When the carriage rolled back through the village gates, the morning light caught the polished wood and the midnight-colored horse, drawing every eye.
Villagers stopped what they were doing.
A smith froze mid-hammer. Women carrying baskets whispered. Children ran to the roadside. Even the elders lifted their heads from their walking sticks.
And they stared.
To them, Dream and Erias must have looked like nobles. Or emissaries.Or something far above the lives they lived.
No one recognised the boy in the fine coat and new boots.
They saw only finery, elegance, and a stranger beside him whose presence was impossible to ignore.
Dream noticed the villagers' stunned faces but didn't react.
Erias did.
He stared out the window, shoulders tight, eyes lowered.
Dream glanced at him.
"What troubles you?" Dream asked softly.
Erias forced a weak smile that fooled no one. "…Nothing."
Dream waited.
The boy sighed and looked back at the receding rooftops and dusty alleys.
"I know this place was bad to me," Erias said quietly. "They hated me. They feared me. They chased me out. But…"His voice cracked slightly."…it's still the only home I ever had. And I'm leaving it. Maybe forever."
Dream watched him, understanding something the boy could not yet name.
He spoke with soft cosmic gravity a voice shaped from the beginnings of creation.
"Erias," Dream said, "a home is not the soil where you were born, nor the walls that sheltered you. A home is the place where your soul finds rest. A place that answers your presence rather than rejects it."
The boy blinked.
Dream continued:
"You leave this village not because it cast you out, but because you were meant for roads it cannot comprehend."
Erias swallowed hard.
"You think I'm meant for something?" he asked.
Dream's gaze drifted toward the mountains, where the traitor once stood.
"I know you are," he said.
The carriage moved on, leaving the village behind like a fading memory. Erias watched until the last rooftops disappeared behind a hill.
Then he sat back, inhaling slowly, letting the weight of Dream's words settle into him.
For the first time in years, he didn't feel alone.
Days passed.
The countryside of Vvralis rolled by in waves of green slopes and golden plains. Birds wheeled overhead; the winds carried scents of pine and harvested grain. The horse pulled the carriage steadily, unbothered by distance or time.
At night they slept inside the carriage or beneath the stars.
Dream needed no rest, but he pretended. Erias slept deeply each time, feeling safer beside him.
On the fourth day of travel, as the sun dipped low behind a stand of tall oaks, Dream brought the carriage to a stop.
"We rest here," he said.
Erias unharnessed the horse, brushing its coat with gentle hands. The great animal leaned affectionately into the boy's touch. Dream watched, quiet and unmoving.
When Erias finished, he said:
"I'll find firewood."
"Do that," Dream replied.
Only once the boy had walked out of earshot did Dream turn toward the open fields.
He stepped away from the campsite, far into the tall whispering grass, until he stood alone in a hollow of wind and silence.
Then I felt them.
Two deities descending.
Their presence split the air like a line of light. The sky shimmered as they stepped through unseen doors.
The first took the form of a woman with cascading hair of pale lavender clouds, wrapped in robes of flowing water. Aestra, goddess of streams and passage.
The second appeared as a tall man of bronze skin and amber eyes, crowned with rings of faint flame. Torvas, god of justice and dominion.
They landed before Dream, their forms bending the grass around them.
Both gods bowed their heads.
Not deeply.Not like worship.
But like mortals bow to storms.
Torvas spoke first, voice rumbling like distant thunder.
"Mysterious one… what business brings you to Vvralis?"
Aestra's voice followed, softer but edged with caution.
"You do not belong to this world. And yet your presence crosses its rivers, its hills, its dreams."
They knew.
Not who he was.Not his origin.Not his name.
But they knew power when they saw it.
Dream did not reveal himself fully, yet the air around him trembled. His mortal shape flickered faintly at the edges, enough for the gods to feel what lay beneath.
Dream's voice was calm.
"I travel," he said.
Torvas frowned. "Your kind does not simply travel. Your kind shapes. Commands. Influences."
Aestra stepped forward, eyes narrowed.
"And your influence ripples through our waters and stirs new currents in the dreams of mortals. We must ask What do you seek here?"
Dream held her gaze.
"I seek what was stolen from me."
Aestra stiffened.
Torvas's eyes narrowed. "Stolen… by whom?"
Dream shook his head.
"That is not knowledge for gods bound to a single world."
The silence that followed was deep.
Wind brushed the grass. Birds quieted. The sky dimmed slightly as the sun dipped lower.
Aestra gathered her robes. "We will not interfere with whatever you pursue, stranger. But the city of aramoor… is uneasy. Something has shifted there in the last month."
Torvas added:
"And many gods feel a shadow moving among their worshippers. If what you seek walks in that city, it is not hiding well."
Dream's eyes darkened.
He knew.
The traitor had reached the capital.
And had already begun to poison dreams there.
Aestra bowed slightly. "We offer respect to one stronger than ourselves. But we ask… do not break this world."
Dream lifted his chin.
"I will break nothing," he said. "Unless forced."
The gods felt the truth in his voice.
They bowed once more and vanished, dissolving into wind and sparks of light.
Dream remained standing in the hollow.
Alone.
But the air around him now trembled with warning.
By the time he returned to the campsite, Erias had gathered wood and was kneeling by a freshly lit fire. The boy looked up, cheeks warm from the flames.
"You were gone a while," Erias said.
Dream nodded. "I walked."
"Was everything okay?"
Dream sat beside him.
"For now," he said.
Erias didn't press.
But he felt it. Somewhere deep in his bones.
Something was coming. Something woven from dreams and shadows.Something that waited in the capital.
Dream watched the fire flicker in the gathering dark.
The boy tended the horse.
And high above them, two gods watched the road with unease, whispering:
"He walks toward danger."
"He is danger."
We all knew the truth:
The city of aramoor would not welcome them with peace.
It would greet them with the traitor's waiting shadow.