Loki grinned—but the edges of that grin twitched, peeling at the seams. Flas licked up his arms, no longer warm, but gnashing. Serpents of fire with teeth made of whispering tongues. They slithered around his forearms, hissing in tongues older than sleep.
He clenched his fists. His knuckles cracked like bones splitting in ice.
"Then let’s do this."
Aurora didn’t answer. Her breath hitched in her throat—too shallow, too quiet. Her shoulders rolled back slowly, and sothing shifted beneath her skin. The air shimred around her. Not with heat, but with presence.
Crimson light seeped from her wrists, pulling through her like thread dragged through open flesh. The tendrils wrapped around her hands like veins turned outward, gleaming and wet. Her eyes narrowed, the skin around them twitching with too much restraint, as if her body knew what was coming—and feared it.
A circle ford in the air. Not ink. Not fire.
It was... wrong.
It pulsed golden, but dull—like dying candlelight beneath water. Its symbols crawled across its edge like ants made of bone. Ancient glyphs stitched in patterns that made the eyes itch and the stomach turn. They moved even when you didn’t look.
The air changed.
It dropped—not like snow, not like winter—but like the temperature inside a sealed tomb. A cold that ca from within, that leaked from marrow and mory.
Then ca the sll.
Burnt sugar, yes.
Then copper. So strong it coated the tongue like blood fog.
Then ’sulphur and rot’.
It clawed into the lungs like smoke from cremated bones. It tasted like soone had set dreams on fire and let them fester.
The spellbook behind Aurora snapped open with a wet hiss. Its pages fluttered not like paper, but like wings. Tattered, breathing wings—struggling to escape her will.
The glyphs scread across the air now. The circle writhed like sothing in birth-pain. It fed not just off her mana—but her certainty, her guilt, her unspoken grief. It devoured her.
"Stand back," she warned, but the voice wasn’t hers anymore. It was taut, cracked at the edges. She didn’t sound like a girl. She sounded like a priestess who had touched too many corpses. Touched by the damned.
"This spell... tunnels through the Dreaming. Or what’s left of it. And there are things there. Don’t let them touch you.....They rember the warmth of skin."
Her voice broke.
Even saying the words made her bones squirm beneath her skin. Her nerves tingled like rusted wire pulled taut by invisible hands. She was unraveling already.
Veil hissed behind Loki. "Wait—what ’they’ are we talking about?"
Aurora didn’t answer.
The roof rippled.
"Too late to complain," Loki muttered. "I left my sanity back in the Dark Continent long ago....no need for details."
The roof trembled—not from impact, but from resonance. A vibration that crawled up their teeth, into their eyes, into the folds of the brain not ant to feel sound.
Far away—where dreams once road like wolves—a symbol opened above the monsters. A crack in the air. A scar. A mouth with no bottom. It didn’t bleed light.
It bled screaming.
The kind you hear when you’re alone. The kind behind locked doors.
Aurora arched backward—then lifted. Her feet dangled inches from the ground as though sothing had slipped hooks behind her ribs and begun pulling. Her veins flared white through translucent skin. Her jaw wrenched open. No sound ca, but her scream ’shook the walls’.
The spellbook tore itself open—pages slashing into the air like blades.
"This is the last ti I save his ass," she whispered. "He better be alive..."
Her voice splintered.
"...or I’ll kill him myself."
And then—
The ’sky scread’. Laws restricting the reality and the dreaming weakened ever so lightly. Focusing on both figures before her.
And they vanished. Devoured by the dreaming.
.
.
.
Arrival.
They landed like carcasses dropped into oil.
No splash. No scream. Just impact—soft, smothered, and final.
There was no sky. No ground. Just Dreaming—or what remained of it. A rotted abstraction.
Around them, the space pulsed. It didn’t breathe. It ticked.
Bloated dream-orbs floated, jelly-thick and stinking. They pulsed like tumors. mories ruptured and leaking pus: childhood songs sung backward, wedding kisses that tasted of ash, eyes that blinked without heads.
Colors flickered—shades never ant for sanity. Sick pinks. Yellow bruises. Moldy green that vanished when stared at.
It wasn’t a place.
It was a grudge.
A mory of sothing better. A monunt to unbirth.
Corpses drifted around them. Not n. Not beasts. Things older than stories. Once caretakers of dreams—now drifting at. Limbs splintered. Jaws unhinged. Eyes peeled wide, still seeing things behind the fabric of now.
"...What the actual fuck happened here?" Veil whispered, curling tighter around Loki like a fevered shadow.
Loki didn’t answer. His voice cracked from sowhere deeper than his throat.
"Sothing worse than us."
Veil froze.
He understood. He had devoured whole forests. But this? This was sacrilege against the laws of endings.
A light blinked ahead. A faint arrow.
Aurora’s spell.
It pointed forward—into the womb of hell.
"Let’s go," Loki muttered.
They swam.
There was no ground. No up. No down.
They moved through reality that pulsed like liquid lung. Every inch fought them. Every breath tasted like burnt cloth and forgotten screams. The Dreaming rejected motion. It tolerated only forward.
Sothing watched.
Loki felt it first.
A tickle beneath the skin. An itch inside his eye.
He didn’t speak.
Veil whispered, "Don’t stop. Don’t look. They rember your shape."
The air froze.
Not weather. Not ice.
This was void cold. The kind that ca from stars murdered in their cribs. It sank beneath skin, numbed the soul.
Fear grew roots in their bellies.
Loki’s breath ca sharp. His mana refused to spark. Every spell he cast guttered into silence. This realm didn’t reject his will.
It erased it.
Below them, sothing opened.
A shadow darker than blindness.
Not empty—but older than light.
It blinked once.
And the whole Dreaming convulsed like a dying god.
Veil tried to scream. Nothing ca.
"Co on..." Loki panted. "We’re almost..."
A tap
Gentle. Delicate.
Sothing touched his shoulder.
"Veil," he said tightly. "Stop touching—"
"I’m not," Veil rasped, trembling.
Loki turned.
Veil turned.
"Haaaaaaa!!!!"
"Haaaaaaaa!!!!!!!"
They scread.
A man-shaped thing hovered behind them.
Blue skin. Curved ears. Armor stitched from mory fragnts and regret. A soldier. A soilder of the dreaming? ghost. A wound in human form?
His eyes glowed with absence.
"...What the fuck..Who are you?...."
The soldier smiled. It split his face like a wound.
"I’m a survivor," he said. The voice echoed from too far away. "And you? You do not belong....here. "
Veil shrank behind Loki.
"We’re just passing through," Loki lied. "No harm, no gods, no eyes."
The soldier’s smile widened, showing too many teeth...to many than one needed."
"Wait." He voiced.
They moved.
The arrow pulsed.
"Co on," Loki hissed.
{{{{{{{{{{{{{I said... wait.}}}}}}}}}}}}}}
The Dreaming cracked.
Loki’s limbs froze. Veil convulsed.
Aurora’s voice echoed—like a mory of hope:
"If it wears a face you know—keep moving. Even if it calls you ’friend.’"
The soldier lunged.
Then sothing ....dragged him back....
Not hands. Not force.
Just ’Law’. The fading law of the dreaming. The remnants of Dracula. Their ward.
He smiled as he vanished.
".....sooooon....sooooonn"
Gone.
Silence swelled like a wound.
"...We keep going," Loki said.
But his voice betrayed him.
They swam.
No one spoke.
Then—warmth.
Light. Real light.
A pulse ahead. Like a heart still beating.
Aurora’s spell flickered, weak.
Loki swallowed.
Veil whispered, "He better be alive."
"...Or we’re all already dead," Loki said, quieter now.
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