CHAPTER 3: THE OBSERVER

  Suryel’s memories had begun to leak.

  Not all at once.

  Not violently.

  They seeped, thin and quiet, toward the Dream Realm like water finding hairline fractures in stone.

  She started dreaming of faraway places more often.

  They were not the kind of dreams that clung to the waking world.

  No.

  They arrived already underway, scenes mid-breath, motion already committed.

  Each one caught her running before she understood where her feet had landed, the world snapping into place around her without warning or permission.

  In one, she led scattered tribes out of burning forests.

  Smoke tore at her lungs as she shouted herself hoarse, voice cracking while embers drifted down like falling stars.

  Children stumbled.

  Elders leaned hard on spears and shoulders.

  She kept moving because stopping meant death.

  The journey stretched long and merciless.

  The destination was worse.

  A dim settlement crouched beneath a sky that offered no mercy.

  Hunger lived there, patient and methodical, turning survival into a prolonged negotiation with despair.

  It hollowed bellies and sharpened tempers.

  Worse than the ache was the hope that things might improve, a thin, stubborn thread that only made the waiting crueler.

  Apathy crept in quietly.

  It settled into bones. It dulled grief until even mourning felt like labor.

  The dream ended there. No collapse. No release.

  Just an abrupt severing, as though someone had closed a door without looking back.

  In another, she died laughing.

  The feast had been generous, overflowing with color and sound.

  Wine caught the light as it was poured, red and rich.

  Bread tore open beneath eager hands.

  The laughter came easily.

  Too easily but with a hidden price.

  They smiled at her across the table.

  Polished.

  Warm.

  Friendly.

  Allies, she had thought, distantly, even as a prickle of unease slid down her spine.

  It felt too smooth, like a story rehearsed too many times.

  The poisoned wine tasted faintly sweet.

  Her vision tilted.

  The room slid sideways, someone reached for her and missed.

  She never felt the blade when it came.

  There was a life where she stood at the altar, to sacrifice her hand and freedom in the name of peace.

  White veils fluttered, flowers slipped from her anxious hands and struck stone.

  Steel rang out sharp and sudden as voices rose, then fractured into shouting.

  The accord collapsed in moments, chaos bloomed faster than grief.

  Another dream held her briefly.

  As a young page, loyal to a foolish prince who trusted the wrong men.

  She ran torchlit corridors with her breath tearing free from her chest, clutching the hem of her wounded master’s cloak as shouts thundered behind them.

  Boots pounded stone, doors slammed, the castle tore itself apart in a mutiny that moved faster than loyalty ever could.

  She watched him fall before dawn, her own life followed shortly after.

  They did not make it to sunrise.

  One dream burned brighter than the rest.

  Color and speed tangled together as she flew over rooftops and cut through forest paths, laughter ripping from her lungs while boots pounded close behind.

  Gold spilled from her group’s hands as they scattered it into waiting palms, grins breaking open across faces long starved of hope.

  The crowd stilled when they caught her, a red sky narrowed with a blade of light. She closed her eyes, braced herself, and waited for the dark.

  There was rush of wind falling, a sharp thud accompanied the chop.

  A roar swelled with indignity before the silence claimed her.

  There was a battlefield too.

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

  A vast plain stretched under a merciless sky.

  Heat pressed down like pressure from the sun as she stood toe to toe with another general.

  Sweat slicked her already numb grip, the blade in her hand felt impossibly heavy.

  She smiled anyway, unflinching, certain of how it would end.

  The moment drew taut, until they launched forward, a cry.

  Then the world snapped to black, and then it was gone.

  Like a film cutting out mid-reel, no credits offered, no final frame to linger on.

  She woke untouched.

  Suryel liked the adventures the Dream Realm brought with it.

  The spindle-like movement.

  The bright, clashing colors.

  The distant sounds that never quite resolved into clarity.

  They passed through her like weather she had learned to expect.

  Sudden. Vivid. Gone.

  Each morning, she woke, yawned, stretched, and returned to the living.

  Another mundane being, unaware she had died a thousand times before breakfast.

  But while she remained blissfully untouched, Yael did not rest.

  Each night, he slipped into those dreams alongside her, duty pulling him close.

  He skimmed the edges of her paths, keeping watch. When he could, he nudged her feet toward simpler choices.

  He softened scenes. Blunted edges. Redirected moments that might draw the wrong kind of attention.

  He fed her images and tones that would not linger. That would not invite recognition.

  Yael hoped his brother’s curiosity would starve.

