There was the sound of wind whistling in his ears.

  He was falling.

  Coming to his senses but still disoriented, he sighed.

  “Here we go again.”

  Then, as expected, came the water. Cold, but not painful. Not shocking. Just there. He hit it like a dropped stone and began to sink, not resisting, not surprised.

  Virgil didn’t thrash. Didn’t kick. He let the weight of himself pull him down, arms slack, legs drifting behind like broken branches. He waited. That was what he was supposed to do. He was sure of it.

  He had never been here before, not really. And yet… it was familiar. He’d never even dreamt before, not once in his life. But something about this place—the feel of it, the certainty of its direction—made sense in a way that troubled him. It felt older than memory, older than imagining.

  Water.

  Nothing but water.

  Endless water surrounding him. It moved in a single, slow current, gently downhill, just enough that if he were floating long enough, he would surely reach somewhere. But there was no up or down anymore, no direction except the one he felt rather than saw.

  He was floating in a river that had no banks. He didn’t know how he knew that. He just did.

  Virgil thought, vaguely, that if he opened his mouth he could drink from it. The thought hovered like a suggestion from someone else’s mind, someone nearby. He wasn’t thirsty. But if he were, the river would let him drink. It would give him what he needed. It always did.

  He sank for a minute.

  An hour.

  A day.

  Time stretched thin. Broke. Folded over itself. He had time to wonder why he wasn’t panicking, why his lungs didn’t burn for air, why his thoughts were so calm, so distant, like ripples in deep water.

  He had time to realize the numbness in his chest wasn’t just emotional.

  When the darkness finally began to thin, it wasn’t dramatic. It faded out gently, like fog dissolving under morning sun. Still, when Virgil opened his eyes—had they even been closed?—he could see. Not much, but enough.

  There was nothing.

  Nothing in any direction.

  Clear water above. Clear water below. Clear water stretching out endlessly. If there was a bottom, it was too far to matter.

  And then, just as subtly, his head broke the surface. Not with a gasp, not with a struggle, but naturally. As if he’d simply risen because it was time to.

  He blinked into a thick fog, the kind that swallowed everything beyond arm’s reach. Above him, a twilight sky bled pale blue into deeper gray, without a sun or moon or anything he could name. Just diffused light, soft and uncaring.

  Around him, water. Behind him, more water. And in front of him—

  Nothing again. Fog. Water. The distant sound of moving current, smooth and steady.

  It was a dream. That much, at least, was certain. His first dream.

  He’d never had one before. Never imagined that when he did, it would feel like this.

  No monsters. No voices. No surreal landscapes. Just... this.

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  Virgil thought he should feel disappointed. He’d heard stories. Friends and strangers talking about dreams where they flew or ran from shadowy creatures or met their dead parents and argued about past sins. This wasn’t like that. This was water and fog and silence.

  Still, a part of him whispered that this was worse.

  A dream like this had to mean something. Didn’t it?

  He waited for fear. For wonder. For curiosity. But what came instead was… emptiness.

  He felt numb.

  Not sleepy or slow or dulled. Just—disconnected. Like a page ripped from a book. Present, but not part of the story anymore.

  A wind stirred the fog. Or maybe it was the river breathing.

  And then it happened.

  Not a voice. Not even a thought, not exactly.

  But the knowledge slipped into his mind like a memory returning home.

  Malakor had failed.

  Virgil’s eyes narrowed slightly. The name stirred something. Recognition. Not like recalling a face, but like touching a scar and remembering the pain that came with it.

  He didn’t know who Malakor was. But he knew he had failed. He felt it like a stone in his chest.

  Zelos had fallen, too.

  He didn’t know Zelos either. But the image came all the same: a city in the shape of a star, burning from the inside, its towers cracking and toppling like melting candles. The air thick with ash and dust. Silence, not screams.

  And death. So much death.

  He’d seen it. Lived through it. Felt the heat on his face and the blood on his hands.

  Except… he hadn’t.

  None of it was his.

  The grief. The weariness. The guilt. They weren’t his emotions. He was sure of that.

  But they were there.

  Virgil closed his eyes, trying to breathe, but the river didn’t care. It flowed on, around and beneath and through him, unhurried.

  It wasn’t the sadness that scared him. Or the loss.

  It was the fatigue.

  The deep, soul-worn exhaustion that crept into his bones like cold water. A sense of having lived too long, seen too much, endured too many cycles of failure.

  The feeling of being ancient.

  And tired.

  And done.

  But that wasn’t him. It couldn’t be.

  He was eighteen.

  He lived in a third-floor apartment above a grocer who hated loud footsteps. He had a cracked phone screen and a single houseplant he forgot to water. He got up late and worked evenings and drank terrible coffee.

  He hadn’t fought in any wars.

  Hadn’t led any doomed revolutions.

  Hadn’t watched empires crumble under the weight of time.

  But the memories persisted. Not full scenes, just flashes. Echoes.

  A hand covered in blood. A whispered oath in a dead language. A silver sun falling from the sky.

  Virgil shivered, not from cold.

  The current pulled gently at his legs. Somewhere far off, a bell rang once, deep and hollow. He turned his head, trying to find the source, but the fog thickened, swallowing the sound before it could repeat.

  He was being watched. He was sure of it.

  Not by a person. Not exactly.

  But something old. Something that had been waiting a very long time. Something patient.

  Something tired.

  It wasn’t a presence so much as a pressure. Like a forgotten book suddenly opening its eyes.

  And still, nothing happened.

  Virgil floated.

  Waited.

  Wondered.

  When he spoke, his voice sounded distant, like it came from someone else’s mouth.

  “Whose memories are these?”

  No answer.

  The river flowed on.

  He frowned, rubbing at his forehead. There was a weight behind his eyes. Not pain, not yet. Just… weight. Like the beginning of a thought that didn’t want to be born.

  A name stirred at the edge of his mind. Not Malakor. Not Zelos.

  Older.

  He tried to catch it, but it slipped away, just out of reach.

  Another bell rang. This one closer.

  A flicker of movement in the fog.

  Virgil turned sharply, instinct overriding confusion. He scanned the mist, but saw nothing.

  Then—

  A shape.

  Far off. Just for a second.

  A figure.

  Standing on the water.

  Watching him.

  He blinked.

  Gone.

  He was sure he’d imagined it. But also… he hadn’t.

  The fatigue behind his eyes sharpened. For a moment, it felt like something else looked through them.

  Something very old. And very tired.

  Virgil closed his eyes again.

  The river continued.

  He thought about how absurd all of this was. How calm he still felt, despite the unease gnawing at the edges. Maybe that’s how dreams worked. Maybe the rules didn’t apply here.

  Or maybe the numbness wasn’t his either.

  Maybe it belonged to whoever had sent him here.

  He remembered a whisper now. Faint, lost.

  A voice in the dark, once, saying—

  “I just need one more.”

  He didn’t know what it meant. Not yet.

  But he knew he was the one. The “more.” The next.

  He felt that certainty settle into him, soft and sure and final.

  He didn’t like it.

  The fog around him shifted, thinned just a little.

  He turned, slowly, and saw something strange in the distance.

  A light.

  Faint. Flickering. Golden.

  Like a lantern swinging gently in the mist.

  It didn’t move closer. It didn’t grow.

  But it was there.

  And he was meant to go to it.

  He wasn’t told. No voice guided him. No sign pointed the way.

  But he knew.

  He began to swim, slow and steady.

  The numbness clung to him but he ignored it. The foreign memories tugged at him but he left them behind. For now.

  The light pulsed once, welcoming him.

  Or warning him.

  He didn't know which.

  He kept swimming.

  The river let him.

  It always did.