84 | snow; frosted dreams

With the first step, all colour leached away from the world, the crimson turning into shades of the darkest black and white.

There was a dull layer, a film of dread and emptiness that painted itself over the bone white, the greys of the starless skies, and the very ground under his black boots.

Shadows spun around him, and he couldn't manipulate them to obey his command, to separate and spread.

Lucas couldn't do anything but continue walking. He realized this as hesitation bound his ankles with heavy chains, and any step back was stopped by an invisible hand of something unknown.

He stopped mid-way, hanging his head low as black wisped over his face, the pure whites of his eyes staring at the ground.

If there was no turning back, then he wouldn't panic.

Panic did nothing but encourage chaos in the mind, but it resolved nothing. He'd fallen into the voice's trap the moment he fell for their taunts, their threats.

Logically, he really shouldn't have wandered off alone, but it was a bad habit of his—a common thing he was used to.

With another step, the blacks were coated in fine particles of white, as if gradually being erased by light. Eventually it became white buildings, white grounds, white skies. The hanging moon, with its crimson hue, became white, with only a faint outline preventing it from blending with the sky.

And then the frost crept it, inching from his toes to the tips of his fingers.

Lucas shuddered from the chill, gritting his teeth as he trudged forward. A droplet of ice fell on his cheek, dropping to coat his eyelashes, and he looked up with alarm.

It was snowing.

And that could only mean that he had entered another space, another dimension—another Story.

"Are you planning to freeze me to death?" seethed Lucas bitterly, his voice faint, but he knew they were listening. He felt it, the way an unknown stare squeezed his chest with alarm.

The outline of the white buildings, white moon and white objects were beginning to blur, to fade into nothingness.

Soon, he realized that his feet were trudging through freshly fallen snow, and that the cold seized his ability to move properly. His speed had slowed significantly, and much to his irritation, he could only keep walking.

What Stories were related to snow?

And in the distant, through the lenses of his failing sight, he saw a woman appear in the pure white of the world, the only shape and colour he could see.

As she approached, he made out her features. Objectively beautiful, with blue lips and ice cold skin flaked with frost. She was a tempting allure, a ghost that could be mistaken for an illusion. Her long black hair was laden with ice, crystals decorating the thin strands.

Her being was almost transparent, moving forth as if she were not walking, but elegantly floating through the snow.

A white gown billowed around her body, pale and slender arms hanging at her sides.

She was getting closer, and even in his pathetic and half-frozen state, the alarms in Lucas' head echoed at full volume.

To run—to flee, immediately.

Of course, that was nonsense. If he could've run, he wouldn't trudge in the snow as if approaching impending doom or the first day of a class he didn't want to attend. He scolded his instincts, telling them to warn him of something he could actually prevent.

Although he pretended to have an indifferent and careless attitude, the truth was that his movement was entirely sluggish, and the cold was painful.

And he hated it, but should the woman approach and drive a stake through his heart, he would only be able to stand and watch a blade plunge through.

He was defenceless, useless.

His teeth were chattering, and he ground them down to stop it, but fear penetrated his bones alongside the chill.

The woman smiled, a fleeting and faint sort of smile.

'You have always been one interesting to watch. Even your failures were done with such commitment and will. I always wondered when you'd fade.'

Her voice wasn't like the booming and throbbing echo of Teller's he'd heard in the past. It was a scratching whisper, spoken in the very depths of him, tickling his ears and making him sick.

He glared at the woman viciously, and she laughed.

They both were moving towards each other, but the distance wasn't decreasing. And Lucas saw the amusement written in her frost-covered gaze, how he could continue walking for another hour and the distance between wouldn't close.

Therefore, spitting crudely into the snow, a cough of icicles, he spun sideways and started walking.

If he couldn't go back, he would go in another direction.

He was dressed in a lack of clothing after his other clothes had half-ripped or burned, only his pants remaining mostly intact.

'Come now, oh lovely dreamer, give in to the cold.'

"Are you that desperate to ogle my bare chest when I'm too frozen to resist?" spat out Lucas through his chattering teeth. "Consent is key."

Her smile flattened for a second, but the mere second was enough to satisfy Lucas.

'I have no interest in mortals. You have a foolish way of revolving reality around your selfish needs. Of living such insignificant lives—tell me, why do you even fight?'

"Then you have no interest in yourself. When you were mortal."

'That was a faraway time.'

"I'm sure you're the same—" A gasp as the cold tightened around his chest. "—coward as you were."

'What tenacious spirit you have, for somebody who will die alone, buried in this never ending paradise.'

He coughed, venom in his voice. "Paradise? Like hell."

Lucas tripped in the snow, piled too high for his frozen body to continue trudging through. White flakes of snow coated his night black hair, stiffly obscuring his gaze. Although seeing didn't matter when all that existed was the frigid woman made of ice and snow.

He numbly heard delicate footsteps, the soft smother of snow behind him. She had no shadow, where she stood peering at his miserable state.

Lucas sighed irritably, throat parched, frostbite coating his body like a second skin. He forced himself to roll over, gazing at her with stubborness set in his jaw, to his straight eyebrows.

Even half frozen, he looked less like a pathetic corpse and instead a sculpture, carved and crafted in the winter's light. And what drew to him wasn't a breathtaking beauty, but the determination still vicious in his gaze, burning with an eternal fire that no cold could freeze.

