Deeper down the rabbit hole of the past.
That had been Shana’s choice. And now, the world of the book was drawing something new.
She was still astonished at this blank world. Every soft slide of her feet produced that nostalgic sound of light friction against paper. Not just any paper, either, but book paper. She’d always thought there was something magical about the paper used in books.
She had several questions she wanted to ask. Why had she been brought here? Why only her? The boy had said that the door to the room with the book had been locked, and was surprised that she’d gotten in — had the book done something to let her in?
But she kept her mouth shut. The book was writing, and drawing, and she didn’t want to interrupt that process. The time spent waiting was also time to think, to organize her thoughts, and that was valuable.
Soon, an illustration, entirely in black ink, and a message above it in the same black ink, were formed. Shana read the message at the top first:
Long ago, there was a boy. A boy who was always afraid. A boy plagued by Nightmares.
The illustration brought the message vividly to life. There was a boy, the boy, the one that had brought them into his house for his “game.” He was curled up, cowering, small and vulnerable in the center of a frightening morass of pitch-dark monsters and horrifying environments straight out of Nightmares. That was no exaggeration, either — the monsters themselves had the form and the twisted, wicked eye shape and smoky aura of Nightmyrn. But there was a primal, raw fury to them, an inconstant energy about them and their form that was different from the more solid Nightmyrn that Shana had faced. And below the image, further text appeared in elegant script:
He knew these were no ordinary Nightmares. They followed him into the Waking World. They even sometimes attacked his friends and family.
It was not how things should be. He mustn’t let this continue. But what could he do?
The illustration and text remained, unwavering.
Waiting, Shana realized. Waiting for her to respond.
I decide how the story proceeds? Not like I’m writing it, but in terms of what it tells me and how? But why? Why not just tell me the whole story in order?
But she remembered, when she’d asked the book a question of whose past it was taking her down. Something had shivered in the air, a strange sensation, like a chuckle without sound. The book had its own personality, somewhat capricious, perhaps. Somewhat mischievous.
The real question was…
“Why tell me this?” Shana asked.
New text was scrawled beneath what already existed — and beneath Shana’s feet. She had to step back so she could read it.
You picked me up. You opened my pages. You sought out answers.
“The boy didn’t want me to find you.”
There it was again, the strange, mischievous shiver through the air, like the book was laughing. But it added nothing more to the text that was there.
“So the boy was real,” Shana said. “He once existed in the Waking World.”
All was suddenly blank, the text erased faster than an eyeblink. One word was scrawled onto the empty page:
Yes.
A strange shiver ran down Shana’s spine. She felt like she was treading towards dangerous knowledge. But…
“Who was he?” she asked in a soft, anxious voice.
The single word was erased, replaced by:
He is part of one who can no longer Dream. They were once whole.
“One who can no longer Dream… who —” Shana started, but the book wrote something new to interrupt her.
There is a story to be told.
Shana nodded. “Right. I don’t want to just skip to the end. Go ahead.”
The book erased its text and started anew, drawing and writing in unison. Shana stepped back, watching and waiting until all was complete. What resulted when this page was finished was an illustration of a familiar locale.
Grimoire.
It was the Grimoire of the past, as Shana had thought from the style of the boy’s house, a Grimoire before the Crater District, when Grimoire University was just a single building called the Lunar College. Grimoire had changed over the centuries, but it was still recognizable. Much had changed, but much had also remained constant.
The house that was illustrated was the spitting image of the house in this world of Nightmares, the boy’s house, and Shana realized now why she’d never seen it in Grimoire. It was built on the land that would become the Crater District, land that would be leveled when minor shrapnel from a meteor came crashing to earth. Even such tiny fragments caused a tremendous explosion, transforming that section of the city forever.
But here in the image, the Crater District wasn’t a crater yet, its land as hilly and densely packed as the rest of Grimoire. It flattened out towards the north, making way for Lunar Park, Lunar College, and the cliffs overlooking Grimson Bay — that area barely changed over the centuries, save for what people would build on that land.
