The dreams of Elarion began to change.
At first, they were gentle — visions of gardens reborn, seas turned to silver, and children laughing in endless twilight. But as days bled into nights, the dreams grew louder. Too loud. The people began waking in tears, whispering names they didn't know, songs they had never learned.
Arenne could feel it, too.
Every night when she closed her eyes, the air around her trembled. She would dream of hands reaching from beneath the soil, of voices murmuring beneath the sea, of temples crumbling in slow, deliberate rhythm — as if something old were breathing again.
She knew that feeling. It was how the first world had begun to break.
From the highest tower, she watched the horizon that never quite grew bright. The dawn lingered half-born, its colors caught between silver and crimson. The sun itself seemed reluctant to rise fully, as though afraid of what waited in its own light.
A voice came from behind her — low, resonant, familiar.
"You feel it too."
Arenne turned. It was Vaelen, the Keeper of Echoes — one of the few from the old court who had survived the collapse. His eyes glowed faintly, pale as ash.
"What do you see?" she asked.
He stepped beside her, resting his hands on the marble rail. "The ground hums with memory. The gods who once shaped this world are restless. They feel you moving through their silence."
Arenne looked down at her hand. The veins beneath her skin shimmered faintly with light — the silver pulse of Seraphyne's essence. "I didn't call them."
"No," Vaelen said softly. "But your breath calls to their breath. You are the Queen of Dreams. The more you heal this world, the more they awaken to what they've lost."
Arenne turned away. "Then what am I supposed to do? Let the world decay again so they stay asleep?"
Vaelen's expression was unreadable. "You must teach them to remember, as you taught yourself. Or else destroy them before they remember fully."
The words struck her like cold rain. "Destroy them?"
"They are not like you, my queen," Vaelen said. "They do not know how to dream kindly. When they wake, they will want to reign again. You carry the power they believe is theirs."
The silence stretched between them.
Finally, Arenne whispered, "Seraphyne would not have killed her own kin."
Vaelen's eyes softened. "And that mercy destroyed the first world."
Arenne closed her eyes. The wind shifted, carrying with it the scent of rain and something older — a faint, metallic tang like blood on moonlight.
When she looked up again, the horizon flickered. For an instant, the dawn shuddered — the sky cracking to reveal something vast and dark beneath it. A heartbeat later, it was gone.
Vaelen bowed. "The first god stirs."
"Who?"
"The Sleeper Beneath the Sea," he said. "The one Seraphyne bound in the age before this one."
Arenne turned toward the ocean, her silver eyes narrowing. The waves rolled strangely now, out of rhythm, as if obeying a pulse not their own.
"Then I must go to him," she said quietly.
Vaelen's voice was a whisper. "And if he remembers you not as queen, but as rival?"
Arenne's hand brushed the air. Silver light flowed from her palm, weaving itself into the shape of a blade — not sharp, but alive, pulsing with the heartbeat of creation itself.
"Then I will remind him," she said, "that even gods must dream."