For some reason, the black around him was not as frightening as the white from before.

D’Argen looked down at his hands though he did not see them. It was pure black everywhere. Yet that comforted him more than before. He let out a heavy sigh and his lungs finally stopped struggling.

“D’Argen?” Lilian’s voice sounded beside him.

He closed his eyes, an action to explain away the darkness, and his heart calmed as well. He reached for Lilian’s voice and after touching nothing at all for a few waves, he felt the soft silk of their blouse. Immediately, he latched on. Lilian grabbed back as well, their hands trembling where they clutched at his blood-soaked glove.

The pain from their grip was a dull ache that echoed up to his shoulder and then dissipated. Like ink in water. Like smoke to the wind. Like the white space to the dark tendrils that surrounded them now.

Them. Him and Lilian.

D’Argen opened his eyes and was not surprised to see the darkness all around like before. He did, however, see his own hand and where Lilian clutched at him. Like the white from before, there was no light source, yet Lilian was visible before his eyes. He searched their face to see how the shadows fell, but everything looked so flat and grey. It looked wrong. The more he thought about it, the more the shadows darkened and softened at once. A sun. High above the horizon that did not exist and not visible in the black around them, but there all the same to throw the bow of Lilian’s upper lip into a dark triangle.

“Where are we?” Lilian asked.

D’Argen was too focused on how light reflected off their lower lip.

“D’Argen!” Lilian shook him by the arm.

“I did not run us,” he replied finally, slowly, his mind catching up to both the question and the situation. He dared a look around again, but now that he could think about it, the black was scarier. The white he could tell was large and expansive, an unknown distance but an open space. Now, in the black, he could not tell if there was a wall right in front of his nose or a drop under his feet. He clutched Lilian tight enough to bruise and pulled them closer to him.

Lilian immediately let go of his arm and wrapped their hands around his waist, falling under one of his arms as he wrapped it around their shoulders. Lilian’s hair looked like silver.

“I didn’t run us,” D’Argen repeated his words, as if to himself. “Do you think this is yet another layer? Another realm?”

“No. We would have felt it.”

“My experience of moving between here and the mortal realm were preceded by either falling, dying, or sleeping. That is all I felt.”

“No, no. It is more of an… anyway, I cannot leave this realm,” Lilian clutched him tighter. “I tried, on one occasion, I tried calling out to you. It hurt so much. I made it into your dream but not the—”

“That was really you,” D’Argen interrupted with a gasp.

Lilian ducked their head into his armpit. They nodded slowly. “It hurt,” they said.

D’Argen wrapped them up completely in his embrace and tucked their head under his chin. He knew it was not Darania, but he still recalled their most powerful attacking Lilian and trying to tear them apart. But before that—

“I understand why the Darania attacked you, if you entered that fake world, but why attack me?”

“Because you were starting to break the visions apart. Breaking it apart. You have been, since the moment you awoke.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know who the white shade is?”

“Of course. It’s Thar.”

“How long did it take you to remember his name?”

D’Argen paused and his arms tightened around Lilian for a moment before he had to push them back so he could look at their face. “Does this place have anything to do with Thar? The white, I mean.”

“No. A coincidence.” Even as they said the words, uncertainty clouded their eyes. They hesitated. “No. It has to be. I have not… no. Thar’s mahee is… it is powerful, but it is impossible—”

“It’s okay,” D’Argen interrupted them. “I believe you. It doesn’t feel like him either. Or, well, like me. I feel him now, you know? I mean, not him him, but I feel his mahee. I feel it like it’s my own. It took me a very long time to realize what it was that I actually felt. His and…” he trailed off and finally let his fingers wander. He pushed the silvery hair he knew was the colour of wheat out of grey eyes he knew should be blue. Lilian did not flinch with his fingers so close to their eyes, then ear, then trailing down to their neck.

“You feel me?” they asked.

D’Argen nodded. “Always have. Since I fell in that place, anyway. Just never knew what it was. I’m an idiot. Your winds have always kept be afloat and rising higher. Running faster. You have always been there for me. I’m sorry I didn’t—”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“No,” Lilian interrupted him. “It was not on you. If you tried to stop me, I would have hurt you too. In fact. I know my winds harmed you back in Evadia. I am glad you were not with me in the snow, otherwise you may have been in this place with me permanently, instead of just visiting it again.”

“But… the first time I came here was when you…”

“No,” Lilian corrected him.

Their small hands landed on his chest, and he felt the pressure as if they were reaching for—he wiped the thought away before it could form.

“And that is why we need to find your sword,” Lilian added in.

“I feel like I missed a part of the conversation there.”

Lilian rolled their eyes, but they were smiling.

“Your sword is the only thing I know of that has been to the three realms. It was with you in the gods’ realm. It was with you when you fell. And you did not just fall.”

“Some of us floated down, some rose from the ground—” he tried to remember the exact words Lilian used when they first met, in both sets of memories.

