Sleep was a country Arden visited with caution. For thirty years in the void, there had been no such thing, only an endless state of nothingness. Since his return, his rest was a shallow, guarded thing, more a powered-down state of vigilance than true surrender. But the body, even one touched by dawn and void, had its limits. After the grim discovery in the Moss-Gilt Vale, exhaustion finally pulled him under.
And the dream came.
It was not a narrative, not a replay of memory. It was pure sensation. He was a single point of awareness, a golden spark adrift in an infinite, starless black. This was the familiar terror of his imprisonment, a sensation carved so deep into his soul it was a part of his anatomy. But this time, it was different.
There was no pressure, no tearing agony. Instead, he felt a pull.
It was gentle at first, a subtle current in the absolute stillness, tugging him southward. It was not the violent suction of Nergath's core, which sought to devour and unmake. This was a siphon. A slow, patient, gravitational draw. He felt the essence of his light—not the great torrent of the Prime Dawn, but the tiny, fundamental particles of his being—being coaxed, teased outward, flowing in a silent, invisible stream toward a fixed point in the darkness.
He tried to resist, to anchor himself, but there was nothing to hold onto. The void offered no purchase. He was a dandelion seed in a slow-motion hurricane, his substance slowly, inexorably, being scattered.
And with the loss of his light, something else flowed in to take its place. Not the violent cold of negation, but a profound, welcoming stillness. A promise. The dream-voice of the abyss was not a roar here; it was a whisper, smooth as polished stone.
Let go, it sighed into the fabric of his being. The fight is a tremor. The pain is a flicker. I am the silence between the notes of the song. I am the peace at the end of all stories. Why cling to the temporary, painful noise?
It was seductive. After a lifetime of struggle, of carrying the weight of worlds, the offer of absolute rest was a poison so sweet it felt like nectar. To just… stop. To let the current take him. To become part of the quiet, endless dark.
Yes, the whisper agreed, sensing his weakening resolve. Just a little more. Let the light fade. It is so much easier…
A jolt of pure, animal terror shocked through him. Easier. That was the trap. This was not the peace of accomplishment or rest; it was the peace of surrender. The peace of non-existence.
With a monumental effort of will that tore a silent scream from his dream-self, he fought back. He was not a spark. He was Arden Valen. He was the Warden. He focused not on resisting the pull, but on defining himself against it. He remembered the weight of Dawnbringer in his hand. The sound of Elara's laugh. The desperate, grateful eyes of the people in Saltmire as he limped to his fate. The messy, painful, beautiful noise of being alive.
The siphon hesitated. The gentle pull seemed to… recoil, just for an instant, from the defiant, chaotic complexity of his memories. In that split second, he wrenched his consciousness back.
He awoke on the stone floor of the spire, gasping, his body drenched in a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the chamber's chill. Dawn was just beginning to bleed across the sky, painting the room in shades of iron and rose. He was clutching the front of his tunic, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He pushed himself up, stumbling to the south-facing window. He braced his hands on the sill, his knuckles white, and stared out as if he could see the source of the psychic drain.
It was real. More than the silenced foxes, more than the erased moss, the dream confirmed it. The enemy wasn't just in the land; it was in the dreamscape. It was tapping into the collective unconscious, the spiritual aquifer of the world, and slowly draining it of will, of hope, of the very energy that fueled resistance.
The "Gentle Dark" didn't just want to unmake the physical world; it wanted to convince every living soul to unmake itself.
The rest of the day was lost to a frantic, focused search. He ignored the growing knot of hunger in his stomach, the protest of his tired muscles. He sat in the center of the room, Dawnbringer across his knees, and cast his senses south with a precision that was almost violent.
He found the drain easily now that he knew its signature. It was not a single point, like a well. It was a vast, diffuse field, centered on the densely populated regions of the southern coast and the fertile plains inland. It was a mist, a fog of apathy, settling over thousands—tens of thousands—of minds. It was so subtle that to any individual, it would feel like a passing melancholy, a day of unusual fatigue, a fleeting thought that maybe ambition was pointless and peace was found in wanting nothing.
But to Arden, perceiving it in the aggregate, it was a roaring, silent river of stolen vitality, flowing toward… nothing. Or rather, toward a concept. Toward the ideal of Silence.
He tried to trace it to a source, to a leader, to a central ritual site. But the moment he tried to focus, the signal blurred. It was like trying to grab smoke. The cult, if it was a cult, was hydra-headed. It was a network, not a hierarchy. Its power came from the collective, surrendered will of its victims.
He spent hours attempting to reinforce the minds he felt wavering. He sent pulses of warm, golden reassurance, not as an attack, but as a counter-melody—the memory of a satisfying meal, the joy of a child's accomplishment, the fierce love for a family. For some, it worked. He felt a few dim lights brighten momentarily, the psychic siphon rebuffed. But it was like bailing out an ocean with a thimble. For every mind he bolstered, a dozen more succumbed to the gentle, relentless pressure.
As the sun began to set, painting the sky in a spectacular fire of oranges and purples that he barely registered, he was forced to withdraw. The effort had left him spiritually raw, his own light feeling thin, stretched. He felt the Warden's most terrifying paradox: the more he reached out to protect the world, the more he exposed himself to the very ennui he was fighting.
He stood again at the window, the brilliant colors of the sunset feeling like a mockery. The world was putting on a show of vibrant life while its soul was being quietly bled away.
He had faced Nergath on a field of glass and fire, and that had been simpler. This was a war against a ghost, a battle fought in the spaces between thoughts. His sword was useless. His power was a blunt instrument.
He was the guardian of the dawn, and the enemy had chosen to attack the night, convincing everyone that the dark was a friend.
The silence in the spire was no longer empty. It was now filled with the echo of that gentle, relentless whisper from his dream. It was in the stones, in the air, in him.
Why cling to the noise?
Arden Valen closed his eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, he had no answer.