While everyone else drifted off, one by one, into the kind of exhausted sleep only a day full of killing can buy, I slipped outside. Not because I needed rest — I'd gone longer without sleep than most people could stay sane — but because I didn't trust lying unconscious beside Anderson or his little flock of righteous zealots.
Not that I feared they'd touch me. I'm not twelve. I'm way too old for them.
But that priest definitely has some kind of holy hard-on for killing me, and I didn't want to wake up with his sword "accidentally" poking me in the ribs.
The night outside was cold, blue, and quiet in the kind of unsettling way only the outskirts could be — like the city itself was trying to remember how to breathe. I climbed silently up a collapsed balcony, then a crumbling façade, landing on rooftops without a whisper. Dracula's castle had taught me that trick — how to move like a shadow's shadow.
Eventually, I found someone already there.
Sara sat on the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling over the street, staring out toward the walls like she expected someone to walk back through them.
"So why are you sitting here all alone?" I asked.
She jumped so hard she nearly fell backward. I caught her by the collar.
"Ah—! You scared me shitles!"
She laughed, but there was something tight in her eyes. Something bruised. I sat down beside her and, without a word, pulled out a bottle. Her eyebrow arched.
"How the hell did you get alcohol up here?"
"I have my ways."
I took a swig, then handed it to her. She sniffed it like she expected poison, then took a sip.
"…Thanks, I guess."
We sat in silence for a moment, the wind brushing past like a sigh.
"So," I asked, "what made you so depressed you had to sulk on a roof in the middle of the night?"
She laughed quietly — the kind of laugh people use to hold grief in place. "Oh, you know. Thinking about stuff you wouldn't understand."
I took a bigger drink this time. "Try me."
She exhaled slowly. The kind you can hear the weight in.
"I'm thinking about David… You'd know him as the first Bright Lord."
She reached for the bottle again. I passed it over without comment.
"He was my partner," she said softly. "In more ways than one. Back then, I wasn't strong — not like now. I was weak. Scared. But he… he made everything feel safe. I healed him, and he protected me. For the first time in my life, I felt loved."
I raised an eyebrow without meaning to. She noticed immediately.
"I had a rough childhood," she continued. "I was pretty, and my father was a low-rank noble in Valor. He decided the best use for a daughter was to sell her for influence."
Her voice cracked.
"I was sold to a—" she stopped. "I don't want to talk about it yet."
I cut her off before she forced herself into a breakdown.
"That's fine. I don't care about your sob story enough to pry. I just came to check up on you."
She slapped my back, laughing harder this time. "You asshole. You really know how to pull me out of my thoughts."
The moon was high now, pale and sharp like a dagger above us.
"Back then," she said, "when we found survivors, he and I built a cohort. We reclaimed the dark city and made it safe — really safe — for humanity on the Forgotten Shore."
Her voice grew quiet. Too quiet.
"That ended when he took the cohort on an expedition beyond the walls. I didn't go because I was pregnant. When he didn't come back…" She swallowed. "The stress— I…"
She didn't need to finish. Some wounds speak for themselves.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or the moonlight, or the shared weight of two broken pasts — but I heard myself speaking before I fully decided to.
"Well," I said, "I was a normal guy before the spell infected me. Black hair. Two arms."
Sara snorted.
"My first nightmare sent me to a castle — creepier and way bigger than the dark city's. Harder, too. I ended up thrown into the life of some rich noble, and that's where I met her."
The words tasted like blood.
"My first love. Yuki."
Sara didn't say anything. She just listened.
"I lied to myself for half a year," I admitted. "Pretended a nightmare could give me something real. I tried so hard to make her happy. But you know how nightmares go."
My throat tightened.
"She was taken from me. A knight and a priest — treacherous bastards — murdered her. I didn't even get to say goodbye. The last thing I did was bury her corpse."
My voice failed.
Suddenly, Sara's arms wrapped around me. Warm. Steady. Human.
"It's okay," she whispered. "Let it out."
Only then did I realize my face was wet.
I— me — crying. Pathetic. Embarrassing. But gods, it felt… relieving. Like finally unclenching a fist I didn't know was closed.
"I didn't think you'd understand," I managed.
"I do." She hugged me tighter. "More than you know."
We stayed like that for a while — two broken silhouettes under the moon, clinging to ghosts neither of us could bury.
From a distance, someone might've thought we were lovers.
But we weren't.
We were just two people grieving what the nightmare stole from us.
Two people holding each other together for one quiet moment before dawn tore us apart again.