THE LAST KING OF EMBERWYLD : THE AWAKENING DARK
Chapter 2: The Dreamer’s Vision
The road to the north was different now.
Five years ago, it had been a wound in the earth—cracked and broken, lined with dead trees and dying fields. Now it was alive. Grass grew between the cobblestones. Wildflowers bloomed along the edges. Birds sang in the branches of trees that had been skeletal the last time Kaelen had walked this path.
But the sky was changing.
The further north they traveled, the darker it became. Not the darkness of night—the darkness of something gathering. Something waiting. Something that had been sleeping for five years and was beginning to stir.
Seraphine walked beside him, her silver hair bright against the gloom, her sea-colored eyes fixed on the horizon. She had not spoken since they left Dusk Hollow. She had simply walked, her staff tapping against the stones, her breath steady, her focus absolute.
Kaelen watched her.
She was young—younger than he had first thought. Nineteen, maybe twenty. But her eyes were old. Old in the way that Elena’s eyes had been old. The eyes of someone who had seen too much and carried too much and hoped too much.
“How long have you been dreaming?” Kaelen asked.
Seraphine glanced at him.
“Since I was a child. The dreams came to me like they came to all dreamers—unbidden, unwanted, unavoidable.”
“What did you dream about?”
She was silent for a long moment.
“The door,” she said. “I have been dreaming about the door my entire life. Before I knew what it was. Before I knew where it was. Before I knew why it mattered.”
“And you never thought to find it?”
“I was afraid. The door is not a place for the living. It is a place for the dead. For the nightmares. For the hungry.”
“But you’re going there now.”
“Because I have no choice. The crack is growing. And if it grows too wide, the nightmares will escape. And the world will end.”
They made camp that night in the ruins of an old watchtower.
The walls were crumbling, the roof half-gone, but the fire pit was still there, and there was wood enough to burn. Kaelen built a fire while Seraphine sat with her back to the stone, her staff across her knees, her eyes closed.
She was dreaming.
Kaelen could tell by the way her breathing changed—slower, deeper, more regular. Her lips moved, forming words he could not hear. Her hands twitched, as if reaching for something only she could see.
He watched her.
He had never met a dreamer before. He had heard stories, of course—everyone had heard stories. The dreamers were the ones who could see beyond the veil, who could walk the paths of the nightmare and return with their minds intact. They were rare. They were feared. They were needed.
And they rarely lived long.
The dreams took them, eventually. Consumed them. Turned them into hollow shells of who they had been.
Seraphine knew this.
She had accepted it.
She woke with a gasp.
Her eyes were wide, her face pale, her hands shaking.
“What did you see?” Kaelen asked.
She looked at him.
Her sea-colored eyes were wet.
“I saw the crack,” she said. “It’s wider than I thought. Deeper. It’s not just in the seal. It’s in the door itself.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the door is failing. Not the seal—the door. The stone. The magic. The thousand years of sacrifice. It’s all crumbling.”
“How much time do we have?”
Seraphine closed her eyes.
“Weeks,” she said. “Maybe less. The nightmares are pushing against the door. They can feel the weakness. They can smell the light.”
Kaelen’s hand went to the Duskblade.
It was warm.
Hungry.
“Can the door be repaired?”
“I don’t know. No one has ever tried. The door was made by the first king, using magic that has been lost for a thousand years. It cannot be recreated. It can only be maintained.”
“By the guardian.”
“By the guardian. But the guardian is gone. You sealed the door. You ended the line of guardians. There is no one to maintain it now.”
Kaelen felt the weight of her words settle onto his shoulders.
“So the door will open.”
“Yes.”
“And the nightmares will come.”
“Yes.”
“And the world will end.”
Seraphine opened her eyes.
“Unless we find another way.”
They walked north for three more days.
The land grew colder, darker, more barren. The grass gave way to frost. The trees gave way to stone. The sky gave way to clouds that never moved, that hung over the horizon like a lid on a pot.
On the fourth day, they reached the mountains.
The pass was narrow, barely wide enough for a single traveler, the walls on either side sheer and dark. Kaelen remembered this place. He had walked it five years ago, alone and afraid, carrying a blade that hungered and a key that burned.
Now he walked it again.
With a dreamer at his side.
And a new fear in his heart.
“The door is on the other side,” Seraphine said. “In the valley beyond the mountains. The place where the first king made his bargain.”
“The place where I sealed it.”
“The place where it is now failing.”
Kaelen looked at the pass.
At the darkness beyond.
“Then let’s not keep it waiting.”
They climbed.
The wind was cold, biting through Kaelen’s cloak, stinging his face. The path was steep, the rocks loose, the drop sheer. One wrong step and he would fall. One moment of distraction and he would die.
He did not fall.
He did not die.
He kept climbing.
Seraphine climbed beside him, her staff tapping against the stone, her silver hair streaming in the wind. She did not speak. She did not need to. Her presence was enough.
At the summit, they stopped.
The valley spread before them.
And the door.
Kaelen had expected to see the wall—the solid, unbroken wall that had replaced the door five years ago. The wall that he had built with his blood and his will and his soul.
But the wall was not there.
In its place was a crack.
A wound.
A fissure in the stone, jagged and raw, pulsing with darkness.
The door was opening.
Kaelen drew the Duskblade.
The blade blazed—not with hunger, but with something else. Something that felt like recognition.
“It knows the door,” Seraphine said.
“It remembers.”
“Can it close it again?”
Kaelen looked at the blade.
At the darkness.
At the crack.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I have to try.”
He walked toward the door.