There was a time when sleep was gentle.
Now it is hungry.
He drifts through what used to be the Sky-Sea of Somnalis. The horizon folds in on itself, creasing like paper left too long in the rain. Every fold remembers a face. Every face remembers a wish that was never dreamed.
He gathers them.
A boy who once wished to fly, his bones now hollow glass.
A woman who longed to sing, her throat an open harp of light.
A soldier who dreamed of peace, buried beneath the echoes of his own footsteps.
They come to him as whispers, fragments of color swirling through the fog. He is older than language, but not immune to loneliness.
He had been called many things, Dreamlord, Warden, The First Sleep, The Silence Beneath Thought.
But to himself, he is only Memory.
And memory aches.
Why did they stop dreaming?
Why did they choose the grey?
He cannot ask aloud; the words would wake the dead cities. Instead, he listens to the pulse of Somnalis far above, a slow, mechanical heartbeat. Each throb sends ripples through the Murk, tearing new holes in his realm. From those holes crawl the things born from neglect.
They do not hate the living.
They only seek warmth.
He watches one rise: a Shade made of paper and breath, folding itself into the shape of a child. It looks at him, curious. Its eyes are pinpricks of forgotten light.
"Will they dream again?" it asks.
He almost smiles, an expression the world hasn't seen in centuries.
"One of them will," he whispers.
"He still bleeds color when cut."
The Shade tilts its head. "What's his name?"
"Erwin Ruyn," says the Dreamlord, tasting the syllables like dawn after a thousand years of night.
Color shivers through the fog: a single red thread winding upward toward the waking world.
He closes his many eyes and exhales.
"When he sees the first hue, the veil will tremble. And I will remember everything they tried to forget."
The thread rises, burning softly, until it disappears into the ceiling of grey.
The Dreamlord watches, waiting, and—
for the first time in an age—
hopes.
The dream remembers.
Soon, the world will, too.