One day, Yezen would want to die.

He imagined himself drifting off into peaceful slumber somewhere comfortable, before passing dreams and blackness and whatever else beyond that, unto where he would finally face the ceasing of his own existence, and he would be content.

When he finally and grudgingly acknowledged that day would not be this day, Yezen forced his crusty eyelids open. The dark of a cold night greeted him, seemingly worse now that Yezen had finally dared acknowledge it. He shivered involuntarily and tried to rise, but no matter how he tried, his old and tired body would not cooperate. Puffing with effort and frustration he finally resigned himself to lie there, staring up at the black silhouettes of wilted canopies in a forest without a name, and he tried to remember what he had dreamed. His hands instinctively sought the small journal within the folds of his shirt, along with the small piece of charcoal he had tucked into its spine – a process made entirely more difficult by the trembling of his cold fingers and the aching of his body, reluctant from sleeping in the cold.

The Dream.

He finally put the small piece of charcoal to the page, and closed his eyes. It lingered there still, dancing along the fringes of his mind, and he could feel it slipping away further with every passing moment. He breathed slowly as he had learned to force himself, reaching for It with the greatest care, coaxing it to return back to a place where he could grasp it. And yet he knew well that it was a delicate thing, as fragile as a butterfly made from glass, and as brittle as a teardrop made hollow, and that a single ungentle touch could ruin it forever. Just when he thought to have found a hold, and faint outlines of what had never been came back to him, the Dream slipped away again. It trickled through his fingers, teasing, taunting. No! He reached for it again, tried to grasp it, but it had already begun to dissolve into nothing. Before he could try to hold on to the last remaining fragments it finally evaporated like smoke, slipping his mind.

Damn, he thought as he opened his eyes to stare at the empty page in the dark. Another useless one. Had it been a good one? He couldn’t even remember that much. He afforded himself a long, frustrated sigh. Then Yezen licked a dirty fingertip, flipped through the small leather-bound book, making another melancholy mark among many others on the last page. More and more of those recently, he pondered as he sat up, groaning ever-so-slightly, his back creaking and cracking and his joints popping. His long years had finally begun to make themselves reminded at last.

Yezen quickly gathered his few belongings in the dark, a task he had put down to an art by now. Once this was done, he rewarded himself by relieving the night’s pressure against a tree. Cold winds still blew through the forest and whipped about him occasionally, sending shivers down his spine. But Yezen did not mind, now that he was awake.

Cold was good. Cold meant still alive.

Either way, that was just the way of it in this part of the world. And he had come close to the Prism now, closer than he had been in many years. Dangerously close. Here, more land seemed to grow cold and dark and gray, as if all life had been sucked out of it, and even the boring gray and brown of dirt and stone seemed a tad lesser, lacking any vibrance at all. Fraught with such dark thoughts, Yezen found himself shivering again, and not from the cold.

Grown determined to keep his mind away from things better not thought of, he wrapped himself in the tattered clothing that had made his pillow for the night, shouldered his pack, and stumbled back toward whence he had come, until he found again the small dirt road that had carried him so far already. He gave his small resting place only a fleeting look back as he left, sour that it had left him with little more than a kink in his shoulder from sleeping on the hard soil.

The first few rays of sunlight greeted him where they peered through the trees. He had apparently slept far closer to the forest’s edge than he had anticipated. Yet there was something else, too; something he had not expected, carried by the wind.

Voices.

Yezen stiffened, trying to figure out where the voices came from – and if he could, their intent. He stood silent there for a long time trying to listen, saying nothing, barely moving.

Thwack!

The sudden, echoing sound of a distant axe striking wood was enough to make him jump. However, Yezen knew well that wood cutters meant some measure of civilization, and civilization meant fewer roadside bandits, at least in the immediate vicinity, as they usually preferred to do their deeds where they could remain undiscovered for a time. He let his hand fall from where it had come to rest, trembling on the handle of the dagger by his waist. Then he took to his path on the road again, leading at first away as it coiled and twisted, and then towards the sounds.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Yezen finally emerged into a world at dawn, dark and grey apart from what few hopeful rays could pierce the thick clouds above. In the distance he saw figures, looking to his tired eyes like three men and a hefty woman wielding long axes, cutting away at brushwood and undergrowth, having inched its way toward the dirt road year over year. Yet now it seemed that someone had finally decided enough was enough, and now they were pushing it back once more, as if stuck in an endless, terribly slow game of tug-of-war between man and nature.

