Guan Ah Dan rarely slept when he could help it.

This was not one of those times. The moment he had sat down, and safety was evident, his body took control and overpowered his mind. There was no avoiding sleep in the state he was in. The labyrinth itself seemed to grab his mana as it spilled out of him, sending it back with extra weight, which then pressed down solely on his eyelids. In his current state, Dan had no defences raised against sleep, so it took him easily.

The world of Jaia lay below him. A gem of incredible colours, a perfect swirl of greens, yellows, blues and white. From his vantage point far above it all, Dan felt a tranquillity that didn’t exist on the surface. It definitely didn’t seem to exist below the surface.

His thoughts about the labyrinth spurred the dream to motion. A sickening lurch, a tumble from his celestial seat. Then came the terrible shattering in his body, as though nails covered in rust were being pushed directly through his spiritual core. He was going to crash into the planet again, a hurtling spray of meteoric cataclysms. As he pierced the veil around the planet, he ignited. Where he touched the green forests, the blue seas, the white clouds, all were scorched and ruined.

Blackened pockmarks on the jewel. A planet screaming in terror and agony.

Rage, too.

Monsters clawed at the molten fragments of Dan’s body, their anger at his intrusion so powerful that they ignored the pyroclasm of heat which he had gathered in his fall. Some fled when they could no longer stand that awful inferno, but there were many beings of power on the land of Jaia. Sleeping titans stirred. Mountains rose as they shifted in their sleep, the skies filled with the sounds of their grumbling.

Somewhere amongst the chunks of himself, a much smaller shard fell away. It drifts on the tumultuous winds, carried by the waves of time as well as the whims of nature. Many years in the future, when the green forests have returned, when the blue seas have reclaimed their territory and the clouds in the sky gather their strength once more, the final piece of himself would float into a warm cup of tea.

“Would you like some assistance, lost one?”

Cutting through the miasma of his nightmare, a velvet voice caressed away the stress. There was something saccharine about it, as though there was a joke hidden in the question that Dan wasn’t privy to. Whether or not he was being made a fool of was neither here nor there, he grasped towards the sound with fervor.

“Please,” Dan whimpered, “help me.”

With another flash of inertia, Dan felt his presence shift within the ethereal space. Instead of the foggy oil painting clarity of his dream, a room came into focus around him, as though he had been there the whole time.

Dan would not have been able to imagine a room as opulent if his life had rested on it. Reminding him slightly of the vault of the Guan family, a room of golds and silvers formed. Cushions began to appear, their violet and red colours as vivid as any flower. Curtains and tapestry began to fall from an unseen ceiling while six walls arose from the inky blackness beyond, more splashes of colour, blue and orange waves in the air.

Moments before, Dan was a scattered being desperately grasping for a sense of self. Now, as the walls filled in around him, Dan felt whole. Until he looked down and saw his body.

He was tattered. Not just his clothes, though they were ragged themselves. Dan’s skin was ruptured, his bones jutted from him at angles. Ribs were facing the wrong way, fingers were missing. He felt no pain, and part of him still understood that this was a dream despite how real everything looked. Blood dripped from his pierced lungs, staining the silver rug beneath his feet.

“I’m sorry.” Dan mumbled. He tried to cup the flowing crimson river, but slipped and splayed upon the floor, splashing the growing pool onto the legs of the golden chair he reached for. Tears appeared in his eyes and fell, a small salty dilution of his still leaking lifeblood. Dan was appalled that he was making such a mess.

“You won’t be able to fix it like that.” The sweet and dangerous voice said, no longer seeming to come from everywhere at once. Now, Dan looked towards the voice and saw a woman.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Seated on another chair, the woman looked at Dan with predatory eyes. The frame of her seat was a solid gold, the upholstery a masterwork of soft red cushion. Her elegant fingers were whiteknuckled, her nails piercing the fabric of the chair’s arms. There was a voracity in her gaze that Dan shrank away from. As their eyes met for the first time, Dan flinched. Orbs of amber, with the dark slit of a vulpine huntress, were locked on his flimsy body.

She wore a dress of alabaster white. Her posture was fierce, chin raised and upper lip twitching into a curl that exposed teeth for a fraction of a second. Her legs were crossed, sandals with white ribbon curled up her tanned skin to the calf. Everything about the way she held herself was restraining, as though a moment of relaxation would see her tearing Dan apart.

“I don’t understand.” She had offered him assistance, and Dan decided to trust in that. “Am I dying?” Still, Dan was scraping at the pool of blood around himself. He cupped and dragged the thick liquid, desperately shoving it into the hole in his chest. Even as he pathetically filled up his broken container, more and more slipped out.

“Not dying, no. Not here.” There had been a growl in her voice before, but it had softened now. Dan looked up from his scrambling attempt to contain the flow, and some of his fear ebbed away. The woman’s eyes were now those of a human, a deep blue iris that seemed much cooler than the moment before. “You are safe here, but I cannot make you what you are not.”

