When D’Argen woke up, his first thought was that he was never going to sleep again. He could do it. It was possible. None of the Never Born actually needed to sleep. Except for Santis, God of Dreams, but he was dead. In every set of memories.

With that sobering thought, he remembered what happened in the white space and he immediately reached for his broken ribs. With his missing hand. Both his hand and his ribs were fine. His fingers were cold as if he had slept on his arm and his body was sore, his back itching, but he was fine.

Santis was the one who introduced the rest of them to sleep. His mahee, as a mentalist, allowed him to manipulate their dreams. But only if they had them to begin with. D’Argen could not recall his first time sleeping, but he knew it was months after landing in the mortal realm. Months after returning and joining the others. So, it was possible.

He sat up with a groan. His entire body was so sore and heavy. It felt like he had been sleeping for days. Then he took stock of the room he was in. He recognized the decorative trim at the bottom where the walls met the grey wooden boards. He knew the wood was grey even before he lost his ability to see colours. The wall he was staring at was covered in dark blue wallpaper. Or it could have been green. It was a dark enough grey to make him think it could have even been red. But the pattern on it was silver. That, he knew for sure. That, he never changed, even when Lemysire took over his rooms for renovations.

When he saw the wooden doors to his dresser he smiled. The double doors leading out into the receiving room of his chambers were closed. But there was a long gash against one of the doors that he had caused one time in a fit of frustration with his sword. He never told anybody about it and always kept the doors open to hide it against the walls when others visited.

He smiled. He was back.

His stiff body protested him getting up, but he did not let that stop him.

When he threw open the doors between his sleeping room and the receiving room though, his smile faded away. The furniture was old. It was wooden and carved into the same intricate shapes he knew so well. But he also knew that the settee he was looking at got broken one night in a drunken wrestling match with Abbot. The table beside it should have had a glass top. The carpet under both was only a small woven circle that protected the wood under it from scraping furniture.

No.

He rushed to the balcony and when he threw open the curtains, his hopes and dreams were dashed away. The forest that lay in the skirts of the single mountain he saw was full. Too full. It had yet to be cut down for extra lumber and turned into a hunting ground for the inhabitants of Evadia. He dashed out the balcony and—

The Mountain Tower of the castle was not fully constructed. He already knew it, but he still looked up. The floating bridge that circled the entire castle from tower to tower was not there. That had been built much later.

No.

No, no, no.

NO!

D’Argen was already leaning over the railing before he realized where his thoughts were taking him. He wrenched himself away before the distance below could tempt him. He rushed back into his rooms and searched every corner, as if he could have missed the white shade that belonged to Thar earlier. It was not there.

“Thar!” he called loudly.

There was no response.

“Lilian!?” he called louder. “Lilian! Get me out of here!!!” he started screaming at the corners of the ceiling.

Still, no response.

“This can’t be happening,” he whispered to himself and looked around the room again. The wooden table in the middle annoyed him enough for him to kick it as hard as possible. It flew at the closed doors leading out into the hallway, but he did not watch it shatter. The kick caused a pain to shoot up to his hip and then he lost balance and fell.

A moment later, the doors burst open.

Darania was standing there, her small form rushing at him.

D’Argen remembered her rushing at Lilian and he tried to get up and run away from her. His hip protested and he screamed in pain.

“Shh, shh! Why are you up?” Darania asked. Her small hands were so strong as she pushed him to stay still. Then they wandered to his hip and—

D’Argen realized he was wearing a healing gown. The slit from ankle to hip made it easy for her to flip the fabric away and examine the spot. All D’Argen saw was black and grey blobs on his skin.

He knew when this was.

He had dislocated his hip once before they went to the northern continent. It had been a—

D’Argen let Darania help him up and back into bed as he thought of the north. It all started there. The pillar, the field of red, the mountain made of ice, the avalanche… if he returned—

“Just two more days, I promise,” Darania was saying. D’Argen ignored her words though he did not fight her hands as she touched the bruised skin around his hip. He had been bed-ridden for a month. The bruising had kept forming over and over, worrying Darania that he had done more damage than just a dislocation. It was the reason that—

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

No.

It was not Darania who had nursed him back to health at that point. Darania had gone to the Rube Islands and Simeal had been named Court Physician. But, in this set of memories, Simeal died during the demon wars. He remembered her limp hand. He wondered, for a moment, if her body had been in that pit that Vagor turned into decay and dust from old bones.

He knew the time, but it made no sense. When he left this realm, this dream, he was in the cavern. They were all in mourning. They had locked themselves up away from the mortals to honour their dead and build their statues.

Darania left his rooms with instructions that D’Argen did not listen to. He counted a hundred breaths and gave up after he lost count twice around the forty mark. Close enough.

When he left his bed and went into the receiving rooms, Halen was there. The builder looked at him with a put upon expression and then held something out to him. A wooden crutch.

“Darania said you would not listen to her, but you should stay off that hip for at least another two days,” Halen said.

D’Argen did not feel any pain at all from walking. He had seen the bruises, but they were only tender to the touch. His steps and his balance were perfectly fine. He did not need a crutch. Still, he knew Halen would not leave him until he took the thing. Once it was settled under his arm, Halen left. D’Argen followed him out of the room but turned in the opposite direction in the hall.