'Have you guess my Story, dear dreamless dreamer?'

Lucas said nothing, keeping his lips sealed. He was fairly certain that they were sealed together by ice, and parting them would only peel his skin and make him bleed.

Would that add some colour to this bleak reality?

'Don't be ridiculous. I'll offer you a gift then, my dearest friend. I can't have such an interesting companion die on me so easily.'

Her raven hair, flaked with shimmering crystals of frost, swayed as she waved a hand in the air. Lucas felt a burst of cold, and then a soft fabric blanketing around his chest and arms, covering what had once been a torn and ragged shirt.

A subtle warmth coated his face, barely enough to sustain him. He pried his lips apart, feeling the stickiness as he pulled them, the faint metallic taste of blood. He stared the woman dead in the eye and said,

"Fuck you."

'...that certainly isn't the answer I was looking for.'

Lucas was filled to the brim with complaints, and if he could talk without being in pain, he would swear his head off to relieve stress. If Elias was in front of him, he would undoubtedly pick a violent fight.

First, he almost burned to death. And now he was about to freeze to death. If he was going to die, or teether on the edge of hell, then couldn't it be a violent, bloody, and chaotic battle instead? Instead of this woman—her identity, he already guessed.

'Tell me, what Story is this?'

She floated closer, falling to her knees as she tilted her head, crouching down with an innocent sway of her body. Her eyelashes fluttered, heavy with frost.

"Even if I know, your real identity isn't this. This isn't really your story."

'Would you like to hear it? My story. No, I actually don't wish to recall it. Why don't I begin with another story? Hm? You like stories, don't you, dreamer?'

"Stop calling me that."

'It's the name, the last Title, granted to you by a special somebody.'

"If I don't remember, then I don't care."

'How cruel. Did you think the same when you didn't remember your brother?'

Lucas' body jerked violently and she sprung back with a light laugh, curved eyes bright with interest. Her dress flowed around her, and Lucas collapsed back into the blankets of snow.

He glared at her, bones creaking. "Speak badly of my brother, and I don't care if I have to abandon a limb to strangle your neck."

'Charming. As you've always been. Even more so at death's door.' She smiled, approaching him close again, lowering her beautiful face to whisper into his ear, a curse of frost and ice. 'Now, since we have all the time to spare, why don't I tell you a story?'

She spun around, crouching some distance nearby and begun scraping away the snow, digging with her bare hands. If they were frozen, she didn't act like it, as if already assimilated with the snow.

When she walked back, she clutched a frozen head in her embrace.

She caressed the cheek gently, brushing her delicate touch over the shuttered eyes, down to the severed stump where the corpse's head had been crudely snapped, protruding with bone and strings of flesh. There was affection in her fingers, and in her gaze.

It was morbid; it was sorrowful.

'This was the most important person to me. Do you know how common it is to make a wish to save another? To wish to bring somebody back from the dead? Do you know how many made those wishes, and were denied or blessed in some twisted, horrid way?'

Lucas closed his eyes. It was true—people often had no reason to live for themselves. There were few with such desperation to survive for their own sakes. And the power of the ones who did survive often came because they wanted to protect or save somebody.

If Kane died... then the moment he claimed the Forsaken Throne, there would only be one honest wish he would be able to make. And the moment the idea of it flickered in his head, the wish would be set.

The woman smiled, pleased. 'This is my lover. He's still, in some ways, alive. I talk to him sometime, and he replies if the world believes I deserve an answer.'

So he was in the hands of a mentally insane woman, concluded Lucas bitterly.

'You think I'm lying, but I'm being daringly honest with you, dreamer. But my story wouldn't interest you, not in the way another would. So let me tell you the story of a man destined to ruin his world.'

"I'm not listening."

'Oh, but you will. And then, you will wait in this empty land, this Story with no means of success—or none that I will share, and wonder endlessly if you will be saved, or be trapped for all eternity. I do wonder, are you a precious person? Will there be somebody willing to brave these horrors to save you?'

"I don't lack self-confidence."

'Don't you? Then why did you follow me here alone—because you didn't want to risk anybody's help, correct? Because you don't want to risk their life, and in some manner, place their lives above yours.'

"Don't speak nonsense, Teller. I love myself the most." Lucas said, the common truth that he always said, always believed.

The woman gazed down at him, softly, almost gently. She reached out and stroked Lucas' cheek, and he resisted the urge to bite her fingers right off, to snap her delicate bones and leave her a mangled corpse. He liked fighting, but he didn't love killing.

But to this woman, who dared to threaten his brother, who continued to play games, he held no sympathy or hesitation. She was one who'd long abandoned humanity—hers and the world.

'Close your eyes. You, full of dreams that will never be met, whose nights are plagued with darkness, I'll bless you with a special dream.'

He wanted to refuse, to open his eyes as wide as he could, but his body was numb and the command was absolute. His half-open eyes shuttered close again, and he melted into the cold, his body shattering into a million shards, fragments of thought and ice.

He couldn't feel anything. His existence was floating.

He existed on another plane of reality, in which he was there and also not there, seeing but not really seeing. The world played around him like a twisting film.

And then, he saw a man, a handsome and well-dressed man with rich blue eyes, gazing up at the top of a clock tower where an adorable bunny sat, antlers protruding from the mounds of fur and folded wings. His face twisted as the large hand of the frozen clock slowly begun to move.

And a shrill voice echoed all around.