With a blinding flash of lightning from the storm overhead the dream ground to a halt, froze like a paused video.

Emerald's form became suspended mid-motion, her scales still glowing red with residual dragonfire. The storm hung motionless overhead, lightning flash shearing brilliant tears across the sky, not fading away.

I felt myself separating from Cassie's memories, my consciousness pulling away from hers like oil from water. The sensation was disorienting - one moment I was bleeding out in the passenger seat of Emerald's glider, the next I was standing beside it, watching the scene as... myself.

As Martin Kilborne.

Cassie blinked rapidly, her ocean-blue eyes clearing as she too seemed to separate from the memory, awakened from her dream. Her feathers shifted through confused dark red-grays as she looked around at the paused scene.

Then her gaze found mine and she rose from her seat, blood splattered white dress and all.

"You..." she started, her voice trembling slightly. "What... what are you doing in my nightmare?"

"To be honest," I said. "I'm not really sure."

[Skill Unlocked: Dreamwalker LV 1] Silver sparks flashed across my eyes, burning into coherent letters.

"Oh," I said blinking the messages away. "I guess... I just learned Dreamwalking."

"Get out of my head, Martin!" Cinder snarled, advancing towards me on the beach, her face Phase-Shifting into a snarling dragon, eyes shining like blue comets, claws extending, wings flaring with grays and blacks. "This isn't... you shouldn't be here! You shouldn't see this!"

"Love to," I said. "but can't. Like I said before, I don't know how I even got here. It was an accident. I didn't mean to intrude. I think it happened because we are sleeping next to each other."

"Since when did we... Arghhh! This is private!" she hissed, wrapping her wings around herself. "These are MY memories! MY nightmares!"

"I know," I nodded. "And now I understand why you quit singing. Why you let Em control you."

"Shut up!" Cinder's feathers bristled. "You don't understand anything!"

"Seems like an open and shut case," I said. "Em saved you that night. She helped you get revenge on the Skinwalkers. She gave you purpose, direction, a way to feel strong again."

"Stop it!" Cinder's voice cracked. "Just... stop analyzing everything! This isn't some puzzle for you to solve! Abyss-damn it! I didn't... I don't..."

Her eyes filled with tears.

Another figure melted away from her body, like spilling silver-fluid, twisting and writhing through the air and reforming into a familiar form.

Vespera clicked her beak, sitting on the edge of Emerald's glider.

"Curious," Vespera commented, her gray eyes studying the frozen scene. "So this is what happened with you n' Em. I see why you don't talk about it. You murdered em' all didn't you?"

"Vee?!" Cinder choke-sputtered, spinning towards the Thunderbird. "You're here too?!"

"Mhmm," Vespera nodded. "Guess we're all sharing dreams now. My bad. Dreamancy is one of my skills, the stuff that dad wants me to use to rewrite myself into a proper Prima-princess bride n' Chief Technology Officer. Guess Lexy mooched it off me with the shake. This really shouldn't have happened. It must be the lighter. Whatever it's doing... is amplifying the shit out of every spell, every skill. Excess mana. Wild magic."

"Get. Out." Cinder growled, her wings flaring with dark reds and angry violets. "Both of you. Now!"

"Don't want to," Vespera shook her feathered head, her chain mail sparkling. "You're not the boss of me. Sides' if I leave, he's gonna stay and probably eff your shit up sideways 'cus he's so full of mana. Dreamancy isn't a joke. It's used to edit someone from inside out. Haven't you seen that dum' movie... Inception? It's like that, but worse. So much worse. Thus, someone has to teach our clueless human husbando about proper Dreamwalking."

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

"I don't care!" Cinder snarled. "This is MY head! MY memories! Pull him out! You have no right to..."

"To what?" Vespera asked. "To see why you changed? Why you let Em control you? Why you stopped singing?"

"I didn't stop singing," Cinder protested weakly. "I just... changed how I did it."

"You let Em turn your talent into a callin' bell," Vespera noted. "Used it to lure monsters through gates instead of... what was it that pretty-warp-flesh wolfie said? 'Speaking to people's souls'?"

"Don't," Cinder warned, her feathers bristling. "Don't you dare quote him!"

"Why not?" Vespera pressed. "He wasn't wrong about your voice, you know. Just wrong about everything else."

"SHUT UP!" Cinder screamed, her wings flaring with furious reds and violent blacks. The frozen dreamscape around us began to crack and splinter like breaking glass.

"Ci, wait..." I started, but she was already turning on me, her ocean-blue eyes blazing with a mixture of rage and pain.

