Dare What is dead may never die

[Venla Thiel]

Astenvale monastery, dormitories

The dream came again.
The dream always began the same way.

Venla stood by a lake, though it was no longer a lake. The water stretched on forever, like a vast black mirror. The stars hung too low, too close, vast and ancient and wrong, pulsing faintly like dying hearts. Between them ran rivers of black light, and where those rivers met, the world seemed to bend inward, as if the heavens themselves were folding to look back at her.

She stood ankle-deep in water that wasn’t wet. The surface quivered like skin stretched too thin, reflecting a thousand versions of herself. Each reflection was slightly off, a wrong angle of the jaw, a too-wide eye, a smile that didn’t belong to her. Faces bloomed and vanished in the cracks, eyes without lids, mouths opening where no mouths should be.

Her hands moved of their own accord, reaching toward the reflections. The reflection fractured. Then the ripples began to whisper. It wasn’t a voice, not truly, just the idea of one.

"You break the pattern beautifully." The thought came. Not sound, not even words, but a pressure in her skull.

The water thickened, viscous, climbing her wrists like tar with a mind of its own. Beneath the surface, something vast stirred, shapes twisting and the faint suggestion of eyes in the deep. Symbols bloomed beneath the glassy surface. Shapes her mind couldn’t keep still, always shifting when she tried to understand them.

"That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange aeons even death may die.”

Venla tried to move, but her body wasn’t her own anymore. She felt her veins glowing faintly through her skin, pulsing with color that didn’t exist, hues that stung the eyes to see. The ground beneath her split like brittle glass, revealing a great pupil staring up from the depths. Lidless and the size of the sky itself.

The dream always ended with her mouth opening to scream.

Venla gasped awake and sat bolt upright, drenched in sweat, a half-choked cry dying in her throat. Her body trembled so violently the straw mattress creaked. She pressed a hand over her heart, feeling her pulse hammer. The room was still. A slice of moonlight spilled through the narrow slit of a window. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was. The monastery’s quiet was like a held breath. The dormitory was still. The others slept. No one else stirred.

“Just a dream,” she whispered. She rubbed her face with trembling hands, trying to shake the dream loose. It clung like cobwebs. Her hands were clean. But she half-expected to see the strange light still pulsing beneath her skin. The whisper still echoed somewhere in the back of her skull, half-forgotten words caught in the rhythm of her pulse.

Her breaths came shallow.
She couldn’t stay in the room.

Venla threw her cloak around her shoulders and slipped out into the corridor. The air beyond was cold and faintly damp, as it was in these big stone buildings, like the stones themselves had been sweating. The candles lining the hall burned with an amber tinge. She passed them, one by one. At the end of the corridor, a narrow door leads out to the garden. She went out. The mist seemed to climb the buildings like a breath on glass.

 

[Yuric Vale]

He had long stopped counting how many nights he’d spent here. What had once been disquiet, the way Astenvale seemed to listen to itself after dark had become something like ritual. The hush between the monastery’s walls wasn’t empty; it was full of breath and memory. Full of the weight of lives that hadn’t yet learned how to rest.

Yuric sat cross-legged among the flowers, still as a carved saint beneath the moonlight. The sigils carved along the squire's brow glowed faintly, pulsing with the rhythm of his breath. To most, he would appear entranced. But he was more awake than the living world around him.

Because the monastery was never truly silent.

He'd always possessed the ability to look beyond death's curtain, for as long as he could recall. Even now he could see them; faint smudges of light in the mist, taking shape as they remembered their forms. Knights, squires, novices. Men and women who had given their bones to the soil beneath his feet. The garden was full of them. Not ghosts as tales would tell-- not the moaning kind. These were quieter, content with their echoes of routine. They moved among the lavender and sage like priests walking a procession, speaking softly to one another in voices that sounded half like thought, half like wind through leaves.

Swain, the Knight Sworn, sat beneath the ancient oak, leafing through letters only he could see. His lips moved silently as his eyes traced each line, a ritual as steady as prayer. He looked up as Yuric passed him a nod of acknowledgment, and for an instant the two men shared a faint, knowing smile, a soldier’s wordless greeting.

Farther along the path, young Tameral, the squire who’d died in an accident of her own making, sat cross-legged, her ghostly fingers weaving strands of blue fire into thread. Each time she neared completion, the weave unraveled, light scattering into the mist. Still, she smiled faintly, patient with herself. She had all eternity to learn.

“Your form is improving,” Yuric said quietly. His voice barely stirred the air, but she heard it, glancing up with a grin before returning to her task.

