Veins of the Maw
The Dream Maw breathed with ancient memory—memories Mira had only touched in whispers. Now, fully within it, she felt them thunder beneath her skin like second heartbeats.
Every step deeper turned the air thicker, more lucid. The path underfoot wasn't earth but woven recollections—shards of thought and flickers of time. She passed the memory of a girl cradling a dying wolf. A moment later, she saw herself, weeping over a body she had never touched. The Maw showed what was buried.
But tonight, Mira didn't come to mourn.
She came to hunt.
Alaric had severed the Inquisitors' anchors. Their sigils were dim, their minds fraying. But the Council's assassins were still dangerous, and the Maw—while loyal to the dreambound—was not kind.
The first one she found was already half-lost, crawling through illusion, slashing at phantoms that whispered his name in every voice he feared.
Mira circled him, unseen, her feet leaving no sound.
"Ren Delath," she said, using his true name.
He froze.
"Your blade has tasted children's dreams. You cut from shadows. Tell me—what dream haunts you?"
He turned, his face pale, his mind fractured.
"Who are you?" he choked. "You're not real. You're... you're the girl they said broke the moon."
"No," she replied softly, "I'm the girl who remembers what the moon saw."
She stepped into his mind.
Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Literally.
Through the Dream Maw's conduit, Mira plunged into his consciousness like a diver into a storm-churned sea. Images crashed around her—flashes of execution fields, cold temples, and a childhood stolen by ritual. She did not pity him. But she understood.
The Council devoured its faithful as swiftly as its enemies.
Mira found the knot where his obedience lived, wrapped in chains of fear. She did not ask. She severed it with a thought.
Ren screamed.
The Maw consumed him. Not in death, but in disconnection. The man who had entered it a blade now wept like a broken shepherd. He would never kill again. Mira left him to the trees.
She moved on.
The next two assassins tried to fight.
They emerged from the thick of dreamsmoke, twin brothers by birth and binding, circling like wolves with blades carved from hollowbone.
"Dreamwitch!" one snarled.
"You bleed like the rest!" the other promised.
Mira's eyes went silver, then black.
She dropped to one knee, laid her palms to the dreamsoil, and called.
From the roots beneath, ancestral wolves rose—massive shapes with glowing scars and no eyes, mouths filled with song and shadow. Spirits of Ridgefall's lost kin.
The brothers charged.
The wolves met them.
The fight was violent and brief. Mira did not flinch as screams tore through the wood. The brothers died not by claw or tooth—but by being seen. The dream exposed their truest selves, stripped them of pretense.
Mira whispered rites for their souls. Even assassins were children once.
Then came the last—the most dangerous.
This one bore no name. Mira knew him only as the Quiet. He moved like melted iron and had already slain two scouts and a dreambinder. When Mira found him, he was crouched at the Maw's root-chamber, trying to breach its heart.
"I know you," he said without turning. "You're the mistake."
Mira didn't rise to it.
"You don't belong here," she replied.
"Neither do you. The dream chose wrong."
He lunged. Fast. Silent. His blade aimed for her throat.
But Mira was already gone.
She appeared behind him, wrapped in mist, her voice echoing through every shadow in the grove.
"You think silence makes you pure. But I walk silence. I breathe silence. You fear it."
The Quiet turned—and Mira met him head on.
They clashed—not in strength, but in spirit. His will collided with hers inside the Maw. Visions of fire and shattered moons erupted. For a moment, the grove was lit by a battle of pure essence.
Mira faltered—just once—when she saw herself dying in his mind, over and over. But she drew deeper.
Deeper than fear.
Deeper than rage.
She found stillness—a stillness born from love, from kinship, from the first night Alaric looked at her and didn't flinch at her power.
She shattered the Quiet's blade with a scream that wasn't hers alone.
It was the voice of every dreamer the Council had buried.
The Quiet collapsed, gasping, bleeding from the eyes. Not dead. Just… hollow.
Mira stood over him.
"You lost the moment you stepped into our dreams."
And then, it was over.
The Maw whispered in contentment.
Mira turned and walked back toward the waking rootways, where Alaric's signal still flickered like a guiding flame.
The Maw was cleared.
But the war had only just begun.