The winds were howling tonight.
But for once, she wasn't afraid of them.
Layla stood at the edge of the dunes with her scarf trailing loose, her lantern dark, her bare feet planted firmly in the sand.
Behind her, Qamar lay in uneasy silence … its people shut away in their homes, whispering prayers, their fear thick enough to choke on.
But Layla felt nothing but fire.
Tonight she would not run.
Not from their glares.
Not from the darkness.
Not even from herself.
Because Malik's whispers … though faint now, ragged and torn … still reached her ribs.
"Dreamer…"
"I'm still here," she whispered to the wind.
"You shouldn't be," his voice rasped. "The darkness waits for you now. It's learning you. It wants you. More than me."
"Let it come," she said softly, and her breath curled white in the cold air.
"You don't understand," he murmured. "If it takes you, Dreamer… I don't know if even I can bring you back."
Her jaw tightened.
"Then let it try."
The dreamland was nothing but void tonight.
A sea of black glass stretched beneath her feet, cracked with veins of gold that shimmered faintly, as though trying to hold the world together.
And in the center of it all stood Malik … barely there anymore.
He was no longer whole.
More fracture than form, more whisper than light.
The darkness coiled around him like smoke and thorn, wrapping tighter with every breath he took.
But his golden eyes still burned.
When he saw her, they flared faintly, even as his voice faltered:
"Why are you here?"
"Because you are," she answered, her own voice steady.
"Dreamer…" His light flickered wildly, painfully. "You don't belong in this. You don't know what you're fighting."
"Then tell me."
He laughed faintly … a sound like glass breaking in the wind.
"I don't even know anymore. It has no name. No shape. It's only… hunger. It will take and take until nothing is left of me. Of you."
"Let it try," she repeated.
And she stepped closer.
The darkness rose to meet her, hissing and writhing, its tendrils striking toward her feet, her wrists, her throat … but she didn't flinch.
Instead she raised her chin and called his name like a spell:
"Malik."
The blackness recoiled faintly, as though startled by her voice.
"Malik," she said again, louder this time, her chest burning as the words ripped out of her:
"You are not nothing. You are not lost. You are mine."
The darkness roared, striking her square in the ribs, wrapping her like chains of ice.
She cried out … but still her voice didn't break.
"You hear me?" she gasped, her knees buckling as the black tendrils cut into her skin. "You are mine!"
Malik's light flared … just faintly … and his whisper came to her, soft and broken:
"Mad Dreamer. You don't know what you're doing."
"I don't care," she ground out through gritted teeth. "If it takes me, then we go down together.
But I will not let it have you alone."
The darkness shrieked then … a high, terrible sound … and tightened around her, trying to crush the breath from her lungs.
Her knees hit the black glass.
But still… she whispered his name.
"Malik."
"Malik."
"Malik."
Over and over, her voice shaking the dreamland, the cracks in the void spreading wider, golden light bleeding through them.
And suddenly … with a sound like a thousand mirrors shattering … the darkness recoiled all at once.
Its tendrils released her.
Its voice hissed one last time:
"He is not yours. He is nothing."
But she stood, her ribs aching, her breath ragged, her eyes bright as stars, and whispered:
"Then let me love nothing."
The dreamland burned gold.
Malik fell to his knees before her, the chains of black around him crumbling into ash.
His hands shook as he reached for hers … as though he didn't dare believe she was really there.
"You shouldn't have done that," he whispered, though his voice was thick and full of something sharp and wild.
"Why?"
He smiled faintly, sadly.
"Because now you've made me love you more."
"Good," she said, her lips curling into the ghost of a smile.
He looked at her then, really looked at her, and his words came out in quiet, broken poetry:
"If you are my flame… then burn brighter.
Even if it burns me too. If you are my wind…
then howl louder. Even if you carry me away.
And if you are my madness… then never let me wake."
Her heart cracked open at the sound of him.
She reached up and cupped his face, her thumb catching on one of the golden fractures along his jaw.
"Then don't wake," she murmured.
"Not if you're here."
He closed his eyes at her touch, leaning into her hand as though it was the only real thing left in his world.
And the dreamland shimmered around them … no longer gold, no longer black, but something in between.
Something alive.
And for the first time, the stars began to blink back into the sky.
When she woke, her body ached everywhere the darkness had touched her.
Her palms were streaked with black.
But when she looked out at the sky above Qamar, faint streaks of starlight shone again through the dark.
She smiled faintly to herself, whispering into the night:
"Malik… I will never stop calling you. Even here. Even when fear follows me."
And in her mind, warm and soft and full of quiet fire, his whisper answered her:
"Then I will never stop coming to you. Even where fear cannot follow."