A flutter of pale light drew his attention next. The smallest of them all, an apparition of a girl no larger than his palm, perched now upon his knee. Her eyes were pools of soft silver, aglow with the kind of curiosity only the very young or the very dead ever held. She swung her legs idly through the air, not truly touching him, but he could feel the chill of her presence all the same.

“I haven’t seen Garrick tonight,” she murmured.

Yuric’s gaze wandered across the spectral garden. A dozen faint auras moved among the hedges, fading in and out like candleflame in wind. Garrick was not among them.

“His birthday,” Yuric said, the hint of a smile ghosting across his lips. “He’ll be haunting some tavern by now, rattling mugs, making drunks believe in curses again.” Lilly laughed, a sound like glass chimes brushing together. For a moment, the air around him warmed with their shared humor, then it ebbed, the laughter drifting upward into the mist.

Yuric exhaled slowly. The air trembled faintly, his breath brushing against the veil between. They were content tonight. That was rare. He bowed his head. “You’ve all earned your peace,” he murmured. “If only peace would have you.”

The garden stirred. Not wind, but something deeper. The spirits shimmered faintly, as though in answer, then began to fade back into the silver mist. Lilly lingered longest, resting her head against his arm. She was more than the others, a presence who'd followed him since the beginning. A friend.

When he opened his eyes again, the garden was quiet. Empty, or nearly so. The moonlight gleamed on dew-dappled leaves, and mist curled low to the ground.

And that was when he heard it: the soft rustle of footsteps through the grass, hesitant, human.

Someone was awake.

@Venla Thiel

 

[Venla Thiel]

She padded softly along the path, bare toes brushing against the moss between the stones. The stone was cold beneath her feet, smooth in some places, rough in others. The night was alive with quiet things, the slow drip of water from the fountain, the whisper of leaves, the faint rustle of something small in the hedgerow.

The light from eight moons washed everything silver-blue, the herbs, the low stone wall, the crooked bench beneath the old apple tree. She pulled her cloak tighter and exhaled slowly, pretending the tremor in her hands was from the cold. Water, wind, and the soft thrum of her own heart, trying to settle itself after the dream. For a little while, that was all she could hear.

Venla wasn’t expecting to find anyone there. A boy, or nearly one. A young man, perhaps. Still soft-faced. A squire, she guessed. Though why would he be awake at this hour? Her heart gave a start of guilt for disturbing him. Venla stopped short, feeling suddenly foolish for wandering about half-dressed in the night. She hesitated, unsure whether to turn back. But that would look foolish now, and perhaps even more suspicious.

“Oh, forgive me,” she said. “Didn’t mean to intrude." Keeping her voice gentle so it wouldn’t startle him. "I only needed… some air.” She gave a small, rueful smile. “Bad dreams.” She gestured vaguely at the blue shadows behind her, as if that explained everything. “I’ll not linger,” she added quickly, “just walking a bit.” Her feet shifted against the stones, a soft scuff.

 

[Yuric Vale]

Yuric hadn't been a Squire for long, but he'd made an effort to introduce himself to as many others as possible, if only not to seem like the stand-offish type. Maybe he hadn't made many friends yet, but they knew his name. That was a good enough start.

But he hadn't seen this woman before; he'd remember if he had.

The woman looked almost spectral in the moonlight, pale and ethereal beneath the folds of her cloak. The soft fabric clung to her shape as if reluctant to let her go. Her skin seemed to glow faintly, catching the silver sheen of the night as she moved. She gestured toward what appeared to be empty air, but it was not as empty as it seemed. Yuric could see the veil bending around her, the residual ripples in the curtain of reality as she vied to escape from her dreams.

He smiled.

"Not a bother at all." he replied, lifting a hand in a casual wave as he turned to face her, the etchings on his forehead fading to match the color of his skin as he receded fully from his trance. He'd just been complaining about a lack of living company, hadn't he? He sure wasn't going to turn his nose up now. "It's actually nice to see somebody out this late. I was starting to feel like I might be the weird one."

"Oh, you are. Let's not get that twisted."

Lilly’s teasing lilt brushed against his ear, and Yuric fought the urge to roll his eyes at the invisible wisp perched over his shoulder.

“Have you been here long?” he asked instead, crossing the garden with easy, unhurried steps. His hands slipped into the pockets of his trousers, posture relaxed but his gaze sharp with curiosity. “It’s only my third week,” he added with a crooked half-smile. “Still trying to figure out how not to get lost every other day. Yuric Vale, by the way.”

@Venla Thiel