Page 66 of Whisper of Nightmares

Euphemia looks too, though when she does, the only reflection she can see is her own. Not the bank surrounding the water, nor the maroon sky. And in her reflection, she watches in horror as her entire body is engulfed in flames.

Flesh melting.

Scorching.

Turning to ash and then bone.

And through it all, her reflection smiles.

Gasping and screaming, Euphemia clambers out of the river for a second time. Righteousness be damned. If he forgets her again, she’ll simply have to remind him.

From the bank, Euphemia wrings out her skirts and catches her breath.

For the first time, she realizes just how silent the world has fallen.

The river stops babbling.

Snowflakes freeze midair.

Slowly, Ash guides both hands up to the jagged jawline of his skull. Fingers trace along the sharp edges, climbing up toward the serrated snout. The hollowed eye sockets. The sharp tips of horns at the top of his head.

And in this moment, Euphemia understands that he was never meant to behold himself. Not like this.

A tremor builds in his hands. It rumbles up his arms and into his chest until his breaths become ragged.

And soon the entire dreamscape is rumbling with him. A low growl the grinds from deep within the earth. Something immense and shifting.

The dreamlike meadow is cracked wide open.

An earthquake splits the ground in two places—then seven—then twelve. Fissures spiderweb across the earth’s surface like broken eggshells.

And like the backswing of a pendulum, Euphemia is bucked off the ground; black clods of dirt fall upward around her, pummeling the sky while she herself falls.

Down.

Heavy and hard.

She should’ve hit the ground by now, but nothingness is below her. It yawns wide, prepared to swallow her whole.

She opens her mouth to scream⁠—

“Ash!”

For the second night in a row, Euphemia bolts upright in bed.

Hands clammy.

Lungs gasping.

It takes her only a moment to recognize her surroundings this time, and only a few shaky inhales more to catch her breath.

“Just a dream,” she utters to herself, a quiet whisper in the night.

Or perhaps not…

For the second night in a row, Euphemia throws her bedsheets aside and finds her feet covered in mud.

Glancing down at herself, Euphemia scours the rest of her body for other signs that the dream has bled into her reality. Her gaze climbs first to the hemmed seam of her nightgown, damp and tinged wine-red. Then up to her hips, where the fabric has taken on a speckled look, as if lightly rained on—like snowfall melting.