"You want to know why I let Em control me?" she snarled. "Why I stopped singing for myself? Because the one time I did, the one time I let my guard down, let myself be truly vulnerable... Thought that someone actually liked me... THIS happened!"

She gestured violently at the frozen scene. "You asswarts obviously wanted to know what happened. Well, there you go! Congratulations! Now you know everything! Are you happy?!"

"No," I said. "I'm not happy. I'm angry that this happened to you. I'm angry that those monsters hurt you for their dumb ritual. And I'm angry that you let it change who you are."

"Who I am?" Cinder laughed bitterly. "Who I am is someone who learned her lesson. Someone who knows better than to trust pretty words and perfect smiles. Someone who knows that being vulnerable just gets you hurt!"

"Cassie..." I started.

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" she roared, the dreamscape fracturing further around us. "That weak, stupid girl died in that lake! She died believing in fairy tales and happy endings! She died thinking that someone could actually love her voice, love her for who she was!" Cinder's voice cracked. "And Em... Em saved me. She showed me how to be strong. How to use my voice as a weapon instead of... instead of..."

She trailed off, tears streaming down her face.

"Instead of sharing your gift with the world," I finished "Instead of being who you really are."

"And who am I really?" she demanded, wings wrapping tighter around herself. "The naive girl who nearly got herself killed? The one who trusted a pretty face and honeyed words?"

"No," I said. "You're Cinder. You're someone who survived something terrible and came out stronger. But you're also still Cassie, a girl who's been hiding behind dark armor ever since, afraid to let anyone see the real you."

"How about you screw off?" Cinder snarled. "Nobody asked you to be my therapist! Nobody invited you two nargomorfs into my head! Dreamwalkin' sons of birchards! Slayer Nazareth, WHY?! It wasn't enough for you to annoy me in real life 24/7, now you gotta be in my dreams too?!"

"Because," I said, "you needed someone to see. Really see. The truth behind your walls. The pain you've been carrying alone."

"I don't need anyone to see anything!" she snapped, but her wings trembled slightly. "I'm fine! I'm strong now! I've levelled up lots because of Em!"

"Em made you dependent," I corrected. "She saved you, yes. But then she used that debt to control you, to reshape you into what she wanted. Just like Valor tried to do, only slower. Much more subtle."

"Em did NOT just reshape me!" Cinder snarled, wings wide. "You saw it! She saved my life! She helped me get revenge! She..."

"She made you feel like you owed her everything," I finished. "Like you had to earn her protection by becoming what she wanted. By using your voice to hurt instead of heal."

"You don't know F'all about me!" Cinder's voice cracked. "You've been clinging to me what, four, five days? And suddenly you think you get everything? Get me?"

"I get enough," I said. "I get that you're still singing that night's song, Ci. Still trapped in that moment when your trust was betrayed. Still letting it define who you are. You're getting better though. You have friends you can trust now. People bound by purpose who won't use you."

"As if!" She growled. "As if you're not using me for your lunatic plans of revenge against all Omnid-kind! As if you didn't get into all of my classes, my house, my parent's hearts, my brother's delving vault. You're a human without magic and yet everyone adores you! Io, Vee, Kat.... even my little sister thinks that you're Mr. Perfect! But you're not perfect, you're full of lies! Em is wrong and also so... very, very right about you!"

"You're right," I said quietly. "I am full of lies. I manipulate humans and Omnids alike. I have an agenda. I'm not perfect at all. But there's one big difference between me and Em - I want you to be yourself, not what I want you to be. I already told you this - I don't want to control you," I stated firmly. "I just... want you to smile. I want you to sing because you want to, not because someone else is making you."

"And what if I don't want to sing anymore?" she challenged. "What if this is who I really am now?"

"Is it?"

"Screw off!"

"Fine," I said. "I'll screw off."

I snapped my finger, closed my eyes, tried to push myself awake. Nothing. I opened my eyes with a sigh.

"You can decide what to do yourself without me bugging you, Ci," I said. "Vee, lets go walk and sit over there by the giant bones in the distance. You can teach me how to dive out."

Vespera leaped off the glider and grabbed me by the elbow. "Sure thing, dream-husbando. Let's give our captain some space to steam it out. I gotta see what's up with these cracks in the dream anyway."

We walked away from the frozen scene, towards the massive bones jutting from the lake's shore. The dreamscape wavered around us like a mirage, details blurring at the edges of our vision the further we went away from Cinder.

"So," Vespera clicked her beak once we were sufficiently far out. She bent down to the shimmering shear stretched across the beach and poked at it with her talon, sending sparks in. "Dreamwalking 101. To exit someone's dream, you need to..."