The dream began with water. The water was blue to the eye, but red to the heart.
Vast, impossible canals stretched in all directions, flowing upward from the cracked earth, defying gravity and very nature itself. They floated through the dead air in random trajectories, spiraling across the skeletal trees, rib mountains, and clouds of ash and breath, coiling and intersecting like the mad, beautiful geometry of a fever vision.
But the water was not pure. Coiled upon those floating streams—wrapped around them like parasitic vines—were intestines. Wet, pulsing organs. Red mists hung in the air like clouds of atomized blood, coating the back of her throat with the taste of copper and salt.
Syuri knew it was a dream—not a nightmare, but a vision. What will this show me? was her first thought. She knew that dreams as vivid and gory as this never frightened her anymore. Maybe if she was still a young girl carrying her unborn child, or before, when she used to play with her friends, she might have woken up crying. But not today. For this dream was nothing but a regular occurrence for her.
She kept on walking over the moist, red grass that stretched from the ground below, finding a sunset across the mountains. She walked alongside the cliff.
"Should I jump?" she murmured, waiting for someone to reply.
Syuri sat on the edge of the jagged cliff. She slowly brought her hand—the left one—and pressed it softly against her own chest. Beneath her palm, she felt it. Not her own pulse, but the rhythm of a giant heart beating somewhere in the suffocating dark, yet reddish-orange lands, suspended between the waking world, the void, and the dying sun.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Each pulse sent a song of shockwaves rippling through the heavy air like a gun being fired in ceremonies, tearing through the floating water, rattling the calcium in her bones. It was the sound of something too large to understand, a biological engine too ancient to question.
She looked down over the precipice, over a small forest of green—the only one she could find in these desolate dreamlands. Immediately, her eyes fell upon the cut trees, a square with erected walls. And in that square, below the cliff, bathed in a pale light that came from nowhere, children played in a park.
Seesaws creaked back and forth with innocence. Metal slides of several dozen colors gleamed. Swings arced through the air, carrying laughing children who seemed entirely oblivious to the beating horror surrounding them. Their bright, ringing joy felt obscene against her own selfishness.
Is this what I desire? she asked herself. The children, their laughs, their obliviousness—all of them pure, entirely unfounded in the years of her life in the Sanctuary. Beneath the playground were flowing canals. It was a beautiful lie painted over a nightmare.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
The rhythm continued, and Syuri felt the air pressure shift behind her, as if the ginormous heart was beating right over her shoulder. A presence so heavy, cold, and absolute, making the fine hairs on her arms stand up.
She turned.
A man stood there. Not as tall as the tallest men she knew, yet taller than average in a way she couldn't quite understand. His white hair was very short; the sides were trimmed in a fresh cut, while the top was left in ragged, uncombed strands—hair the exact same stark color as her own. His eyes were lime-green, bright and caustic as poison, lighter than her own, untainted by rust or fading.
But his face was ruined by agony. It was contorted in absolute disgust. Hot tears streamed down his pale cheeks. He was heaving, his chest violently contracting as he vomited. Though nothing came from his mouth now, several stains of blood and stomach fluids coated his lower face.
"Why are you crying?" Syuri asked instinctively, a gesture of a parent, her voice sounding small, swallowed by the vastness of the dream. "Why are you—"
She got up and held him, letting her own body act as a balance for this strange man she felt so close to.
"You must free me," he whispered. His voice was a broken rasp, the sound of grinding stones, carrying the tone of someone who had given up. "Please... you must free me."
The words hit her harder than the beating heart. Syuri felt them vibrate in her chest, tear at her throat, and lodge themselves in the base of her skull. It was a command wrapped in a plea. She could feel his pain somewhat, but Syuri felt her eyes could not shed a tear for it.
"Free you?" She held him down gently, letting him sit against the grassy ground, but he refused. Even in pain, he wanted to stand upright. "If you want to tell me something... do it! I trust my dreams—" She paused, giving the man another look. "My visions," she corrected herself.
The man did not speak again. He raised one trembling, pale finger that bore an etched golden ring, and pointed over her shoulder, down toward the park.
Syuri spun around. Her breath caught in her lungs, refusing to exhale.
The children were gone.
The playground stood entirely empty, utterly broken. The swings hung from violently snapped chains, swaying in a dead wind. The seesaw lay detached, splintered, one end buried deep into the sunken, rotting ground. And everywhere—covering every inch of the metal, the dirt, the rusted chains—was blood.
It pooled in thick, dried patches—it had happened a long time ago—forming dark lakes in the soil where critters lay feasting. Yet, it also dripped lazily from the lip of the slide. It stained the empty wooden seats of the swings, fresh and gleaming.
"Must... stop!" the man whispered from right behind her ear.
Syuri whipped her head back. His face was swirling now, his features melting and reforming like pale wax held too close to a thriving flame. Syuri understood something then: the man had not recognized her. He hadn't even registered her presence. Each and every word that came out of him was pure instinct. A tired reflex.
