Christabel sat amidst the gnarled roots, looking less like an orphan and more like a spirit of the woods she had conjured. At sixteen, she was only a year Erik's junior, but she carried herself with a grace that the orphanage's threadbare clothes and lye-soap scrubbings couldn't tarnish.
Her blonde hair, which usually caught the soot of the Liden City chimneys, shone here like spun silk. But it was her eyes—a startling, vibrant green—that defined her, they possessed a permanent, secret light, as if she were always on the verge of sharing a joke the rest of the world wasn't clever enough to understand.
Erik leaned against the massive trunk, looking down at her. They were two halves of a broken whole, cast aside by a kingdom that had no place for them.
The records at the orphanage were a ledger of abandonment. Erik had arrived first—a two-year-old bundle left on the stone doorstep in the dead of winter, nameless and screaming at shadows no one else could see.
Two years later, the river had delivered Christabel. She had been found shivering on a muddy bank, four years old and staring at the rushing water with an eerie, silent intensity.
They had grown up in the spaces between the rules, two anomalies who had found an anchor in one another.
"I heard about the fire," Erik said softly, his voice echoing in the vast, green quiet of her mind. "Sir Rustic's manor. Father Bioka says you're trying to break my record for 'most families disappointed in a single year.'"
Christabel looked up, her smile widening. It was a beautiful thing to see, especially here, where the light didn't have to fight through the smog of the Viremont Kingdom.
"He was a cruel man, Erik," she said, her voice like wind through the leaves. "He liked to lock the pantry. I simply thought the door deserved to be opened... with a bit of heat."
Erik chuckled, the sound soft and grounding in the vast silence of the meadow, and settled into the grass beside her. "I don't believe you for a second. You didn't do it for a pantry door."
"Of course you don't," she replied, her gaze drifting back to the horizon. She looked at peace here, far removed from the cold stone floors and the judgmental eyes of Liden City.
Erik had been a thief of dreams since he was four years old. He had trespassed into the minds of every soul under the orphanage roof—from the trembling youngest wards to the stern, prayer-weary Nuns and even Father Bioka himself. Most dreams were cluttered, anxious places, smelling of unwashed linens and stale fears. But Christabel's mind had always been his harbor.
It wasn't just the impossible beauty of the endless green or the sweetness of the air; it was the way she held the door open for him. While others woke up screaming of "demons" and "shadows" when he visited, Christabel simply made room for him on the roots of her great tree. She didn't just tolerate his presence; she craved it.
"I hated it there, Erik," she said, the peaceful mask of the dream flickering for a moment. "Madam Rustic was determined to 'civilize' me. She wanted to turn me into a Lady of the Court. She had me laced into those suffocating corsets and buried under layers of silk and lace. She had me..."
She trailed off, her nose crinkling in genuine distaste as she remembered the restrictive finery of the upper class.
Erik gave a sudden, sharp bark of laughter, picturing the wild, river-born Christabel trapped in a Victorian parlor. "And what's so terrible about that? A Lady of the Kingdom, draped in jewels? Most girls in the ward would kill for a single silk ribbon, let alone a manor house."
"Well, I am not most girls," she countered, her voice sharpening with a playful edge. "So, tell me. I heard you were cast out of your new foster home as well. You didn't even manage a full week this time, did you?"
Erik winced, leaning his head back against the bark. "The Moredins. They had fragile minds, Christabel.The mistress... she was kind enough, I suppose. She looked at me with pity instead of horror. But the Master was made of stone. He decided I was a demon before I'd even unpacked my rucksack."
"Unlike me," Christabel said, turning to look at him, "the rest of the world prefers to keep their secrets behind locked doors. They don't want a voyeur in their heads, Erik."
"I know. But I can't help it. It's a hunger," Erik admitted, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Sometimes it's curiosity—the Need to see what they hide when the masks come off. Everyone is so different when they're asleep. You find the secrets they don't even know they're keeping."
"And what has Old Man Bioka had to say about your latest 'expedition'?"
Erik sighed, the sound echoing strangely in the vast green space. "The usual sermon. He says it's dangerous. That I'm playing with forces that will eventually swallow me whole. Some part of me wants to believe him—that there's a price for this—but I've been walking these paths since I was a child. I'm still here, aren't I?"
He reached out, letting a blade of dream-grass slip through his fingers. "I don't know how I do it. Bioka calls it a tragedy. Maybe it's magic, or maybe it's a gift from the Light Himself. But if the Light gave me this, He must have a very dark sense of humor."
Christabel watched him, her green eyes shimmering. "Perhaps it isn't the Light or the Dark, Erik. Perhaps you're just the only one who's actually awake."
A heavy, comfortable silence settled between them, the kind that only exists between two souls who have known each other since the dawn of their memories. For a moment, the world was perfect: the air tasted of summer rain, and the emerald grass swayed in a rhythm that felt like a heartbeat.
Then, the rhythm faltered.
"Erik," Christabel said, her voice losing its playful edge. She stood up, her hand shielding her eyes as she peered toward the edge of her world. "Do you see that?"
"See what?" Erik asked, pushing himself up.
He followed her gaze, and his breath hitched. On the once-infinite horizon, the golden light was being devoured. A line of oily, suffocating darkness had appeared, spreading across the landscape like ink dropped into clear water. It was a physical decay. Where the darkness touched the meadow, the vibrant grass curdled, turning into a black, weeping sludge that smelled of sulfur and old graves.
"It's rotting," Erik whispered, stepping back as the sky above the darkness began to tear like wet paper.