The terror of horrid nightmares radiated from Kaelen's subconscious like pus from a festering wound. Cascades of screams sprawled over the barren landscape of his mind, crashing into the depths of his soul like raging waterfalls. Some were his own, some were coming from far away, from behind a dark veil that clouded the horizon, black and glossy. Shattering thunder echoed through his throbbing head, weaving a cobweb of noise that caught his sluggish thoughts all too easily — and as they dissolved into inanimate haze, his mind kept spinning, round and round like a marble on a slope.

He woke with a start, screaming into a dark room like he'd been skewered alive. Warm sweat ran down his cheeks and forehead, dripping onto his shivering hands in thick droplets. His lungs were burning, spreading a stinging pain through his entire body as they struggled for air. He forced himself to stop screaming and inhaled sharply — but the horrible noise remained, further aggravating the raging headache that made his head feel like it was about to explode.

Only then did he realize that it wasn't just his own screams, nor the ones haunting him in his dreams — there were actual screams coming from all around him, heralding terrible pain and agony. People were shouting words he couldn't understand, but they still pierced his mind like verbal javelins while he struggled to regain consciousness.

The room he was in looked familiar, and yet completely foreign at the same time. Clothes that could've been his lay scattered across the floor, next to a wooden staff whose touch he could recall in the far reaches of his memory. There was a window on one side, and a shut door right across from it — the cacophony of screams was effortlessly permeating both.

The darkness outside was thick and unmoving, with no stars to guide lost travelers — or lost dreamers.

Kaelen blinked and rubbed his aching temples. After taking a few deep breaths, his sense of self finally returned to him, and so did the awareness of where he was and what was happening around him.

The Fateless army must've attacked the Great Library while he'd been fast asleep, wandering through his barren dreamland in search of … something. It had been important, but he couldn't remember that, either. He tried to focus his mind, hone it like a dull blade, but the screams made any attempt at that futile. Whatever the battle outside looked like, it was close and brutal.

He scowled.

How could he have slept through all this commotion? And worse yet: how could he lie here under a warm blanket while his fellow students were fighting to protect their home — and dying, judging by the sound of it. Looking onto his own self like an outside spectator, he was disgusted — disgusted by the confused mess he'd turned into, sitting on his bed amidst sweaty sheets, barely remembering his own name. But there was another name … Elara — was she alright? Had he heard her voice earlier? When the thoughts in his mind refused to make sense, he clenched his fists and slammed them against his aching forehead, trying to knock them back into place.

It didn't work — and if anything, it made it worse.

Kaelen let out a suppressed scream of frustration and scrambled out of bed. He quickly put on the orange robes that lay on the floor, then picked up his staff and let his palm familiarize itself with the intricate veins of its wooden handle. From across the room, his pale likeness stared at him from within the mirror. He didn't even want to look, and so he quickly laid a hand on the cold door knob and turned it around. There was a subtle click, and the door swung open, letting in a barrage of shouts and screams, paired with the vicious sound of clashing metal.

A soft yet large object dropped onto his feet, and Kaelen gagged when it turned out to be the upper body of a Fateweaver, his head wrapped in orange cloth soaked in blood. Instinctively, he took a step backwards, and the limp torso dropped onto the ground with an unpleasant thud, where it lay motionless like a bag of grain. A crimson trickle weaved through the seams of the stone tiles beneath it, painting a garish picture with the brush of death.

A flash of orange passed behind the open door, then another one, as his fellow students charged at an invisible foe further down the hallway. He could hear their screams as they drew their weapons, screams as they landed the first blow, screams when they were cut down like cattle.

Kaelen reached for his head. It was all too much, too loud, too violent. But there was no escaping it.

He exhaled deeply and tapped his staff against his temple.

Get a grip, he told himself, and huffed a few times as if to emphasize his point. He closed his eyes, grabbing his weapon with both hands and letting it become an extension of his own body.

Then, after a few long moments, he joined the battle.

#

The hallway outside Kaelen's room was a different kind of nightmare, more explicit than his dreams. A metallic odor filled the air, mixed with the foul stench of bodily fluids, released as their creators breathed their final breaths. There had been casualties on both sides, and they lined the hallway like trophies along the walls. Most of the other doors were wide open, their inhabitants long gone or massacred inside. Kaelen knew all of them, and when their lifeless faces stared back at him, he could feel his last meal creep its way up his esophagus.

More and more Fateless soldiers were streaming up the staircase at the end of the hallway, only held back by a handful of orange-robed figures that seemed to have pushed them back at least temporarily. Whirling their poles and staves around, they made quick work of the less experienced Fateless, but every now and then a stray blade would slice through a calf or thigh, or puncture an abdomen through an otherwise flawless guard. More Fateweavers were running down the hallway to aid their struggling brothers and sisters, trying to hold back the enemy behind a rampart of dead bodies.

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Kaelen mustered his courage and tightened the grip around his staff. Fate had decided this hallway to be his battleground, and most likely his tomb. If that was how he'd find his end, he'd do his very best to take as many Fateless with him as he could. He would stand his ground and put everything he'd learned from Master Nerina to good use.

