Translucent white sheets draped across Ashencrest's shoulders. The faint curve of her hip jutted out further than it normally would have. She leaned against the old wooden door frame and the warmth of daylight painted her silhouette against the cloth. "Morning sleepy."

I blinked in disbelief, leaning on my arm, feeling the soft cot underneath me. "What?"

"You slept all through the morning chatter. Those fuckers came to snoop around the place."

Slept?

"Should have seen them jump when you were tossing and turning. You'd have thought someone pulled a knife. Not that I wouldn't have."

I blinked in disbelief.

My mentor paused her rambling and gave a strange look. "What's the matter? Nightmare?"

"No—well…"

"If you didn't have a nightmare, we've got—"

"Stop. This isn't right."

The woman in front of me paused. Then she stood, not as she had been a moment ago, but she stood as she normally stood. Tall and proud, like she knew everything, and I knew nothing.

"What are you talking about?" she asked. Her voice was serious now, none of the playfulness that was there a moment ago. She was upset, I knew it well. No, she wasn't upset.

"You're not fooling me," I said, "I'm privy to your illusions, Kafk."

The woman—the figment of my imagination frowned. "You're ill," she said.

"Obviously, I'm—" I stopped myself. There's no point talking to it. That's just what it wants.

"Wait here," she slipped out into the hallway.

I stood to leave. The inside of my room was created to the most exact detail. Almost too exact. An old lockpick's manual lay open on my dresser. I remembered giving up on it and getting Ashencrest to teach me instead. My favorite shirt hung from the back of a wicker chair, it wasn't the shirt that surprised me, but the chair. It felt right. The spot where it sat, in the corner. The space it took up.

My supposed mentor rushed back from where she'd run off to, a small vial in her hand. "Open," she said, before grabbing my face herself and wrenching my jaw open.

I groaned and fought back, somewhat surprised at the reality of it all. The warmth of her fingertips and the force with which she grabbed me. Some illusion this is—

I weaseled out from her grasp, backing away slowly. To my surprise, I was panting. Such a small effort and I'm already tired?

"What's gotten into you?" the fake mentor asked. I knew that face: the faint smirk forming at the corner of her lip. By the gods, she's curious now.

"You're not real," I said to myself.

That really got her. "What?"

"You're not real. You're not real. You're not real," I repeated it, like a mantra. Over and over. If I said it enough, maybe Kafk would give up on the charade. "You're not real, this isn't real, I'm just hallucinating. Kafk, I know these tricks. You're not fooling me, do you hear?"

Ashencrest stepped forwards. Her bare foot slammed into the wooden plank flooring and the house shook. She shoved me, with a force that did not fit the woman I'd once known. An unreal force. I tripped over my bed, well, more like my bed slammed into my legs, and I crashed into the back wall, just below the window. It must have shattered too, because I was covered in glass. The evening soundscape of crickets chirping and townsfolk winding down for the night flowed into the room. Wait, evening? When did it become… night?

"Stop it," she muttered, "I guess it's what I deserve for picking a mutt up off the streets. Never should've given you a chance. Why can't you ever accept things for how they are? It would all turn out much better that way. Do you understand, Ferrowill? Quit the act. It's not funny."

I tried to take a breath, my throat felt stiff and thin, as if the air itself struggled to reach my lungs. "You're right." I wiped the glass shards off my lap, off my shoulders. The atmosphere of that room had completely shifted. It was cold and dark. The town's warming lamplight didn't reach us, only the moon bore witness to what occurred in that room. Or, I suppose, only I did. "You're right. It isn't funny, talking to the dead."

Her posture shifted and before she had the chance to react I leapt towards her. Sluggish. I moved as if weighed down by a hundred river stones. But it had finally clicked, how to escape this prison. There was a way.

"What…" Ashencrest's face contorted in sweet, succulent horror. "What are you?"

I stood hunched on the bed, my own arms too heavy to stand erect. They sunk into the sheets as naturally as a butcher's knife into a pig's gut. I smirked wide. "You see, Miss Ashencrest, I am The Eater of Dreams. I never imagined it would suit me, what do you think? Are you proud?"

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

I blinked and the woman's body lay in pieces, tiny shreds of her skin hung off my claws like tree sap. My mentor, dead on the floor. I panted, even the effort to lift my arm had winded me. More than that, it seemed to have wounded me. I coughed and blood splattered into the mincemeat mess on the floor of my beloved bedroom. It was my beloved mentor.

I waited, but nothing happened. I didn't miss anything, did I? It was fake, wasn't it? The day shifted to night… her unreal strength, it was fake. It must have been. I've righted the wrong, now what? What's going on?

"Kafk! I've rejected your sham illusion, I know it could never be real. Let me out! Face me with your true form, not some grotesque recreation of my past life. Who said you had the right to go through my memories? Kafk!"

My head pounded and the struggle to breathe only grew more intense. Why can't I take a breath?

