Unbeknownst to me, he had always been there, whether either of us were asleep or awake. Even when I hadn’t understood why, had resisted him, and tried to convince myself that whatever bound us was nothing more than circumstance—he had been there. Waiting, as though I was the only thing in that world capable of answering him.
Yet now, there was nothing.
“No,” I murmured, the word barely more than breath, as though sheer stubborn refusal would be enough to reject this horrifying reality. “This can’t be possible.”
I turned from the window and forced myself towards the door, each step steadier now, driven by something sharper than uncertainty. If he was not here…then I would find him.
The corridor beyond was dim, the air stale and undisturbed. My footsteps echoed too loudly against the stone, the sound foreign in the stillness, entirely absent of movement and voices. Doors stood closed along the hall, untouched. I reached for one, hesitated only a moment, then pushed it open.
Inside was an extension of the stillness, like stepping into a tomb. A figure lay upon the bed, unmoving, the sheets untouched by time except for the dust that had gathered along their edges. The person’s chest rose and fell so faintly it was almost imperceptible. Not dead, but sleeping, trapped in the same curse I’d just awakened from.
Room after room told the same story of a castle caught between breath and silence, of a kingdom suspended, but not empty.
No matter where I looked, I couldn’t find Evander, not even in his bedroom. I turned slowly in the corridor, my pulse beginning to quicken. “Evander?” I called, louder this time. The name echoed down the hall, swallowed by the stillness.
No answer came.
I paused on a stairwell and sank onto the steps, burying my face in my hands as I searched for a solution. Sunlight shifted across the stone with the passing hours, but it felt dim and cold brushing faintly against my skin, the details of the real worldhollow without Evander here to experience them with me. At last, an idea slowly began to take shape.
Perhaps…there was another way. If I could return to the dream, to the place where I had always found him, then the world would settle back into something I could navigate. I retraced my steps back to my bedroom, each movement quicker now despite the lingering stiffness in my limbs, driven by the fragile, desperate hope.
Maybe what Evander had told me in the dream world hadn’t actually been true…perhaps I could still travel back. If not by simply falling asleep, maybe my magic would be enough to connect me back to that world.
I reached the bed and sat on its edge before lowering myself carefully back against it, forcing my body into stillness despite the restless tension coiled within me. I closed my eyes and reached inward towards that familiar threshold I had crossed so many times without thought.
Sleep had once come for me like a tide, but now I had to chase it.
I slowed my breathing, willing the steady rhythm to coax my body deep enough to pull me under. The thick silence stretched around me, until it felt as though I hovered at the edge of something just beyond reach.
For a single, fleeting instant, I felt the subtle loosening of the world, as though it were preparing to give way. Hope surged.
“Evander?” His name echoed in that fragile space between waking and dreaming…and vanished. The connection faltered—not like before when the dream had drawn me in, immersing me in its strange, vivid reality, but as though the path I had once walked so easily had begun to unravel beneath my feet.
Ignoring the growing strain behind my eyes and the tension building in my chest, I reached again. But it was like trying to grab mist.
“Evander,” I whispered again, softer this time, as though speaking too loudly might shatter whatever tenuous link remained. For a moment, I thought I felt the flicker of a familiar yet distant presence, like a voice heard through water. Distorted and unreachable, yet unmistakably his.
Relief surged through me. “I’m here,” I said, the words tumbling over themselves in my haste to grasp the connection before it could fade. “I’m awake. Can you hear me?”
At first the silence that followed felt empty and heavy. But after a moment, I thought I detected something within it—faint and strained, as though something vast stood between us, allowing only fragments to pass through.
Then suddenly, I detected a muted but familiar voice, almost lost to the distance. “Mirelle?—”
The sound of my name caught in my chest, stoking my spark of hope. For a heartbeat, I felt him…but the presence wavered before slipping away, dissolving like mist beneath the rising sun.
“No, wait—” I reached for it but grasped at nothing, only the space where he had been only a moment before. “Evander, please—” I wanted to tell him I needed him, but the words broke apart before I could finish them.
Something within me seemed to snap along with the connection…and my eyes flew open.
The room rushed back around me all at once—the dim light, the still air, the quiet weight of reality settling heavily around me, as if the scenery were rearranging itself. I drew in a sharp breath, feeling as though I had been submerged too long beneath the surface.
He was still gone. I lay there for a long moment staring up at the ceiling, my pulse slow and uneven as the truth settled, piece by piece, into something I could no longer deny.
I hadn’t imagined it—that had been him. But whatever bound us before and had allowed me to cross between worlds to findhim so easily was breaking…or perhaps it had already broken irreparably. I pressed my hand against my chest, as though I could steady something there that had begun to fracture in ways I did not yet understand.
I had told myself I tolerated him, that I had been intrigued, challenged, even amused. That whatever existed between us had been nothing more than circumstance—two people caught in the same strange unraveling of the world. I had even tried to convince myself that kiss had been nothing more than a moment of weakness and severe lapse in judgment, something I could forget once this was over. But this was something else entirely.
For the first time since I’d opened my eyes in this world, I felt the full weight of what I had lost.