As he watched the line of defending Fateweavers, his mind yearned to know where Elara was and how she was faring. But he would not get the answers he so desperately wanted in the middle of all this chaos — and turning his back on the defending Fateweavers was not an option. And so he readied his weapon and was about to charge, when his resolve was interrupted by thundering footsteps.

"Out of the way," an unpleasant voice growled behind him, moments before an elbow rudely shoved him aside.

As his back clashed against the wall, he saw a green-robed figure push past him.

Kaelen had never liked Master Sylvaris — not in class, not outside of class, and not now. Unlike the other Masters, whom he respected greatly, Sylvaris was an oddity in every imaginable way, starting with the emerald robes he wore. On top of that, Kaelen didn't even know if he actually was a master at Fateweaving when all he did was to lecture them about anatomy and how to damage it. But not like Master Inara had, with prowess in battle, but with poisons and other means of subterfuge.

He scowled when he thought back to all the time he'd spent in the stuffy undercroft of the Great Library, listening to Sylvaris's sly voice. Zerath once told them that it was immensely important to attend the odd Master's classes, even if the knowledge it conveyed seemed questionable at best. You'll need it when you least expect it, Zerath had said. Or, if nothing else, they'd know how to avoid needing it.

Kaelen couldn't help but frown at Sylvaris's slender figure as it rushed down the hallway towards the students defending the staircase. The train of his robe spread like wings to both sides, gently brushing over fallen soldiers and students. His steps were accompanied by the clinking of colorful flasks along his belt that Kaelen caught a glimpse of when Sylvaris passed him.

"Move," the tall Master shouted at the defending Fateweavers, gesturing with his hand as if he could flick them aside by sheer force of will.

The students exchanged weary glances, then did as he told them, even when another two Fateless soldiers were in the process of scaling the last few steps up to them.

Only now did Kaelen see that Master Sylvaris was holding a purple flask between his bony white fingers, like a throwing dagger ready to seek its mark. When he was only a few feet away from the top of the staircase, he hurled the flask past the students who were pressed against the walls to either side. The flask whirled through the air and shattered on the third or fourth step of the staircase with a crystal clear sound, so pure and high it cut through the noise of the surrounding battle with ease. Two Fateless soldiers stopped right on top of where the flask had landed, exchanging confused glances before smirking fiendishly at what they thought was a foolish effort at intimidation. Their smiles, however, melted like snow in the sun when the air started flickering below their waist, and soon after, they were engulfed in a shimmering green cloud.

Kaelen could see their hands shoot up to their contracting throats, as their faces slowly disappeared behind a curtain of milky vapor. Their death rattles prominently filled the tense silence that had followed the breaking flask, and soon turned into gurgling as thick blood filled their lungs. When they collapsed to the floor one after the other, an extended hand slammed onto the topmost staircase step, like the limb was trying to escape the poisonous cloud on its own. Kaelen swallowed hard when he saw its disfigured skin, scaly and yellow with dark patches, like its owner had turned into a different species altogether. But when the blistering fingers suddenly stiffened, he knew the man they belonged to would have more severe problems than lasting skin conditions — death, first and foremost.

One after the other, the students turned their gaze to Sylvaris. He was still standing right where he'd thrown the flask from, and did not seem to mind the horrified eyes that were now staring at him.

"No one is coming through here in the foreseeable future," he said dryly.

Kaelen gulped, making a mental note of not using this particular staircase anytime soon.

One of the students stepped forward, her eyes glaring at Sylvaris with refined disgust.

"That's a shameful way of fighting," she snarled.

No one would dare to talk to a Master like that, Kaelen thought. But then again, Master Sylvaris was different from the others, and so was his standing in the eyes of the students.

A moment of awkward silence passed while Sylvaris stared at the young woman. Then, he took a long step forward, suddenly towering above her. With his long blonde hair and frosty blue eyes, pale skin, and prominent cheekbones, he looked like a figure of nightmares. The female student flinched and tried to take a step backward, but the cold wall behind her kept her in place.

"Shame?" Sylvaris breathed down on her with a voice like a silk noose.

The surrounding Fateweavers slowly inched away from their fellow student.

"You think this battle is about shame and honor?" he sneered.

Contempt was dripping from his every word, like a thick and bubbly tincture. "Let me guess," he continued, "you are one of Nerina's finest? Bound to impress in battle, to defeat your opponent honorably?"

He snorted, then let his voice take on a honeyed but all the more dangerous tone. "Well, let me tell you a little secret: Master Nerina employed the very same shameful practices, and she still died. So why don't you go and find a more honorable purpose for yourself, like throwing your noble body off the battlements and onto the approaching attackers — surely the weight of your ignorance can take out a few of them."

He cackled sharply, then cocked back his head and examined his work on the staircase. The shimmering green cloud still hovered over the steps and continued around the bend, creating an impassible barrier of death.

No one said anything, and the young woman looked like her spine had been snapped. When Sylvaris nodded approvingly and turned around, his face was a grimace of satisfaction.

"I suggest you stop wasting precious air and instead focus your efforts elsewhere. This battle is far from over."

He briefly glanced at Kaelen and tossed his emerald hood over his straw-like hair. Then, he stalked back the way he came with a long, purposeful stride, leaving the other Fateweavers and their open mouths behind.

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