“What am I not?” Dan asked. A tiny part of his mind reminded him this was a dream, but it seemed irrelevant compared to the amount of blood he had lost. Dan was still lost in the logic of a confused dreamer. However, he did manage to finally ask the most important question. “Who are you?”

The animalistic hunger flashed on her face again as she smiled, a glint of orange in her blue eyes. “I am Kumiho, and your dreaming is very loud, Guan Ah Dan.” There it was again, Dan noticed. There was the hint of a lie within her words, even as she said his name. “And you are not whole. Until you are, no one can help you, not even me.”

“What must I do?” Dan was becoming frantic despite himself.

“Find another piece, of course. You’re in luck, I think. It will come to you, if you can last that long.”

“You said you would help me. Please, help.” Dan was still locked into a primal fear, the blood now drenching the pillows. When they sank into the pool, the colours were overwhelmed and a wine-spill darkness stained them into a near pitch black.

At his words the woman had unfolded her tight form, released the chair and in an instant crossed the distance between Dan and herself so that she was kneeling in the pool of ichor alongside him.

“Are you sure?” Her words were like a purr. Now the curl of her lips could no longer be called a smile. A snarl of excitement, a growl from somewhere deep within her throat. Eyes the colour of a blood orange, too large and animalistic for any human, bored into Dan’s own with such intensity it was nearly blinding.

“I want to live.” Dan moaned, a cold was stealing the strength from his arms and legs. He couldn’t die now. He wasn’t alone, others would fall if he wasn’t there to help them. Again moved by his thoughts, his allies appeared within the room as he pictured them all. They themselves were unmarked, not ravaged like Dan, but each had a hollowness in their eyes that scared him. “I need to help them.”

“My desire is your desire,” she answered, her voracious eyes never leaving the gaping hole in Dan’s chest, “life and to live, just as you.”

As she spoke, she began to help Dan scoop the blood back into his chest. As her hands touched him, the wounds began to close. Where she replaced it, the blood no longer leaked away. Within his chest, Dan;’s heart began to slow from the frantic rabbit’s foot pace it was racing at. He calmed as her help dammed the flow.

“Allow me a space within your dreams, Guan Ah Dan.” Although it was her mouth that moved, the words now felt encompassing once more. There was a pact within these words that made the previous conversation feel like light banter. She stroked Dan’s face with her fingers, her skin was as soft as her voice. “Free me from my bondage. I am no evil spirit, just your sweet Kumiho.”

“I know your fears already, sweet child.” The room around them disappeared as she spoke, Dan’s face still held in her hands. The gilded chairs fell away, the ashen faces of Hyun Soon, Fa Lian and Xiaomei faded to nothing. A terribly familiar sight appeared again. Now they were high above Jaia once more, the black corrosion of Dan’s landing zones visible to him from here. “I can guide you away from these catastrophes.”

The illusion of the dream seemed to fall away all at once. The sights hadn’t changed but there was a reality to this choice that a dream could not cover. Dan looked at the smashed planet below himself, turning away from Kumiho, her orange eyes and her soft hands.

“This is the past,” Dan spoke slowly, looking from the marked jewel that was Jaia back to Kumiho, “but it could be the future, too?”

Kumiho did not answer but she did not need to. Dan was sure of something. This was the past. Somehow he had been dreaming of the labyrinth, and more, since he was very young. The world below spun quickly, millenia soaring past in moments. Kumiho moved her eyes from Dan down to the landscape below. Civilisation grew upon the shell of the planet, a roiling mass of ever growing maze infecting the planet below.

Then, all at once, it shattered. The very structure of the planet started to rupture, and the dream seemed to freeze as though the story could not pass the beginning of the end. Dan looked at Kumiho and saw fear in her eyes, which turned to Dan now with trepidation.

Good, Dan thought, you are the one who offered to help.

“We stop this.” Dan was full of terror at the vision he now understood before him, but he would not crumble at this threat. He took a step forward, stalwart, and placed himself before Kumiho now. Dan flared his mana, something he hadn’t known he could do while sleeping. A swelling of confidence bloomed within his chest. “Agreed?”

Now it was Kumiho’s turn to falter. She winced at her own nerves, the eyes of the child had suddenly been as fearsome as any other prey. She wished she had covered her ears from the loud dreaming beyond her door. Still, never one to back down, she took her fear and turned it into a hidden resentment instead. She buried her anger at having the situation turned on its head, and instead smiled. Kumiho was visibly shaken. She stood, straightened out her tight white dress and with a flick of her wrist, all the blood that covered her disappeared.

“Agreed.” She said, bowing her head. “I think it is time you awoke.”

“Wait,” Dan protested, “I still don’t know what to do.”

“Find Allusia, all things lead from Allusia. And don’t worry, you won’t remember this. After all, you’re only dreaming.”