voice a tangible balm. "I'm here. You're safe."
Slowly, the tension drained from his body. The nightmare, faced with her reality, released its grip and ceased.
For thirty more minutes, Rina kept her vigil, watching the steady rise and fall of Leo's chest. Only when she was certain his sleep was deep and peaceful did she allow her own exhaustion to surface. A soft yawn escaped her as she finally slipped into the bed beside him. She nestled close, resting her head against his chest, where the strong, rhythmic beat of his heart was a soothing drum against her ear. The sound, a constant and living proof of his presence, washed away the last of her tension. Cradled in that rhythm, she quickly drifted into a deep and easy sleep, she dreamed.
From the beauty of the dreamscape, in the place between the thoughts and the movies of the nighttime, came striding an elephant with butterfly ears. Each ear was as a great wing in pinks and baby blue, shimmering, and moving in the way butterfly wings do. When the great elephant had passed, there came a snake into view whom morphed into an eel, then grew fins down the length of its body and soon became a fish. And so the dream spoke of victory, of beauty always remembered and how the selfish snake self became beautiful too.