In this illustration, a boy stood in front of the house. Though he was tiny — a consequence of scale in a drawing that showed so much of the land around the house — Shana could walk across the illustration and kneel down to get a close look at every single little detail. And when she knelt to examine the boy, she could tell that he was the exact same boy. Only…
His eye is different. Only one, but instead of a normal pupil and iris, he has this bright spiral within it. The boy’s eye morphed like that before I opened the book, too, just for a moment. But normally his eye doesn’t look like that. I wonder why?
The boy certainly looked frightened. Even though it was daytime and he was outside with two adults who were likely his parents, he had a haunted look about him, which was even more heartbreaking to see because of how young he was. He must have been about Addie’s age — though, come to think of it, Shana didn’t know how old Addie was. There were circumstances that made her actual age a complicated subject, but Caleb’s best guess going by what he knew of the timeline of her life put her at between nine and eleven years old.
For a child to look so exhausted and worn down by nightly fears…
Shana shook her head, standing straight and walking back to read the inscription below the illustration. It started with a date, nearly seven hundred years ago, and then read:
The child has had enough. Not just of his fear, but of fearing alone. Even his mother, whom he adores and who adores him, speaks to him with words of comfort that act as if the nightmares are not something to be so frightened of.
The enduring wisdom: “Nightmares aren’t real.”
But you know different. And he did, too. But what could he do? He had neither knowledge nor power enough to battle his Nightmares. As long as he was alone, he was trapped.
“Then… he must not have remained alone,” Shana said.
Something like a soundless murmur of agreement passed through the air. The page slowly erased, the ink fading away to a blank page which then hosted a new drawing and inscription being brought to life, one stroke of black ink at a time. Using black ink alone gave the drawings such a stark, powerful sense of contrast. There were no shades of grey here, no colors. The blacks were deep, pitch black, and the empty spaces so bright and white in comparison. Every line was born with sure, confident intention. There were no wasted strokes.
White, and black. No gradients, no blurring of the lines. Empty space was as powerful and meaningful as those filled with ink. Every shadow was more pronounced, every open space and beam of sunlight so powerfully bright.
The latest illustration brought that powerful sense of contrast to the fore. The boy stood in deep shadow, half swallowed up by black darkness. But he met someone — a man, kneeling in front of him so they could meet eye to eye. The man knelt in such bright sunlight, and he smiled so kindly, his eyes bright, and a space at his chest — his heart — was left bright and open, too.
Shana gasped. She understood. This man, who met the fearful child…
That light at his heart… that’s the Dreamer’s Heart.
He was the Dreamer. Before me. Before Leon. Maybe before others, too.
Beneath the illustration was written:
The boy met the Dreamer. And the Dreamer met the boy. The boy was unlike anyone the Dreamer had ever met before. And while the Dreamer could calm his Nightmares for a time, his was a fear he had never seen before. It was as if the boy’s heart was divided, two halves, one of which was born of fear, lived in fear, existed only because of fear.
What he had never seen before, and no Dreamer would see after. What could he do? He puzzled over it for a very long time, but then he came to a conclusion. One that he did not find ideal, but…
What else could he do?
The heart had to be separated. A fear that could not be quelled should be cast away, removed like a parasite from its host.
Did the Dreamer choose rightly? Could there have been another way? Not for him. But perhaps for another?
“He… split his heart in two?” Shana asked, struggling to understand. The Dreamer in the illustration smiled so kindly. And perhaps he was right, perhaps the boy’s heart was truly unlike any other, half of it completely steeped in a fear that could not be purified, but…
It felt wrong to Shana, deeply wrong.
He saw the two halves as a heart at war with itself. A house divided against itself cannot stand — how much more true for a child’s heart?
Something about that felt wrong, too. Shana couldn’t put her finger on it, not yet. But she felt like she was getting very close to a valuable truth.
“But then what happened?” Shana asked. This was all the past. She couldn’t change what had happened. She needed to know all of the facts, the entire story, before she could make a proper judgment.
And hopefully find the right way to end this Nightmare and deal with the boy who had cast her and her friends into it.
The ink faded away, the page once more blank, and then the invisible pen drew and wrote anew. It was intriguing, Shana thought, that the book didn’t just turn to new pages. But at the same time…
It’s like it’s a book meant for me or Shias. It doesn’t need to keep those pages filled in, because they become imprinted in my memory. I won’t forget them.