“And some took a detour through this realm,” Lilian added in where they had not done so before. Lilian must have noticed how confused he looked, because they smiled and quickly spoke again before he could question it. “One. One of us took a detour. That I know of, at least. You see, when you fell, you did not just fall. You passed through this realm before reaching the mortal one. More importantly, and sorry not to put the focus on you, but your sword passed through his realm.”

“What do you mean?

“Your mahee is not just speed. Your speed is incredible, yes, but you are so much more than that. Do not ask me what, even with my knowledge from before the fall, I do not know. But the thing is, nothing should be able to exist in more than one realm at a time. When Delcaus tried it, they fell into a coma. When you tried it, for that is what you did when you used up all your mahee, you fell into a coma as well. But your sword – it exists in three realms at the same time. Four, if we count the dreams in the world you just came from.”

“Even I? I’m not in the mortal realm now?” he asked.

“You are. But not your—” Lilian suddenly cut their words off and looked around. They were quick to catch on to what happened. Then, they changed their thoughts completely and said, “I have only heard about this place. I did not know it was real.”

“What is this place? You said it was—”

“We are still in that realm. The white. But it is also… not. Look—” Lilian finally pulled away completely. D’Argen quickly reached out, grabbing their hand. He was afraid that letting them go would mean they would fade away into the black around them.

“Do not let me go, please,” he whispered out, the words struggling to come out.

Lilian smiled and clutched his hand back, lacing their fingers together.

“I will not. But for now, we have to get you back.”

“To the mortal—”

“To the dream world. Fake world. Whatever you want to call it. Those false memories you are reliving.”

“I don’t want to. Not there. Not without—”

“You have to,” Lilian interrupted him. “Your mind is fractured. It needs time to heal. If you return to the mortal realm now, you will return damaged. I do not know if you will ever be able to heal from this.”

“But I can return?”

“Stop focusing on that, D’Argen.” Lilian squeezed his hand tighter. “You have many more years ahead of you. Centuries. Millennia. If I have a say in it, even longer. But going back now will make those painful for you. Your memories are already a mess, I can see it, you are starting to doubt which are real and which not. Just know that I have always been there for you. As has Thar.”

“Abbot? Yaling?”

“They are important to you too, yes, but they have not… connected with you.” Lilian stepped closer again and rested a hand on his chest. They glanced around the black and their brow furrowed. “Find your sword. You must use it to get out of here and then wait. You will return to the mortal realm in time. Stop scratching at the walls.”

“Do I return as I did before? With…” he trailed off. The pain of Lilian stabbing him was a distant memory. He could not recall it exactly, but he knew it hurt. He knew that watching Lilian be the one to deliver the blow hurt even more.

Lilian nodded in the silence.

“Can I not remain here?” he asked quietly and clutched their hand to his chest when they tried to move it.

“All that you will find here is death and fighting. Before we fell… that is what we were doing. Now that those of us who have returned remember, we have returned to that. All we do here is fight. It is an endless war.”

D’Argen clutched them tighter. Lilian never enjoyed fighting. Even D’Argen disliked it, but he still liked to spar with Vah’mor and the excitement of a blade passing too close to his skin. Lilian never felt that way.

“Do not think it,” Lilian said before he could even voice the thought. They knew him so well. “That would require killing us all and, even then, who knows what would happen.”

D’Argen waved a hand in front of his mouth as if to wave the unspoken words away. But the thought was already planted. It would take root. For them all to be together. If, what Lilian said was false and he remembered what transpired here. He thought for a moment to write it to his little scrap of paper, but would that even make it back to the mortal world with him?

The mortal world. Where Lilian was no longer, but their—he cut the thought off and looked around. The black looked less… black. It had a tinge to it as if the sun that gave them shadows was starting to pierce the dome of emptiness where they—

“A void,” he whispered the word out as if it suddenly made everything make sense.

The black darkened until it was nothing at all. He was right. An absence of. The more he thought about it, the more he found a connection between his place and Thar. The pure white of his eyes and the black ring around his irises. The clean scent that came from him when he—his clean scent that almost seemed like the absence of one, erasing all those around him.

“Yes, that,” Lilian said, bringing his attention back to them. “Now. Your sword. Stop distracting the both of us.”

“Yes, yes. Where can I find it?”

“Last time, Tassikar brought it to me.”

“And that doesn’t even make any sense either! Why would—”

“Stop distracting me. You need to let this emptiness go. We need to return you to the dream world.”

D’Argen knew exactly where his sword was in the dream world. He never grabbed it off the top of Sky Mountain when he fell. He considered, for a moment, what Lilian told him about this realm. It was the same as the mortal one. Maybe, the sword was still on Sky Mountain in this version as well. For once in his existence, he understood why there were some that were so attached to their weapons and even named them. Or, at least, he would have, if their weapons had such an important role to play in their lives.

Lilian pushed against his chest. “Remember, that I am always with you. Feel the breeze under your feet and the ice in your veins. We are always with you.”

The words were enough to make his thoughts focus. He watched the black turn grey and then slither away. It looked like some horror from the demon depths but what it revealed was much more terrifying. Their moment of peace was over.