Yezen had an inclination as to who would win that battle, eventually.

He got almost within three hundred feet before they finally noticed him, at first paying no heed but a few nods and an indifferent wave of greeting. Perhaps they would have let him be, but one man seemed to notice something the others hadn’t, and they soon ceased their work.

Yezen stopped and waited as they approached the weary wanderer, for a moment forsaking their work. As was customary for a man outnumbered and out-armed, he held out his hands, showing himself mostly unarmed and defenseless.

“Morning,” he called out as they came within speaking distance. His voice was raspy and grim, his face no doubt at this point overgrown with beard as shaggy as his tattered clothing, and had it not been for the one thing that made Yezen anything else, they surely would have labeled him a haggard beggar and sent him on his way. The oldest of them, a man with a beard the color of fresh snow and silver-grey hair tangled with dirt and sweat stepped up first, regarding him warily, but said nothing.

“You…” another said instead as he approached wearing a look of bewilderment, seemingly the youngest of the lot. The man kept a good dozen paces between himself and Yezen, as if getting too close would prompt both of them terrible pain. “You’re one of them. A Dreamer.” He looked to his companions, as if to make sure his eyes were not alone in what they saw. “How is it…? How is it possible?”

Yezen looked into the young man’s eyes, pale and grey and lifeless like all the others’, as if all color and life had been sucked out of them. To the young boy he would have seemed an impossibility turned flesh, but Yezen had no answers for him.

He turned instead to the older man. “How far to the nearest city?”

The old man nodded, staring at him through similarly soulless eyes, though he kept his composure well. “I can tell you,” he said after a moment, “Hell, I’ll even take you there myself…” His face lit up with determination, and desperation. “…If you give me one.”

Yezen turned to walk away, continuing down his long path.

He saw out of the corner of his eye as the man’s composure shifted from greed to desperation as he motioned for Yezen to give pause, though he dared not touch him.

“Just one,” the man begged of him. “Please!”

Yezen ignored the pain in the man’s voice. Instead he stopped, turned to face them again and said, “Thank you, and good morning.” Then he turned back, and continued down the road.

“Wait!” the man cried out, catching up in a few swift strides. “You can have my coin, cattle, land!” The man hesitated briefly. “I… I have a daughter. Tell me what you want, and I will give it to you!”

“Steff!” one of his companions called out from behind him in surprise. “What has gotten into you!?”

But the rest of them were young, and unwise in the ways of the world, and so they did not understand this man’s yearning. Not really, or perhaps they would have joined him in his desperation.

Yezen ignored the man and continued walking. This was not the way of it, but as he had come to find, such trivialities had never stopped a desperate man before.

Suddenly, he felt a firm grip around his shoulder as the man caught up and twisted him about until they were face to face. Strong hands, despite the years, calloused and dangerous.

“I’ll do anything,” the man said, grip firm and voice low. They were close enough that Yezen could smell the leather of his vest, the sweat on his skin and the stench of his breath, and the desperation in every word and syllable, oozing out of every pore.

When Yezen said nothing, the man’s passionate pleading turned to anger. “Tell me what you want,” he demanded, needing speak no threats. Yezen was old, and his body tough from long days and longer nights of hardship, but years of labor had hardened the old woodcutter. “I need one. Give it to me. I just…”

And Yezen saw it. The faintest glimmer of a spot of many colors in his eye, layered behind pale grey, almost too weak to make out. Merely a multi-colored speck, but unmistakable.

The glimmer of a man who had once Dreamed.

He looked to where the man still held a firm grip of his shoulder.

“You don’t want to do that. Trust me,” Yezen said, his voice cold and harsh, like a sheet of ice.

The man released his grip and recoiled, a look of horror on his face, as if the mere realization of his actions had brought to him pain. But Yezen had met many men like him before, and so he felt no pity for the man as he turned to walk again.

“No! What have I done?” he heard the man whisper beneath his breath. “Forgive me,” the man cried out behind, “I did not mean to give offense. Please, stay! You’ll have to forgive me!”

Yezen did not turn to watch. He could hear as the man moved to follow him again, but this time he was held back by his confused companions. They reprimanded him sternly in hushed whispers, wondering what had overcome him to such despair, however their actions seemed to do little in dissuading the man.

Even as Yezen passed far away, across the tiny field and along the small dirt path – leaving the small forest and the woodcutters to their work – he could hear the man’s screams in his ears, though whether it lived in his mind alone, he could not say.

You have to! it screamed, fading as he walked.

GIVE IT TO ME!