But does the book know that? Or would it act this way for anyone, hoping that they would remember?
A new illustration, with a new passage below it. Shana looked over the illustration first, which showed the boy, now a teen, standing in the light. There was very little black, a stark difference from the dense, dark illustrations of before. There were no shadows, and it was full of great bright empty spaces, with nowhere for anything or anyone to hide.
The boy was smiling. But it was a strange sort of smile. It was somewhat pensive, hesitant, not as if he wasn’t actually happy, but more as if he wasn’t used to smiling, or didn’t know what it meant to smile. There was a sense that something was missing. He was happy, perhaps, but he was… changed.
Beneath the illustration was written:
No longer fearful, no longer with a heart darkened by Nightmares, the boy stood in the unfamiliar light and found himself.
New purpose. New meaning. And in time, new friends.
“ ‘Found himself,’ huh?” Shana watched as the ink faded, her lips pursed in disagreement. This wasn’t right at all.
The next illustration brought things back to darkness, deeper than ever before. In it sat the boy Shana knew, the boy who had begun this game in Nightmares. Nestled in a roiling, grotesque darkness, the boy sat, arms folded, legs crossed, his forehead scrunched up in deep thought. Both eyes were now dark and normal, almost erasing his former identity. Beneath the illustration was written:
Separation is not elimination. The fear-steeped side of the boy did not vanish, even when separated from his own heart. The Dreamer cast this “Nightmare Child” into the place that even Dreamers cannot normally walk — the hidden realm between Waking and Sleeping.
Here, Darkness grew — not around the boy, but from the boy. You know this, Dreamer. Fear begets Darkness. Now with a life of fear, a life of breeding Darkness in the hidden realm, paralyzing terror gave way to a different response to fear. For fear takes many forms, and causes many different responses. And the boy’s new response to fear was not paralysis, but a desire for control. If this was to be his home, then he would make it his home. And he would not live here alone.
Shana was reminded of when she’d first met the “Nightmare Child” in the Library of Solitude’s Dream. Seated atop the Dream-version of the Dream Forge, he’d taunted Shana and her team, and he’d also delighted in seeing “a pair of Princesses” — Annabelle and Garnet — and had talked of how he was looking forward to making them his. And he’d been especially excited to see Shana, telling her, “My life wouldn’t be complete without you.”
It had sickened Shana. Seeing it as a response to fear and loneliness didn’t change that, but it did somewhat soften the impact. The boy, untethered from a heart that had, at least partially, balanced out such a deep darkness, now sat steeped in fear and longing, darkness and loneliness. Loneliness begged to be cured by companionship. But when that loneliness was coupled with fear… how easily would that desire for companionship turn towards a desire for possession?
The illustration and text faded.
And the page remained blank.
Shana waited, for quite some time, but nothing new was drawn or written. And she felt it, then — an air of expectation, of anticipation.
The book was waiting for her.
She had many questions, and she sifted through them, combining some, discarding others, prioritizing as she went. She finally decided on an opening question: “What can I do for him?”
The book responded: For him?
“I know that… he’s trapped us all here. He’s trying to make us his. I still haven’t found Annabelle, Garnet, or Heart. If he wins the game, then it’s all over for us. But… if all of this is a response to fear, then it’s my job to help him, to fix it, right?”
The book responded: Is that what it means to be the Dreamer?
Shana stared. Well, of course it meant that. Why…
“Why did you unlock the door?”
Words faded, replaced with: Whatever do you mean?
But Shana remembered. The empty house, the way it worked — or was supposed to work — was that certain doors were locked, and others were unlocked. But when Shana and her team had found the study with this book sitting alone on the desk, the boy had asked them how they’d gotten in. When Shana had said he should have locked the door if he didn’t want them inside, the Nightmare Child had insisted that it had been locked.
“You’re the one who let us in,” Shana said. “Aren’t you? Because you wanted something from me.”
Words faded, and a soundless chuckle passed through the air before new words appeared:
You are perceptive. You are not the Dreamer I sought. But you may be the Dreamer that I need.
“You…” Shana was taken aback for a moment, but then understood. “You wanted the Dreamer that separated the boy in the first place. You hoped he could… undo what he’d done?”