I strained to fill my lungs, barely able to expand my chest. Shallow and painfully unsatisfying sips of air were all I could manage. I'm about to…

Think, Ferro, think. While you've still got air to breathe. What happened before you came here? I was swallowed, right. Have I been wrapped in roaches this whole time? Drowning in an endless sea of insects?

My eyes fell on the shredded remains of my mentor once more, and I began to laugh. Slowly, building, until I could not laugh any longer. "DAMN IT ALL!"

A blink of light came through a crack in the floor. My eyes locked to it, or rather, it was locked to my eyes, or rather, locked to me. Then it filled itself in. Roaches.

I scrambled to the floor, heaving my claws into the air and tearing into the wooden planks below. I'd completely disregarded the torn corpse of my mentor, digging by its side as if it did not bother me in the slightest. It was not real, after all. It was not real.

The crack formed again, only this time underneath the hole I'd dug in the ground, through the dirt itself. Somehow, I was forced to squint from brightness, and yet I could recognize the scenery as that of the Valley of the Dead's chilling darkness. What a wonderful place to return to. Maybe I'll stay here. No, stupid.

I shook my focus towards that crack in reality, or unreality. Not simply my eyes, but my ears too, my nose, and my entire soul. I believed it was where I belonged. And it was. When I reached out to the crack, something strange happened. My body did not move as I expected it to. My own arms came up to that crack, up to my face, and I peeled away at the edges. Roaches. I was covered in bugs.

I scrapped at the flood of roaches, tore away at them as if they were a heavy layer of mud coating my face. I coughed up, not blood, but a stream of insects.

"Ferrowill? Can you hear me? Hang in there!" the muffled shouting barely caught my ears.

The vision I'd been trapped inside was no longer visible, I'd cleared enough of the bugs off for feeling to return in my limbs. Though I can't say I was particularly happy about it, all I could make out was the dance of a million tiny legs crawling over me. I shook my arms, wiped furiously at my thighs, rolled around, attempted to stand, and then rolled some more. Coughing, crying out in pure frustration.

"Can you stand? We must run, there is little time."

Wanderer? I groaned and my knee somehow found the ground, my hand as well. I pushed against it to stand, spitting another bug from my mouth. I felt lighter. Surely there would have been too many roaches covering me to stand, weighing me down. That was when I noticed they were fleeing. Peeling off me in sheets, that scurried off into the forest behind. Afraid? No.

"Ferrowill, we must go. Now."

They were regrouping. A flood of insects crashed through the nearest layer of trees, snapping the thick trunks in half as if they were dry twigs. The heaving lumber scattered across the forest, tearing more trees apart as they flew, ripping up the ground. Wanderer's hand gripped my arm and pulled me out of my daze before the entire mass of the serpent could crush me under its weight.

The way out was just ahead, a bright blue sky teasing through the tops of the trees. With Wanderer's tight grip on my wrist, I had no choice but to keep up with his speed. I stumbled on the hard edge of a rock, but the vigilante pulled me without the slightest hesitation, and soon we were scampering up the loose dirt hill that led out of The Valley.

The bright horizon came into view and with one last step, I was finally out of that Nightmare's grasp. Or so I thought.

Wanderer tugged at my arm even harder. "What are you slowing down for?"

The forest behind me exploded, and I turned in time to see the swarm-serpent following close behind.

"By the Gods, when does this Nightmare give up!?"

"Past the wheat field! It can't venture too far from The Valley!"

Like a hound tearing its meal down to the bone, I squeezed the last suggestions of energy from my quickly dwindling reserves. And when I was finally past the wheat field, I collapsed. Not unconscious, simply my legs refusing to move me any further. Wanderer, however, was not done yet. He dragged my limp body by only a few hands' widths. Behind me, the massive serpent raced across the field in the blink of an eye, and my breathing quickened. But before it could engulf the both of us whole, the creature was stopped. The space in front of me wavered where it slammed against some invisible barrier. The overflowing mess of roaches stuck on the opposite side of the barrier was close enough for me to breathe on.

"Pull me further—"

"You are in no danger, pull yourself," Wanderer said through heavy breathing.

But I had not even the energy to pull my own body weight, so I sat staring up at the wriggling mass, the one I had once been consumed by, the one that had recreated the memory of my mentor with frightening accuracy.

It stopped struggling against the barrier and began to vibrate again, a chorus of noise creating the illusion of a voice. "Eater of Dreams. For as long as you live, you will never see that woman again." The snake craned its massive head, and lunged against the barrier once more, slamming an immense weight into the barrier. Finally, it turned its head and began to slither away, back towards the darkness of The Valley. A noise like laughter came from the creature, a cynical and bone-chilling laughter. "Imagine, Eater. Imagine what could have been."

I sat in the lukewarm silence of heavy breathing and sweat dripping down my ears. The snake was gone, and I let my head flop to the ground. I could see Wanderer, upside down, crouched beside me, still panting. Behind him, reaching up into the horizon was the largest tree one could ever hope to lay eyes on. The Skypiercer Tree, within my grasp.

"Is it your first time seeing it?" Wanderer asked.

I could only chuckle. "I've seen it once before."