Amy liked dreams. They were, to her, a place of wonder and beauty—most times, at least.
Sometimes they were nightmares. Memories of things she didn't like, places she didn't want to be, things she never wanted to recall.
For the last three days, however, she experienced something different.
Neither dream nor nightmare.
It felt more like a trance. More vivid. More real.
It was the same thing for all three days; she was in a place, with demolished buildings covered from foundation to top in different shades of green.
She always started at a different place from the night before, but every time, she would walk slowly through this place and arrive at the same building.
A tower, one that stood tall amidst the fallen others. There was a red water mill beside it. It was covered in vines with pink lotuses clustered at the top. She would look at it, then turn to the tower and after, she would wake.
She dismissed it at first, just an odd construct of her mind. Then she would try to recall the details, and she would find that she could.
From every turn to every loose brick on the buildings. It wasn't hazy like a regular dream.
The buildings had the same structure as the ones in Solmere. So she knew it was here. But no place she'd seen had buildings that had toppled. So it had to be the abandoned district. The only place in Solmere no one visited. She'd asked Mr Fitz about it, he said he had no clue. That it was already off limits before he was born. That no one he knew had an explanation for why a stone wall separated Solmere from it.
'It was probably a plague of some sort,' he'd said. 'Maybe it's still infected.'
Hopefully not. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to go there and look for the tower.
Wednesday was the only day of the week that Mrs Fitz and Mr Fitz left the house. They went out to eat and, according to Mr Fitz, got good exercise.
'It's the secret to a long life,' he claimed.
And Mrs Fitz went along with it, she liked the food they cooked where they went.
"We're leaving Amy," Mr Fitz said to her.
"We'll be back by the usual time. And we will meet you at home, with the house clean as a needle. Do you understand?" Mrs Fitz instructed.
"Yes," Amy responded as they walked past her.
When they were out the door, Amy stood by the window watching them as they walked down the pathway.
They were old, so they were slow.
She watched them as they turned hand in hand, silhouettes vanishing out of sight from the square-shaped window.
She waited a bit more, just in case they forgot something, and when they didn't, she left.
Find the building in the old district and clean the house, all before the Fitzgeralds came back. It seemed simple enough.
There was no one guarding the wall.
They didn't need someone guarding an abandoned site. Or maybe they didn't want anyone getting the plague.
She shivered at the thought.
The wall was high, much more than she imagined.
She had to climb. One of her hands found a crack that she clung to, and then her other hand.
Then her legs, one at a time.
Stop. Repeat. Again.
Her hands gripped the top of the wall.
She pulled herself up and sat on the wall.
This was the place. All the buildings were covered in vines and other intrusive plants. They sat on everything, holding it as tightly as Mrs Fitz held her husband.
This side of the wall was a stark contrast to the other one. It was covered in greens of all sorts. A thick vine running across it made it easier to climb down.
She started walking around, looking from building to building.
There weren't that many. Good.
As she walked, she found a path that looked familiar.
She'd been here before, in one of her dreams.
She knew the path from here. It was clear to her, almost like a map she didn't know she'd memorised.
She knew where to turn, when she needed to stop—just like in the dreams.
And after a while of walking, exactly like in the dreams, she was in front of a water mill that was covered in vines and wore a crown of pink lotuses.
She looked to the tower beside it.
Its roof and structure were different from all the other buildings. It was intact, in ways the others were not. There were no vines on it. It was clean, neat, like someone still lived there.
Amy said a silent prayer that she didn't meet anyone inside.
She walked towards it and pushed open its wooden doors. A cold air escaped the room, blowing past her face. The air tasted like crushed limestone, centuries of dry dust and a sharp metallic tang. It was even more potent when she walked in.
Unlike the exterior, there were fractures on the walls, marks left by time. Moss oozed from the fissures, looking like wet veins in the light. There were cracks in the roof too. Spaces that allowed the sun to peer into the building.
There were faded paintings on the wall, some looked like inscriptions, others looked like figures bowing to something.
A spiral stair stood somewhere further up. She ran her hands across the marble railings as she walked up.
The white coat of paint on the wall was faded, closer now to a pale, lifeless ash. There were words carved into it, symbols she'd never seen before.
There was a single black door at the top of the staircase. The door was ajar.
She pushed, and it creaked open.
The room was empty except for a single figure.
A statue.
Made from a black material.
It had its arms stretched as it stared down. It was a sentry, watching over the whole tower from a circular gap beneath its feet.
And it was calling out to her.