The fog thinned as if some unseen hand parted it. The grass rustled in a breeze that hadn't existed a moment before. The wind, impossibly gentle, rolled down the broken path and curled around Sia's limp form.It was not a harsh push nor a violent drag, It just laid him down slowly, as if afraid to wake him. Like a mother easing a fevered child into sleep. His bones settled into the earth, his body sinking into the moss and dirt as if the world was cradling him.The wind silently brushed past him and lifted his hair just slightly and like a whisper of breath traced along his pale cheek. The blood that had been running freely from his right eye stopped. Then something... strange.
The blood didn't vanish. It stilled, then shifted slowly, as if invisible fingers traced along his skin. A thin, curved line stretched from the edge of his upper eyelid, just above his lashes, sliding toward his hairline. It was sharp and deliberate , a faint slit, like a delicate stroke of cat-eye makeup or a barely healed wound.
A subtle mark, almost invisible in the dim light and When it was done, the wind receded and Sia who was unconscious and unaware remained in the quiet. The bone flute beside him glimmered faintly. It shifted, bone bending, curling, reshaping. Wings unfurled and Ashwing reformed in silence. The bird blinked once with its hollow eyes, then turned its head sharply to the side as if thinking of what to do next. Its wings flared and then it vanished into the mist.
The dream was not a dream, It felt real.
Sia floated in it like a leaf caught in a still pool, It didn't feel like his physical form was present cause he felt none. It feels like his consciousness was present and everywhere was still . There was no ground. No sky. Only dark, endless space around him, thick like smoke but with no scent. He opened his mouth, but no word came out. Then… a sound came as he listened
Breath. But not his. Something breathed in deeply . You could feel something old and impossible to describe.Like the exhale of a mountain, or a buried god shifting beneath the soil.And then he heard a voice, it was Low, echoing, stretched and layered.
???:"So… you can finally hear me."
Sia turned. Darkness. No form. Just a voice.
Sia (quietly alert) : "Who's there?"
???:"No one you've met... and yet, I've always been here."
The voice came like a deep breath of something or someone old and bored , vast, ancient, and heavy enough to fear, yet strangely calming enough to converse with the voice.
Sia:"What do you want?"
???:"To remind you. You are not weak. Just... not whole yet"
Sia took a step back into nothing, though his legs never moved. If he could have moved, that would've been his first instinct.
"I… I don't understand…" he whispered, not out of fear, but sheer confusion. His voice was small against the vastness, like a drop falling into a bottomless well.
???:"You will. In time."
A pause. A feeling, like scales brushing across stone, like eyes that had never closed finally opening.
???:"You are the lock, Sia. I am what was sealed.Find what was lost.Free what remains."
Sia (barely above a whisper):"Who… are you?"
A faint breath, like wind over dying embers.
???:"Mortis."
A light suddenly cracked above him. Not blinding, but golden, flickering, like embers from a dying fire. In its glow he saw eyes Two ancient eyes burned like red flames in the darkness. The rest of the figure was vague with sharp edges that might have been ribs, twisted shapes that could have been horns.Sia couldn't make sense of it; the faint light of shadow only revealed it as enormous, coiled, and silent. He was sure it was some kind of beast, but he couldn't tell what. Yet those burning eyes were impossible to ignore.
"Mortis…" Sia breathed without knowing why.
"I am within," the voice rumbled again. "Bound to your soul, as you are to mine."
Sia's mouth opened. "I.I don't understand. What are you? Where am I?"
"You are inside the tether. The binding. The contract sealed long ago. My name is Mortis. Dragon of the Last Ash. Your blood calls me. Your fear keeps me silent."
Sia looked down.
He was barefoot, floating, wearing nothing but his grave-stained shirt and his old patched pants. His left eye was open here, and it saw everything. Light, form, shape. His sealed vision saw more than it should. The dragon exhaled again, and with it came a storm of old memories. A woman. A battle. A Sigil burned into a child's back. Screaming. Fire. Blood. A binding sealed by voice alone. But the images came too fast, too fragmented.
"Stop!" Sia gasped, holding his head. "I can't—It hurts—!"
Mortis lowered its head, gently now.
"Then remember only this."
The voice softened to a whisper that wrapped around him like velvet:
"Do not fear. You are never alone. But your emotion is the cage."
Sia looked up.
"Wait… What do you mean? What emotion? Why are you—"
But the dream was crumbling.
The blackness cracked around him like shattered glass.
"When you awaken… find me."
"Where?" Sia asked, voice barely a whisper in the dark.
"Where the last flames died," came the slow, heavy reply.
Sia frowned. "Where's that?"
"In the valley beyond the ash," the voice said. " be sure to Seek it when you awaken."
He woke with a jolt. His body was stiff, his breath cold. His vision blurred, and the cat-slit blood mark was still carved faintly across though he hadn't noticed it. He groaned and sat up slowly squinting against the pale sun struggling to rise through the thick mist. Everything ached, his bones, his head, his heart. He glanced to his side, The bone flute that should have been in his pouch was gone. Ashwing's bird form was nowhere in sight. But Mortis's voice lingered faintly in his mind.
He was still blind in one eye. Still afraid. Still unsure of the world.
But he was not alone.
Not truly.
That's what he told himself, over and over.