He kept the crutch under his arm for show, but did not put any weight on it. Even when he took the steep stairs inside the walls to go down, he found it more of a hinderance and rested it on his shoulder instead of under his arm. When he made it to the ground floor, he stepped out of the service hall and into the main one. The mortal that he startled looked him over from head to toe then quickly ran off.

D’Argen thought for a moment that he should have changed instead of flashing his legs with every step, but he had something he needed to see. The walk to the hall he needed to reach had him passing dozens of mortals. There were staff that worked there, visiting dignitaries outfitted with enough jewels and precious metals to make him question their sanity, and citizens from the city and beyond, there to marvel at the place where the gods lived.

Gods.

D’Argen scoffed and ignored all their looks.

Then he arrived at the Worship Hall and he wanted to cry. The doors were wide open, held so with metal bars at the top. The hall itself was not the largest in the castle, but it was still prominent. It had columns inside it and there were at least a hundred mortals milling about. Some of them were there to worship and pray, some of them were there to clean the statues. He finally felt the weariness come over him and decided that the crutch was needed. Those that saw him approach stepped out of his way. A few went up to ask if he needed help. He ignored them all.

There.

There they were.

D’Argen started crying before he even stopped in front of a beautiful statue that wore a long robe with an open flowing skirt and almost nothing at the chest. Their feet were covered in flowers and vines climbed up the robes and around their arms. More flowers sprouted from their hands and the vines converged into a crown of flowers atop their head.

Lilian.

“I did not know you two were so close,” Vah’mor said as they stopped beside D’Argen.

D’Argen did not even have the energy to flinch away. He nodded instead. He had been close with Lilian. More so than anyone else.

“Come,” Vah’mor said and offered a hand. “You should be in bed.”

“I didn’t—” D’Argen cut himself off and then nodded. He did not take Vah’mor’s hand. Instead, he let the crutch carry the weight that had settled on his shoulders as he turned around. Vah’mor followed barely a step behind.

Once they were out of the Worship Hall, D’Argen heard Vah’mor say to someone, “Tell Darania, I found him.”

“I do not need to be escorted,” D’Argen said once they were not being stared at by mortals.

“Then you should remain to the top floors,” Vah’mor responded.

“I need to see… something.”

“Lilian?”

D’Argen nodded in answer. He thought this was the first conversation he ever had with Vah’mor that did not include glares or snide comments. Maybe—

When he chanced a glance at the other’s face, all he saw was pure black eyes and endless depths. He flinched and they turned silver. They looked concerned. D’Argen cleared his throat and asked quietly, “And the underground chambre?”

Vah’mor looked confused. D’Argen felt it. He rolled his eyes. There was no underground chambre. There was no cavern. There was only the single river that came from the mountain and ran under the castle before pouring out near the River Tower. The same way that—

He thought for a moment of the dark cave in the mountain that the different illusions had led him through. The thought of the drop in the dark that followed had him waving the thought away, even as it tried to plant itself. He would dream of it, for sure. And the underground cavern.

As soon as they were at the main stairs leading up, the closest set to the Worship Hall and not those of the Forest Tower where D’Argen’s rooms were, Vah’mor left him be.

D’Argen wanted to crawl up those steps. He also wanted to get away from the Vah’mor behind him that he knew was fake. While there had been no anger in their voice, this was not his closest friend after Lilian. This was something else.

He made it around a bend and was sure that he was out of sight from the General of Evadia, and then he leaned against the wall to breathe. Would he have to live out this set of memories all the way to the moment he collapsed? That was still millennia away. It would drive him insane. Especially if he really decided not to sleep.

Not that he had another option.

But at least Lilian was remembered. At least Lilian was being worshipped as the God of Spring. At least—

D’Argen covered his mouth to silence the sob that tried to escape when he thought of Thar. Thar’s statue was not in that hall. He still did not exist. Vah’mor was still not his friend. The only reason he did not curl up into a ball there and then was because others were walking down the hallway. He turned his face away to hide eyes he knew were red and only once they passed did he start moving.

By the time he made it back to his rooms, he was sweating and exhausted. His hip was only giving him little trouble, a dull ache that he felt when he put more weight on it than the crutch, but the faces he passed—

More importantly, the faces he did not pass.

As soon as the doors were closed he leaned back against them and then followed his earlier urge. He slid down to sit in the splinters of his broken table and curled up as small as he could. Only once his head was in his crossed arms did he allow himself to truly cry.

Lilian had said he had to wait for his mind to heal before he returned to the mortal realm. He saw no way of that working as it should. At this rate, he would go insane before he came even close to that. Without a friend to lean on, without—

His touch was hesitant as he reached for his mahee. It was there. It was full. It was waiting for him. D’Argen pulled away and imagined it did not exist at all. That white space, the pain his mahee put him through—no. He could not deal with that on top of everything else.

Millennia.

He would have to, somehow, find a way to survive for that long. Preferably without his mahee.

If only Santis was still alive, D’Argen would go to sleep and let the man control his dreams until enough time has passed. Was this what this place should have been? A pleasant dream to relax and calm him? If so, it clearly failed. From the first moment he realized that Thar was missing. From the first time Vah’mor glared at him with cold silver eyes.

D’Argen had a thought earlier of never sleeping again, yet his tears and exhaustion dragged him down and he fell asleep curled up at the foot of his doors.