THE LAST KING OF EMBERWYLD : THE DYING LIGHT
Chapter 5: The Dreamer’s Game
The field flickered.
One moment it was green and gold, warm with the memory of sunlight. The next it was gray and dead, the grass brittle, the flowers wilted, the sky the color of bruises. The woman in white stood at the center of it all, her dark hair floating in a wind that Kaelen could not feel, her dark eyes fixed on him with an expression that was almost kind.
Almost.
“You are my favorite dream,” she had said.
Kaelen did not know what that meant.
He did not want to know.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
The woman tilted her head.
“Want?” She laughed again, that beautiful, terrible sound. “I do not want. I am want. I am the hunger at the heart of the world. The longing that cannot be satisfied. The need that has no end.”
“You’re the nightmare.”
“I am the dream. The nightmare is what you bring with you. The fear. The doubt. The grief.” She stepped closer. Her bare feet left no prints on the dead grass. “The door does not create monsters. It reveals them.”
Kaelen gripped the Duskblade.
The blade was warm.
Hungry.
“Put that away,” the woman said. “You will not need it here. Not yet.”
“Then what will I need?”
She smiled.
“Yourself. All of yourself. The parts you love and the parts you hate. The parts you remember and the parts you have forgotten. The parts you have buried so deep that you thought they were dead.”
The field dissolved.
Kaelen was standing in a hallway.
Long and narrow, lined with doors on either side. The walls were wood, dark and polished, and the floor was carpeted in deep red. The air smelled of dust and old paper and something else. Something sweet.
The smell of his mother’s perfume.
He had not smelled it in twenty years.
“This is the place where memories live,” the woman said. She was standing beside him now, her white dress glowing in the dim light. “Every door leads to a moment in your past. A moment that shaped you. A moment that broke you. A moment that made you who you are.”
“Why are you showing me this?”
“Because you cannot close the door until you understand what opened it.”
“The first king opened it. He tried to become a god.”
“The first king opened the wound. But the wound was already there. Waiting. The first king just made it visible.”
Kaelen turned to her.
“What do you mean?”
The woman walked to the nearest door.
She pressed her hand against the wood.
“The wound is not in the world,” she said. “The wound is in you. In all of you. In every living thing. It is the crack between what you are and what you wish you could be. The space between your dreams and your reality.”
“And the first king—”
“The first king was the first to feel it. The first to name it. The first to try to bridge the gap.” She opened the door. “Now it is your turn.”
Beyond the door was a room.
Small and simple, with a bed and a window and a wooden chest at the foot of the bed. The walls were painted pale blue, the color of the sky before a storm. The window looked out onto a field—the same field where Kaelen had played as a boy.
He knew this room.
It was his childhood bedroom.
And sitting on the bed, her back to him, was a woman.
She had dark hair, long and straight, and she was wearing a dress of soft gray wool. Her shoulders were shaking. She was crying.
Kaelen’s heart stopped.
“Mother?”
The woman turned.
Her face was the same—the same dark eyes, the same gentle smile, the same lines around her mouth that appeared when she was worried. But her eyes were wrong. They were black. Depthless. Hungry.
“Hello, my son,” she said. Her voice was the same—warm and soft and full of love. But beneath it, another voice echoed. Deeper. Colder. Older.
The voice of the nightmare.
“You’re not my mother.”
“I am. And I am not. I am the memory of her. The part of her that stayed with you after she died. The part that loves you. The part that grieves for you.”
“My mother died when I was twelve.”
“And you have never forgiven yourself.”
Kaelen’s hands began to shake.
“I wasn’t there. I was fishing. I was being selfish. I was—”
“You were a child. Children are allowed to be selfish. Children are allowed to make mistakes. Children are allowed to grieve.”
“I should have been there.”
“You would have watched her die. Is that what you wanted?”
“No.”
“Then let her go.”
The woman stood.
She walked to Kaelen and took his hands.
Her skin was cold.
“I have been waiting for you,” she said. “Not in this room. Not in this memory. In the space between. In the place where mothers wait for their children to forgive them.”
“You don’t need my forgiveness.”
“Everyone needs forgiveness. Even the dead. Especially the dead.”
Kaelen’s eyes filled with tears.
“I forgive you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“For dying. For leaving. For not being there when I needed you.”
The woman smiled.
It was not the nightmare’s smile. It was hers. Warm and soft and full of love.
“I forgive you too,” she said. “For being a child. For being selfish. For being human.”
She reached up and touched his face.
“Now let me go.”
Kaelen closed his eyes.
The room faded.
The woman faded.
The door closed.
Kaelen was back in the hallway.
The woman in white stood beside him.
“You did well,” she said. “For a first try.”
“How many tries will there be?”
The woman walked to the next door.
“As many as it takes,” she said. “As many as there are doors. As many as there are memories. As many as there are wounds.”
“I don’t have time for this. The world is dying.”
“The world has been dying for a hundred years. It can wait a little longer.”
She opened the next door.
Beyond it was a battlefield.
Kaelen stepped through.
The air was thick with smoke and the smell of blood. Bodies lay scattered across the mud—soldiers in black armor, soldiers in gray, their swords still clutched in their hands, their eyes still open.
He knew this place.
He had fought here.
He had killed here.
He had almost died here.
“This is the Battle of Thornwood,” the woman said. “You were twenty years old. You had been a soldier for two years. You had never killed a man before this day.”
“I killed six.”
“You killed six. And you have never forgiven yourself.”
Kaelen looked at the bodies.
At the faces.
At the eyes.
“I did what I had to do.”
“Did you?”
“They were trying to kill me.”
“Were they? Or were they just trying to survive?”
Kaelen was silent.
The woman walked to a body lying face-down in the mud. She turned it over.
The face was young. Younger than Kaelen. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. His eyes were open. His mouth was open. His hands were still reaching for something.
His sword.
It lay a few feet away.
He had been reaching for his sword when Kaelen killed him.
“He was a boy,” the woman said.
“He was a soldier.”
“He was a boy who was forced to be a soldier. Just like you.”
Kaelen knelt beside the body.
He closed the boy’s eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Sorry doesn’t bring him back.”
“I know.”
“Then why say it?”
“Because he deserves to be remembered. Because he deserves to be mourned. Because he deserves to be more than just a number.”
The woman knelt beside him.
“Then remember him. Mourn him. Give him more than a number.”
Kaelen looked at the boy’s face.
He would remember it.
He would carry it with him.
He would never forget.
The battlefield faded.
The door closed.
Kaelen stood in the hallway.
His legs were shaking.
“How many more?” he asked.
The woman looked at the endless line of doors.
“Many,” she said. “But you are stronger than you know. And you have already taken the first step.”
“What step?”
“You forgave yourself. For your mother. For the boy. For the things you could not control.”
“I haven’t forgiven myself. Not really.”
“Then keep walking. Keep opening doors. Keep facing the memories. Eventually, you will.”
She opened the next door.
Beyond it was darkness.
“But first,” she said, “you must face the thing you fear most.”
“What is that?”
The woman smiled.
“Yourself,” she said. “The person you would have become if you had made different choices. The person you are afraid of becoming. The person who is waiting for you at the end of this hall.”
She stepped aside.
Kaelen walked through the door.