Some nights, the lake didn’t reflect the stars.
It absorbed them.
The stillwater behind House Halcyon stretched like a dark mirror, its glassy surface untouched even by the wind. And tonight, as Quentin Flax floated just beneath that surface—breathing through an Aether-bound veil woven from his own focus—he saw no stars above him.
Only shadows.
“You’re not supposed to be here, you know.”
The voice drifted through his mind like a breeze through reeds—not truly spoken, not truly his own. A memory? A warning?
He blinked, and the lake changed.
Now he was walking—not swimming—on an endless hallway made of water and glass. Every step rippled backward but left no trace forward.
The dream had begun again.
Quentin hadn’t told anyone he’d started walking through dreams.
Not Arielle. Not the other Halcyon mentors. Not even the one person he might’ve trusted with the truth—Lyra from Umbral, who once said she heard the same humming in the walls.
This wasn’t trained Dreamwalking.
It was instinct.
It was wrong.
And it was calling him.
In the center of the dream-hallway stood a door with no handle.
Its surface was pitch-black, etched with a spiral broken at one edge.
The first time he’d seen it, he’d walked away.
The second time, he’d touched it—and woken up with a nosebleed and blood on his pillow.
Tonight, though… something behind it whispered his name.
Quentin.
He reached out, not with his hand—but with his aetheric sense, the part of him that existed between thoughts and breath. The space Halcyon students were taught to guard. He touched the door—
—and it opened.
The dream collapsed.
He woke gasping on the edge of the lake.
Soaked. Shivering.
And not alone.
At the treeline, half-hidden in mist, a figure watched him. Cloaked. Still.
The moment Quentin sat up, it turned and vanished into the trees.
But it left something behind. Not a footprint. Not a sound.
Just a feeling.
Like a void breathing.
And a whisper in his ear that didn’t come from this world:
“The Order will fall. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
