HE OPENED HIS eyesto complete darkness.
Where was he?
Whowas he?
What happened?
Everything seemed blank and endless. He felt like he had suffered a tremendous loss but couldn’t remember what that was or where it happened. Maybe nowhere. Maybe he was nothing.
Or maybe he was somethingwhispered through his mind.
Things grew darker and darker still before he heard a tiny roar and saw a flicker of light. How could that be, though? This was nothing, and he did not exist.
Yes, you do,whispered on the black wind in his empty mind.You exist because I exist.
How could that be? It made no sense.
Until the tiny roar grew louder and the flicker of light wider.
Maybe hedidexist. Maybe there was more to him than nothing.Shewas more than nothing.Theywere more. Who was she? They? Because he knew them, right?
Loved them, whispered not in his mind but on a warm wind.
The roar grew louder.
The light wider and wider.
What was love? It felt familiar. Like he knew the word. Had felt the sensation. Just like he could suddenly feel the wind on his cheeks.
The roar bellowed now. The warm white light covered him.
He knew that light. Sun. And he knew the wordlove.
It meant Raven and his offspring.
With that realization, he became the wind, caught on sunrays racing over water. In a blinding moment of self-awareness, everything came rushing back. Raven taking Mórrígan into her. Him dragging Mórrígan down into a place worse than death while pushing Raven free.
She had lived. He had died.
And now he was a spirit racing over the water toward his Fortress. Toward everyone he cared about. Toward his greatest love and their son.
A son who had reached into the darkness and pulled him free.
Yet time was running out. Dwindling fast. He was racing the sunlight. Almost out of time. He saw his dragon. Felt it starting to catch on the wind as he raced toward it. Saw it starting to break apart bit by bit. Fully aware of his great ethereal wings now, he flapped harder and harder, at one with the wind. Would he make it? Could he get there before the sun retreated?
Almost.
So close.
Nearly there.
He closed in fast but not fast enough before the sun dropped lower and no longer covered his dragon’s body. He tried to stay with the wind, but his spirit dragged back with the sun. Dragged back toward an end that would take him away forever.
Until his son roared a mighty stream of fire in his direction.
A fiery salvation that would give him one last chance.
A bridge he didn’t hesitate to race along until he dove into his body, dragged air into his lungs, and opened his eyes...only to see nothing but darkness. Nothing but stark fear that somehow he had not made it. Somehow he was trapped in a body disintegrating in the dying sun.
