The dream began the way it always did—with the black glass plain.
Elias stood alone, the sky above him a bruise of swirling green and silver. The ground cracked, and from the fissures rose whispers, not words but feelings. Grief. Hunger. The cold of a place that had never known light. He walked, though he didn't want to, and the plain stretched endlessly until he saw it: a door.
It was not a door of wood or steel. It was a wound in the air, a jagged tear that pulsed like a heart. Through it, he could see the sea, the sky, the world he had fought to protect. And on the other side, pressing against the tear, was a darkness that smiled with a thousand teeth.
You are already mine, it said. You carry me inside you. The door is not a thing you can close. It is you.
Elias tried to speak, but