  It did not.

  Helel was already there. Present. Observing.

  He felt it first as a faint tug in the air around her dreams, dim enough to dismiss.

  An unease he expected to fade if ignored.

  It didn’t.

  It lingered. It deepened. It gathered weight.

  So Helel began frequenting her dreams without announcement, slipping into their outer layers with practiced ease.

  He stayed distant at first, his attention fixed not on the girl, but on Yael.

  He watched the younger brother redirect her from certain doors.

  Watched him hover too close, steer too quickly, smile too carefully.

  It reminded Helel, unpleasantly, of himself.

  The realization struck sharp— That was how Yael always behaved when he was trying to keep something buried.

  Three questions surfaced, slow and persistent.

  What is it that Yael thinks he needs to hide from me?

  Enough to look this strained.

  Enough to insult my intelligence with this performance.

  The questions pressed closer together as Helel drifted through the dreamspace, unseen.

  Yael’s presence on Earth replayed in his thoughts. His careful normalcy. His unconvincing ease.

  First.

  Why exile to Earth and not the Abyss?

  The Eternal Realm had laws that preserved the expanse of domains, each Abode held in careful balance along the Lapis Lazuli corridor.

  Those who violated them were handled procedurally.

  Metatron documented causality. Authority regulated order. Ophiel delivered judgment.

  Expatriates were offered a final chance to vacate quietly, to relocate their domain with minimal damage.

  But when audacious impertinence was involved, the process ended abruptly.

  An expulsion.

  The ground removed.

  A unceremonious fall into the Abyss.

  Less broken bones than wounded pride.

  And yet, back then, the three had acted outside ordinance— Why?

  Second.

  Why was Yael behaving as though Helel might lunge if the girl breathed wrong?

  The image amused him. Prey freezing, choosing between fight and flight.

  Sensible, really.

  Helel laughed quietly to himself.

  The amusement lingered longer than it should have.

  That bothered him more than Yael’s evasions.

  He had never been fond of humans.

  Centuries among them had seen to that.

  When one caught his attention, even briefly, it was never benign.

  His attention was not a gift.

  It was a sentence.

  And yet his disdain had always been distant.

  Passive.

  Never a compulsion to seek and destroy.

  There was no reason for Yael to shield her so carefully— Unless.

  The third question formed as Helel’s focus shifted.

  From the brother.

  To the girl.

  He lingered nearer to her dreams, unseen but attentive.

  Familiarity crept in, uninvited.

  He studied it closely.

  Her cadence. Reckless curiosity.

  The way her thoughts jumped tracks mid-sentence.

  How she leaned forward instead of retreating.

  The slight narrowing of her eyes, followed by her mouth, whenever uncertainty loomed.

  As they drifted through the shifting shapes of her dreams, something cold and unmistakable slid into place.

  It was like looking into a mirror. Not her reflection, but his own—distorted, familiar, unnervingly honest.

  Helel paused.

  Quietly, to himself, he muttered, “Who are you, really? Beyond the face, beyond the name.”

  The dream offered no answer.

  He leaned closer in thought, eyes tracing her movements from above. “Why do your dreams… make me feel like I’m walking through my own memories?”

  A silence settled, thick and deliberate, as though the dream itself was holding its breath.

  The thought offended him.

  He scoffed, irritation bristling sharp and fast.

  Of course he would remember.

  Of course he would know.

  And yet— A spark crawled up his spine.

  The same sharp buzz he had felt the first day he encountered her awake, when the air around her deflected his touch as she sketched a glowing tree with careless focus.

  Ignorance, perhaps. Or was it defiance?

  His interest sharpened and pressed.

  Below, within the dream, Suryel moved through the endless library, humming softly as she drifted between aisles.

  Other figures passed in the distance, absorbed in their own quiet searches, pages turning, footsteps echoing faintly.

  Yael trailed behind her, nodding at nothing in particular, eyes scanning.

  Alert.

  Guarded.

  Under prepared.

  High above them, hidden among the towering shelves, Helel watched.

  His lip curved slowly, eyes narrowing with intent.

  “Suryel,” He murmured, tasting the name as though circling it in red ink.

  “You’ll have to prove yourself entertaining.” Helel added lightly, already amused by the thought. “For long enough, at least.”

  Then, without a sound, he stepped off the shelf and dropped into the dream below.

  Author’s Note:

  I am adding some drawings at random inspired moments into Patreon.

  *Insert ‘This writer is also an artist— I would like to suffer creatively, twice.’ meme*