But what the book wrote next was far more chilling:
I hoped for vengeance.
“Vengeance?”
Splitting a heart is a terrible thing. He knew that. But he did it anyway. He felt he had no other choice. But one always has a choice.
Shana could agree with that. She’d read too many stories where characters claimed that they must do what they planned to do because “I have no other choice.” But that was absurd. They always had a choice. Shana nodded. “To say you don’t have a choice is a cop-out, an excuse. It’s a way of making you feel like any doubts or concerns are meaningless, of defying your conscience. I hate that. Hard choices are difficult, but they are also choices. Everything we do is a choice.”
She knew that now better than she ever had back when she’d say the same thing to characters in her favorite books. She’d been faced with so many difficult choices, and she’d gone on adventures that she hadn’t wanted to go on, not because she didn’t have a choice, but because she’d made that choice. Yes, a lot was at stake. Yes, she was the only one who could have accomplished those tasks — lighting the Dream Forge, saving Nocta, awakening Leon from his eternal Dream, braving Nightmares once more to awaken her full powers as the Dreamer — but she could have chosen not to do them. She could have run away. She could have done nothing. She could have made the wrong choices, done the wrong thing as the Dreamer, like Leon before her.
It had always been hard. Her road had been so difficult, and adventures had often felt like the furthest thing from her rose-tinted idea of adventure, but she had chosen this road. She wouldn’t dare let anyone tell her she hadn’t had a choice in the matter.
The book responded:
That Dreamer made a difficult choice among difficult choices… but he made the easiest of those choices. He gave the boy the fastest “cure” he could come up with. He recoiled at the sight of such Darkness, such fear, and feared it himself.
You… are different. And while you are not what I wanted…
You are better.
“Better?”
You want to save him.
Shana smiled. “Yes. But… I think I need your help. Don’t I?”
Saving him will come at a cost. He cannot remain divided. But to return him to his real self now, after so long, will have… unknown results.
“His real self… still lives?” Shana asked, stunned. But if that was true, then he would be at least seven hundred years old!
A soundless chuckle shivered through the air, and the book replied:
Such age should not still be so surprising to you, should it? You know of Enchanted, Eternals, and Halfchants.
Halfchants. That was the key, Shana realized. The only Halfchants she knew were from Grimoire. Blaise’s Shadows — Anastasia, Bronn, Sieglinde, Stride, and Doctor — were all Halfchants, and had lived for centuries, watching over Grimoire in the past and then, over time, turning into Grimoire’s greatest enemies, and now serving the city as heroes once more.
The boy had been a Halfchant. And his Waking self still lived. But then who…?
Shana’s heart caught in her throat. There was one possibility. One that she would need to confirm, but could she ask? If it was true… what would that mean? And if she did heal the Nightmare Child and return him to his Waking Self, how would that change him?
“Can you…” Shana started in a small, tremulous voice, “tell me his name?”
The page went blank, and slowly, the invisible pen wrote a name. From the very first letter, Shana knew what it would be, and when the name was finished, she stared in silence at it for a long, long time:
Alexander Salazar Greyson
The Lord of Night. The one whom Shana hadn’t met, but had heard more than enough about to be frightened by him.
Long ago, he’d just been a scared little boy. A boy consumed by fear, by darkness, by Nightmares. His heart had been split, his fear had been removed from him…
And he’d become the Lord of Night? How had that happened? There was too much about his life that Shana didn’t know, too many pieces missing from the puzzle.
“And you don’t know what’ll happen if I succeed and the boy is returned to… Sal?” Shana asked, hesitating at the name.
I do not. It has been too long, and such an event is unprecedented. Not only will what is divided be made whole again after becoming accustomed to division, but what is returned to Alexander’s heart will not be what was taken. You will purify the Nightmare Child. He will not be who he was when he returns to Alexander’s heart.
“I also was wondering… is the boy the cause of the spreading Nightmare that’s reaching out to all corners of Dreamworld? What Nocta sensed, and the Eternal Flame further confirmed — this distant, growing dread?”
He is.
