Time lost its shape after that.

  Minutes, hours—it all blurred together in the dim breath of the Great Tree. Seraphine's body sagged deeper into the roots, shuddering at intervals that made my own heart skip painfully. Every time she twitched, I jerked upright. Every time she went still too long, panic knotted beneath my ribs.

  Ysel kept a quiet vigil near the edge of the hollow, murmuring under her breath to the roots in a nguage that sounded like the forest remembering itself. Velka dozed beside a trunk, sck-limbed and heavy, but every so often her nostrils fluttered like she was scenting something only she could taste.

  Night thickened. Seraphine was deteriorating; her mana flickered like a candle drowning in its own wax.

  And Rocher still hadn't come.

  I kept gncing toward the treeline until the motion became a kind of self-inflicted torture.

  What if he never saw my message?

  What if the wind blew the bark from where I left it?What if an animal took it?What if the forest shifted again and the whole clearing moved before he ever saw it?

  Or worse—what if the padins had spotted him? What if he'd been captured? Locked away in the Tower's dungeon?

  Dread built in my chest, tight and hot and suffocating. And eventually it hardened into something sharper. Sharp enough to cut fear.

  Resolve.

  I stood. My legs were trembling, but I ignored it.

  Ysel's head turned slightly, her gaze tracking me with the same calm scrutiny she'd use on a wild creature deciding whether to run or fight.

  "You intend to leave her side?" she asked.

  "No." My voice came out thin. "I intend to go after her."

  Ysel waited, neither approving nor disapproving.

  I dragged in a shuddering breath.

  Seraphine had fallen into the nightmare trial alone—but that wasn't how it was supposed to go. In the game, Rocher had gone with her. The only reason he could was because he carried tent magical potential as the Hero. Not enough to be a proper mage, but enough to navigate a dreamspace.

  And by the same logic... I could do it too.

  My magic was weak—embarrassingly so—but I could use it. Shape it. That small fme at my fingertips meant I wasn't entirely helpless.

  If Rocher could enter her nightmare, then so could I. The trial wasn't locked to witches. It never was.

  So I offered Ysel the simplest truth that wouldn't betray me.

  "I can do magic," I said quietly. "Barely, but it's there. And if there's even a chance I can reach her, I have to take it."

  Ysel's brow arched. "You think that will be enough?"

  "I don't know." I gave a wry smile. "But I won't sit here waiting for a solution that might never arrive."

  Just saying it left a cold ache in my chest.

  Ysel absorbed the words with a long, thoughtful silence.

  "Very well. If you mean to enter her nightmare, you will require the Forest Guardian's cooperation."

  I exhaled, slow and steady.

  "I understand," I said. And for the first time, I looked directly at her—Velka.

  The Dream Eater.

  She was curled awkwardly against a tangle of roots, mouth slightly open, breathing too heavily to be fully aware. Her eyelids fluttered with half-dreams, half-hunger. Her breath dragged through her throat like something viscous.

  "I know who she was," I murmured. "Before she became this."

  Ysel's eyes went wide.

  The Forest Guardian.

  Forty years ago, Velka had swallowed corruption to protect the forest—to keep its roots from choking on the poison that now pulsed through her instead. It had unmade her mind. It had not unmade her purpose.

  The birth of a witch's child always spelled disaster.

  "She didn't deserve it," I muttered under my breath.

  I moved toward her with the care one might use for a sleeping bear. Her shes lifted slightly as my shadow fell across her.

  "Mmm..." she hummed, voice sticky with dreams. "Sweet priestess... warm thoughts..."

  Her tongue flicked over her lower lip.

  I swallowed hard but held steady.

  "Velka," I said softly. "I need your help."

  She blinked slowly, uncomprehending. "Help...?"

  "I need you to send me into Seraphine's trial. Into her nightmare. I can't get there alone."

  Slow confusion wrinkled her brow. "Down where she is...? In the deep dark...? That pce eats little minds..."

  "Send me there," I whispered. "Please."

  Velka stared at me—empty and childlike.

  Then she nodded.

  Just once. Like a falling leaf choosing where to nd.

  Ysel's voice brushed my ear. "Before she acts... do you have any final requests? As soon as you're down there, we'll lose contact. And there's no guarantee either of you will surface."

  "Yes," I said. There was one thing. "If a man enters the Forest—bck hair, green eyes, built like a warrior—you must bring him here."

  Ysel's gaze sharpened. "Are you expecting him?"

  "I've been hoping," I whispered. "I need him sent under too. Even if he fights it."

  Velka perked at the description, her smile turning vague and hungry.

  "Mmm... strong mind... like trees... tasty..."

  I winced. "Please don't eat him."

  Ysel patted her shoulder. "Control yourself, dear."

  Velka giggled, dreamy and feral.

  Then her hand lifted—too gentle, too cold—touching the back of my neck.

  Magic crawled down my spine like wet leaves.

  Ysel murmured, "Breathe slowly. Do not resist her. Let the Guardian cim you."

  Velka's breath brushed my cheek.

  Her voice dripped like honey and nightmares.

  "Sleeeep."

  The clearing spun. The roots dissolved.

  And I plunged after Seraphine into the waiting dark.

  Darkness wasn't a void.

  It was a pressure.

  A heartbeat.

  A slow, rhythmic pulse that didn't belong to me.

  When sight returned, it came in pieces—the curl of frost on a stone wall, the distant hum of chanting, the faint blue glow of mana mps flickering like dying fireflies.