The cliff beneath her feet gave a deafening groan and began to crack. Black fissures spread like spider-webbing veins through the stone, crumbling around the weight of the woman.
"I recognize that face," she breathed, the realization locking into place just as the ground gave way.
The cliff shattered into a million pieces. She fell into the dark. The cliff was nothing but the hand of a man, and the soil on her face and her hands was crimson blood.
Syuri woke gasping. Her nightgown—woven with furs from the harvest, tied with cultural strings, threads, and buttons of the Chromskt family—was plastered to her skin, soaked completely through with cold sweat.
The bedroom was nightly dark—not so black that one could see nothing, but dark with shades of blue and pale, ghostly light filtering through the open balcony doors. An icy mist rolled in from the outside corridors of the Serv-Hydro Circulator, carrying with it the harsh scent of rusty metal drowned by water. The breeze that had felt so pleasant and cleansing earlier in the night now felt suffocating, pressing down on her chest like a physical weight. Even her throat felt as if it had been struck by a million small swords.
She pressed her palms against her face, digging her fingers into her temples, trying to steady the ache in her head and the rabbit-fast beating of her heart.
A shadow moved in the corner of the room, blocking the faint lighting.
Paranoia flared hot and bright in her blood. "Who's there?"
The figure stepped forward into the thin, ambient light. Syuri's hand went instinctively beneath her pillow, her fingers closing tightly around the cold hilt of her hidden blade—the one Klein had given her, just in case. But as the shape resolved into a smaller silhouette, the tension slowly bled from her shoulders.
She recognized the girl: black hair blending seamlessly with the darkness, purple eyes catching the faint glow from outside but holding no luminescence of their own. The dead stare of the Sanctuary.
Natasha Chromskt.
"I'm sorry," the girl said softly, her voice barely rising above the distant hum of the facility's water pumps. "I didn't mean to wake you."
Syuri exhaled a long breath and withdrew her hand from the blade, placing both palms against her forehead instead, massaging the dull ache that kept radiating behind her eyes. "No, it's... it wasn't you. Just a nightmare. And a headache."
Natasha stood there, rooted to the spot, looking down at the metal floorboards. From the side, Syuri noticed her posture was rigidly uncomfortable—the defensive stance of a child who expects to be struck.
"I wanted to apologize," the girl said after a heavy moment. "For what I said earlier down in t-the... For calling you... those things."
"It's normal." Syuri's voice was tired, carrying the weight of a long, brutal life, but it was not unkind. To a little girl, she would always be much kinder than to the men of her own age or older. "I've been called worse. For longer."
"Still." Natasha's hands fidgeted at her sides, her fingers knotting into the fabric of her sleepwear. "When y-you... you scratched my head. No one's ever done that before. It felt... warm." She looked up then, and beneath the Sanctuary's conditioned and forced emptiness, there was something painfully vulnerable in her purple eyes. "I want to help you. However I can."
"That's because I think you're a good girl, Natasha."
Syuri managed a small, genuine smile despite the relentless pounding in her skull. The girl was a piece on the board of Mikael Chromskt. He had dragged his own sister into his sins, yes, but she was an innocent one.
I have to protect her... a sudden maternal instinct arose inside Syuri.
The girl blinked, visibly taken aback by the unconditional warmth. Syuri knew every child in the Sanctuary wasn't born to be cruel—just like Deinne, and just like her.
The children are innocent and must be protected, she thought. And suddenly, a sharp pain withered through her skull. The memories, the dream she had earlier... the blood-soaked playground bloomed within her mind. But I must make a choice...
"Tell me," Syuri said, leaning forward slightly, letting her pain and the mother seamlessly merge into one. "Do you know anything about the heart? The one your brother mentioned? The one he showed us?"
Natasha shook her head adamantly. "No. When Mikael told everyone about it yesterday, that was the first I'd ever heard of it. I swear."
Syuri studied her face in the dim light for a long moment. She traced the micro-expressions, looking for the telltale spikes of deceit, but found nothing. The girl was telling the truth.
"Alright." I feel bad for not trusting her...
She swung her bare legs out of bed, wincing slightly as her feet made contact with the warm carpet—a blend of leather and fur covering the freezing metal floor. "Do you know where Mikael keeps his research? His study? Wherever he stores all this forbidden information he's been gathering?"
Natasha hesitated, her eyes darting toward the door. "It's his personal space. He gets angry when people try to interfere with it."
"I imagine he does..." Syuri paused for a moment, not breaking eye contact. "Now that he has forced you to be part of this... don't you think it's absurd to keep it a secret?"
Syuri felt bad asking that of a child, but it was necessary, she thought.
A small, subversive smile tugged at the corner of Natasha's lips as she registered Syuri's words, a tiny spark of rebellion catching fire.
"I'd like to see my brother get mad." She glanced up at Syuri. "I'll show you where it is."