Then purifying his fears, rescuing this boy from Nightmares, would save Dreamworld. And besides that, Shana already knew she wanted to rescue the boy. It had been too long since she’d awakened to her full powers as the Dreamer, too long since the last time she’d purified someone’s Nightmares and rescued them from the darkness of fear. A child in need was something Shana refused to ignore.
So she knew what she was going to do. She’d made her choice a long time ago. But she still wanted to know as much as she could.
“Can you help me save him?” she asked.
I can only tell you what I know. And only as long as you are here.
When you leave, it is entirely up to you.
“What else should I know? What else can I know to help him? I… I’m not entirely sure what to do. I don’t seem to have my Dreamer powers in this Nightmare world he pulled us into.”
Of course you don’t. You are divided, just as he is.
Shana stared for a moment, confused. But then she understood, and her heart ached. “Heart. She was taken, and I haven’t found her yet. Once I find her, I should be able to do my usual Dreamer thing?”
Yes. The boy separated you and Heart because he knew what you could do together.
“Can you tell me where she’s being kept inside the house?”
The new light within your heart will show you the way. You must learn to listen.
You are a very different Dreamer from any Dreamer before. But you already knew that.
Shana was again taken aback, the book knowing something before she did, and leaving her with only a cryptic hint from which to figure it out. But in a moment, she did, and she pressed her hand to her chest, feeling a soft bloom of warmth. “The Eternal Flame. I carry her within me, no matter where I go. So I just need to learn to listen to her. She’ll point the way.” She smiled, feeling more confident already. “Okay. And then… well… what should I know? About the boy, I mean, to heal him, to help him. I didn’t even realize he was frightened. The way he acts… it’s not what I expect from someone full of fear. And even now that I know, I’ve never seen this kind of response to fear, or dealt with it. It’s completely outside my experience.”
So has everything you have endured so far.
Think of yourself as a doctor. Fear is a sickness, a sickness you can cure. But you must not treat the symptoms. Treat the cause, not the symptoms, and you will cure him.
“The cause… loneliness? Or is that just a further symptom?”
It is both. The sickness is fear, and the cause for him is loneliness, but loneliness is also a result from his fear. It is a cycle, one which you alone can break. And you must remember that his heart is unlike any other fearful heart. It will look and feel as if fear is all there is, and when fear is gone, that there will be nothing left. Do not accept this lie. Deep within the dark morass of his fear and Darkness is a faint light, the same faint light that is in every heart. You must find what the other Dreamer could not. If you cannot see it, then you must believe it, and it will be made known to you.
“Believe… even if I can’t see it, if I believe it’s there, I’ll find it?”
Yes.
Shana nodded, smiling. “Okay. I understand. I’ll save him. But I have to ask — what… are you? Did you exist in the Waking World, too? Or are you unique to this one? The boy seemed to know about you. He was afraid of me opening you. But he was also — oh! He was afraid of Altair! What is that — I’m sorry. I’m going all over the place.”
That is your nature, and you have done your best to manage the speed of your thoughts so far. Yes — he is frightened by dogs. As for myself… I am a friend. I am confident you understand.
Once again, Shana had to puzzle over that for a moment. But then, she thought she did, and she beamed a full smile, nodding. She was a lover of books — how could she not understand? And knowing a book was this boy’s friend gave her a new perspective on the villain she and her family were trying to stop. “Yes. Unless you have anything else to say… I think I’m ready to go back. It’s time to save him.”
Past time, I would say. I have waited a long time to see him rescued from himself.
Thank you, Dreamer. Good luck.
The words faded, and all was blank and empty once more. Shana thought she heard, off in the distance, a faint voice. But as she turned to listen…
She was back in the study. Back in the dimly lit room, out of the world of the book, and the voice was gone. For a moment, all was frozen in time, an image of what she’d left. The boy, seated on the desk but recoiling, about to fall from the desk, as Altair lunged at him. Shias and Kathryn, rushing to Shana’s side. Ben, in mid-turn from inspecting the bookshelves. Rae, a book tumbling from her hands, staring in wide-eyed shock.
Shana looked down at the book she held open in her hands. On the page was just a single line:
The world waits for you.
Shana smiled, looked up, and closed the book.
And the world came back to life.