  I lifted my head.

  I was small. Too small.

  My legs were too short. My hands were tiny, soft, the fingers clumsy and unscarred. I wore a child's robe—Tower-gray, the fabric coarse and starchy against my skin.

  The dream had shrunk me to match her memory.

  The air tasted of iron and incense.

  A corridor stretched before me, endless and cold. And at the far end—half-hidden by a turn—a little girl sat hunched over her knees.

  Red hair. Thin shoulders. A book open in her p.

  Seraphine.

  Not the Seraphine I knew—sharp and brilliant and guarded—but a child of maybe eight or nine, her hair tangled, her robe too big, her legs tucked tight as though making herself smaller made her safer.

  Her ink-stained fingers traced the margins of her book with careful reverence.

  She wasn't reading. She was hiding.

  I stepped closer. My footsteps made no sound.

  The air trembled, the way it does when a nightmare becomes aware of me.

  Young Seraphine stiffened. Slowly, she turned her head—and her eyes widened, not with fear, but with confusion.

  "Who... who are you?" she whispered.

  Her voice was tiny. Softer than I'd ever heard it.

  I swallowed, trying to remember that in the dream-space, I wasn't myself—at least not a form her child self would recognize.

  "I'm Cire," I said. "I'm... visiting. From afar."

  She blinked. Something in her expression faltered—not quite recognition, but the instinctive hope only lonely children had.

  "You're not from the Tower," she murmured.

  "No."

  Her gaze darted past me, wary, as if expecting a robed instructor to appear and yank her back into line.

  "Then you shouldn't be here," she said. "Visitors aren't allowed. They'll punish you."

  She said it like she'd lived her entire life expecting punishment.

  I knelt beside her, ignoring the way the corridor flickered like an old memory struggling to maintain form.

  "I'll be careful," I said softly. "Is this your book?"

  She hugged it to her chest. "It's only a study primer."

  But I saw the pages—margins filled with tiny sketches and sigils that weren't part of any Tower-approved curriculum. Spirals. Lattices. Symbols that curved instead of angled.

  Original magic.

  She didn't notice me noticing.

  "Why are you here?" she whispered.

  Because this was the first door of her nightmare. Because this was the beginning of the memory that undid her.

  But I only said, "I thought you looked lonely."

  Her lips parted, surprise flickering across her face like a candle guttering in the dark.

  Then a voice echoed down the corridor.

  Bright. Boyish. Too loud for the silence of the Tower.

  "Seraphine!"

  She flinched.

  A boy came running around the corner—about her age, gold-haired, dressed in the training whites of a padin initiate. His boots spped the floor with enthusiastic abandon.

  Her expression opened like a door.

  "You came," she breathed.

  He grinned, sunlight made into a child.

  "I passed my recitations early! So I told Instructor Harn I'd help you study."

  Her cheeks flushed pink—not with embarrassment, but with happiness so pure it hurt to witness.

  She scrambled to her feet, clutching her book. "I wasn't sure you would—"

  "Of course I came." He pnted his fists on his hips with ridiculous pride. "You're my best friend."

  The corridor warmed. The nightmare receded for a moment.

  I felt it—this memory was real. Untainted. A slice of childhood where Seraphine truly believed she wasn't alone.

  He leaned in, whispering with conspiratorial delight.

  "Did you bring it?"

  Seraphine nodded, eyes shining, and opened her book—not to the Tower-approved pages, but to a hand-drawn sigil glowing faintly at the edges.

  A small, swirling glyph.

  A gentle, original magic.

  "Watch," she whispered.

  Her fingers traced the sigil in the air. It shimmered, forming into a tiny floating wisp—like a firefly made of soft white mana.

  The boy's face lit up.

  "That's amazing!"

  Her smile bloomed. Bright. Unrestrained.

  She'd made this spell for him. To share something of herself. To make him proud.

  Young Seraphine turned, ughing, about to show him more—

  And the corridor flickered.The warmth vanished.The air soured with incense and cold stone.

  The boy's smile faded into something ftter. Harder. Older.

  When he spoke again, his voice was no longer a child's.

  "You shouldn't do that, Seraphine."

  She froze.

  "That magic isn't allowed," he said. "It's dangerous. Uncontrolled."

  Her breath stuttered. "But you... you loved it."

  "I have responsibilities now." His tone echoed with the indoctrinated rhythm of the Tower. "We all do."

  "No," she whispered. "No, don't—please, don't look at me like that—"

  Her sigil trembled, distorting.

  "Put the book down," he commanded.

  She shook her head, tears rising.

  "Seraphine," he said more sharply, "I'm reporting this to the instructors."

  The nightmare snapped into pce like a trap.

  Young Seraphine's face shattered.

  "Why... why would you do that?" she choked.

  "Because it's my duty." He turned from her—cold, righteous, certain. "I'm protecting you from yourself."

  He walked away. His steps were thunder.

  She stood in the dim corridor, book slipping from her fingers, world colpsing around her like a dying star.

  "No," she whispered. "No, no, no—please..."

  She was breaking.

  And I felt the nightmare pulling deeper, spiraling, descending into the punishment that came after—

  The sigils.The chamber.The cold hands.The screaming.

  I reached out for her—

  But the floor split open beneath us like a wound, and Seraphine fell, swallowed by the next yer of the dream.

  And I was dragged after her.