The scent of antiseptic and stale coffee was a constant in Alistor's life, a backdrop against which his dreams painted themselves in violent, terrifying color. He sat in his cubicle, the grey fabric walls hemming him in, the fluorescent lights humming their monotonous song overhead. His fingers moved across the keyboard, a dance of muscle memory, inputting data that would be forgotten by tomorrow. Outside his window, the city of Newgate breathed its polluted air, oblivious.
But Alistor was not in his cubicle. Not truly. His mind was elsewhere, in a world where the sky was a bruised purple and two moons hung like fractured pearls. He'd been visiting this place for months, in snippets and snatches between spreadsheets and status reports. At first, it had been a welcome escape, a fantasy more vivid than any film. Lately, however, it had become a burden. A weight.
He saw a city of spired crystal, its towers catching the light of those strange moons. He saw people with skin the color of twilight and eyes that glowed like embers. They were beautiful, graceful, and they were dying. Not in the slow, inevitable way of his own world, but quickly, frantically. He'd watched their fields wither, seen their crystalline rivers run black with sludge, felt their despair as a physical ache in his own chest.
The dream always ended the same way: a voice, ancient and malevolent, whispering from the center of a swirling vortex of shadow. Soon, it would say. Soon, all will be unmade.
"Thompson! The quarterly reports!"
His manager's voice yanked him back to reality. Alistor blinked, the image of the dying world superimposed over his manager's flustered face for a disorienting second. "Almost done, Mr. Abernathy," he lied, his voice a dry rasp.
He'd learned not to talk about the dreams. The first time, he'd mentioned it to a coworker, a woman named Sarah with kind eyes and a penchant for new age remedies. She'd suggested therapy and a sleep study. The second time, he'd broached the subject with his doctor, who had prescribed a mild sedative and suggested he cut back on caffeine. He was alone in this, a sole witness to a slow-motion apocalypse happening in his sleep.
That night, the dream was different. It was no longer a passive observation. He stood on the crimson plains, the twin moons casting long, skeletal shadows. The air was thick with the smell of something burning, a scent like sugar and meat. A figure approached, not one of the twilight-skinned inhabitants, but someone… new.
She was tall, her form wrapped in what looked like woven moonlight. Her face was obscured, but he could feel her gaze, heavy with purpose. She stopped before him, and her voice was not the whisper of the evil deity, but something clear and resonant, like a bell struck underwater.
"You see," she said. It wasn't a question. "You see the Unraveling."
Alistor could only nod, his throat tight. The word hung in the air between them, heavy with finality. Unraveling.
"The Silencer," she continued, naming the source of the destruction. "He is the god of endings. He feeds on despair, on the slow decay of hope. We have fought him for centuries, but we are fading. Our world, Aerthos, is losing its song."
"What can I do?" Alistor asked, the words tumbling out before he could stop them. He felt a strange sense of responsibility, a connection to this dying world that defied all logic.
"You are a Dreamer, a bridge between worlds. Your presence here strengthens the weave of reality. But it is not enough." She raised a hand, and in her palm, a mote of light pulsed with a soft, inner radiance. "This is a Shard of Creation. A fragment of the world's core. Take it. Use it. Find the other five. Only when they are united can the Song of Making be restored and the Silencer banished."
The light floated towards him, and instinctively, he reached out. As his fingers closed around the Shard, a jolt of pure, unadulterated energy shot up his arm. It wasn't painful. It was… right. It felt like coming home. He saw flashes of things: a mountain shaped like a clenched fist, a forest of glass trees, a city swallowed by a desert of black sand.
"Who are you?" he managed to ask, clutching the Shard to his chest. It felt solid, real.
"I am Lyraelle, the last Weaver," she said, her form already beginning to fade. "Hurry, Dreamer. The final chord is about to be struck."
Alistor woke with a gasp, his heart hammering against his ribs. His alarm was blaring, the sun was filtering through his blinds, and his bedroom was exactly as he'd left it. But in his hand, clutched so tightly his knuckles were white, was a stone. It was smooth and black, like obsidian, but it emanated a faint warmth and pulsed with a soft, internal light, a perfect echo of the Shard from his dream.
He wasn't just dreaming anymore.
***
[ The Shard of Beginnings ]
***
The obsidian Shard felt like a secret in his pocket, a dense, warm weight against his thigh throughout his morning routine. Every mundane act—brewing coffee, tying his tie, waiting for the bus—was now suffused with a surreal significance. He was Alistor Thompson, mid-level data analyst, holder of a fragment of a dying world's soul. The absurdity of it was staggering, but the evidence was undeniable. He'd tested the Shard in every way he could think of. It didn't melt under hot water, it didn't scratch with a knife, and it continued to glow with its soft, internal light, a silent testament to its impossible origin.
Work was torture. The numbers on his screen seemed to swim, rearranging themselves into the spires of the crystal city. The hum of the server room sounded like the whisper of the Silencer. He found himself staring at the map of the world pinned to the corkboard in the break room, not seeing continents, but a tapestry, and his mind was looking for the loose threads.