A figure watches from a shadowed doorway — faceless, ancient, radiating the kind of authority that comes from being the last thing a great many people saw before they stopped seeing anything at all.
I know what it is before the dream provides a name.
The Judge.
I wake gasping, and my shadows have built the dome again — absolute darkness encasing my bed in a barrier so dense that moonlight can’t penetrate it. Through the shadow wall Ican sense Iris sleeping undisturbed six feet away, completely unaware.
I modify the dome to appear as normal darkness from the outside while remaining opaque from within. The technique requires sustained focus that makes sleep impossible for the remaining hours until dawn.
By the third night, I’m operating on fumes thinner than the fumes I was running on at the start of the semester, which I didn’t think was possible.
Classes blur together. Marcus beats me three consecutive times during shadow combat practice and stops gloating by the third round because the victory is too easy to enjoy. “You look like shit,” he says, and the genuine concern underneath the bluntness is somehow more alarming than the comment itself.
At dinner, lifting a fork requires the kind of deliberate focus that should be reserved for defusing bombs.
When sleep takes me on the third night, the nightmare escalates beyond anxiety into territory that feels inherited.
I’m strapped to a ritual table — cold metal against my bare back, restraints burning where they touch skin. Silver-infused instruments laid out beside me with surgical organization, each one designed for a specific stage of a process I understand without being told: shadow separation. The systematic removal of what makes me what I am.
The procedure begins, and I feel my shadows being peeled away from my cells — not cut, not dissolved, but separated, the bond between shadow essence and physical form stretched past breaking point like tendons being pulled from bone.
The pain is so complete and so fundamental that it transcends the physical.
They’re not just hurting me. They’re disassembling the part of me that thinks in darkness, the part that reaches and protects and knows things my conscious mind hasn’t learned yet. They’rekilling what I am while leaving what I was still breathing on the table.
Then cold interrupts the heat of agony.
A presence enters the dream with the force of a door being kicked open, displacing the Hunter ritual with a wave of shadow energy so ancient it makes everything else in the dream look like a drawing on paper.
The nightmare dissolves.
Control your dreams, Ashley. They’re broadcasting your fears across shadow networks.
I open my eyes to find Bael kneeling beside my bed inside the shadow dome, his physical form somehow materialized within my protective barrier without triggering a single dormitory security measure. The green of his eyes cuts through the darkness like something bioluminescent.
“Your distress reached me from significant distance,” he says quietly. “Unconscious fear manifestation growing stronger with each cycle. The broadcasts are detectable by anyone with advanced shadow sensitivity.”
My gaze snaps to Iris’s bed. Bael shakes his head before I can speak. “She’s unaware. Your dome is excellent concealment — though its autonomous behavior would trigger immediate classification alert if observed by trained personnel.”
He’s right. The dome pulses around us with visible intelligence, shifting and adapting to our conversation like it’s listening. Like it has opinions about what we’re discussing and wants to contribute.
“I can’t control them while I sleep,” I whisper. “The nightmares trigger protective formations I’m not consciously creating.”
“Dream state removes conscious suppression while emotional intensity triggers autonomous response. Your shadows are doing exactly what they’re designed to do —protecting you. The problem isn’t the behavior. It’s the visibility.”
He places his hand near the dome’s inner surface without touching it.
“You need dream-shadow control. Pre-sleep programming that your shadows follow during unconscious periods.”
“And the nightmares themselves? They feel like memories, not dreams.”
Bael’s expression shifts to something I rarely see from him — careful consideration of how much truth to deliver at once.
“They are memories. Your bloodline carries genetic imprint of ancient persecution. What you’re experiencing echoes real events your ancestors endured — shadow bearers strapped to tables, abilities stripped through ritual separation, eliminated by the same system that’s currently monitoring you for the same reasons.”
Ice water.
“So my subconscious is accessing ancestral trauma through the blood connection.”
