“It’s so good to be back,” Shana said, flying on her back through a sea of magenta clouds under a golden sky. Sitting on her stomach, Altair wagged his tail in happy assent.
“What are we doing this time?” Rae asked. She sat atop Brutus’ shoulders as he flew alongside Shana and Altair. The wind tossed her hair, and she smiled, and Shana smiled to see it.
I didn’t even know she could smile like that. All the old fears, anxieties, and insecurities have just melted away. She’s come so far.
“I had a realization,” Shana said. “The place where I first met Heart, where I saw a scene from the past through a window… that could be a really useful place. If we want to know the past, maybe we should check things out there.”
The past.
That was Shana’s mission — at least, the best mission she could come up with for herself while she waited for things to be ready. She couldn’t leave Alexandra’s mansion without jeopardizing everything her team was working towards, so continuing her fight to purify Nightmares was on hold, right when she’d just been getting started. And she couldn’t do anything about the Key of the World until Delilah was ready.
But after talking with Shias about Sal — Alexander Salazar Greyson, the Lord of Night — and wanting to know who he is and was as a person, to understand him, and needing to know his past, she’d realized she had something she could try on her own.
“Can the windows show you whatever you want to see?” Kathryn asked. She flew ahead, with Heart and Annabelle. Shias and Ben trailed behind the group. All of them were flying quite freely, not feeling the need to stay too close. Their voices carried well, so they could converse comfortably even widely spaced out as they were.
“Not whatever you want,” Heart said in her lovely, musical voice. “Controlling what past events the windows show you is not easy. And you cannot see anything and everything. There must be at least some personal connection to the event or the subjects therein.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Shana said, scooping up Altair and rolling over to fly normally. Altair could fly, too, but he cozied up to Shana’s chest as she held him, so she didn’t let him go. “I saw Bronn, but that’s because it was right after Caleb and Delilah vanished from Grimoire outside the library. And his phone call was to Blaise, about my siblings. But if I can see things or people connected to me, then…”
“You’re thinking because he’s a Greyson, you might be able to see Sal’s past,” Shias said.
Shana nodded. “I know it’s a long shot. I know he’s not an ancestor — at best he’d be the son of some great-great-great-great-great-uncle. We reviewed the family tree, and there’s no Alexander Salazar on there.”
“Well, his mother was an Enchanted from Sunset Square,” Shias said. “Perhaps they wanted to keep that a secret.”
“And some of our distant ancestors had a lot of siblings,” Shana said with a sigh. “We don’t even know which generation he’s from. But!” She tossed Altair up, and he did a little flip, wagged his tail, and then flew alongside her. “But he’s a Greyson. So there’s a chance.”
“Why are there even windows to view the past here?” Rae asked. “Is the past connected to dreams?”
“That is exactly why,” Heart said, smiling back at her. “Dreams are made up of memory, imagination, the conscious, the subconscious, reality, fiction, all intertwined. And not just events that we have personally experienced.”
Rae nodded. “If that were the case, Shana wouldn’t have been able to see the scene with her siblings and then Bronn.”
“Hey, there’s the window platform!” Kathryn said, pointing. They’d all become familiar with several of the locations throughout Dreamworld during their regular visits since coming to Alexandra’s mansion.
All of them flew up and alighted on the platform. It was a wide stone circle, with windows all around. At the moment, all of the windows simply looked out to the wider Dreamworld.
“I’ve never tried using this again since that first time,” Shana said, gazing at the windows. “And I didn’t make that first vision happen, it just came on its own. So… what do I do?”
“Make a wish,” Heart said. “Wish for what you desire to see, and hope that your wish will come true.”
“Is there any way we can help?” Rae asked.
“Wish with her,” Heart said with a smile. “I don’t know how much it will help, but it can’t hurt."
“Does it matter which window we wish through?” Shana asked, turning in a circle, looking at each window. “They all look the same.”
“If it works, you’ll know which window,” Heart said. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. Looking into the past is not something that is in our control. That is why it requires a wish.”
“Wish we could have some kind of guarantee, but…” Shana trailed off, closing her eyes.
A wish. Just hoping for something, anything, about Sal. Who is he? Where did he come from? Why did he become the Lord of Night?
Please… give me something.
For a long time, there was nothing. She kept her eyes closed, repeating her wish over and over.
She could feel something in the air around her. Warmth, the kind of warmth that soaked into her heart and brought a smile to her face. It felt like there were multiple different sources of the warmth, like arms wrapping around her, embracing her. She could feel Rae, Kathryn, Annabelle, Shias, and Ben. They were with her, wishing with her, hoping for the same thing with her.
Then, she felt a shift in the air. Like a whisper, or a faint breeze, or a song in the distance.
She opened her eyes.
“Whoa!” Kathryn cried. “That worked better than we hoped!”
Three — three — windows all had images within them. For the moment, they were frozen in time, not moving, not making a sound.
“Where do I start?” Shana asked, staring.
“Left to right,” Heart said, nodding to the leftmost window of the three. “They appeared all at once, and so they are connected, a sequence.”
Shana and the others approached the leftmost window, and the image within it began to move, a memory playing out.
There was a man. Alexander Salazar Greyson. He was dressed all in black, with a long coat that billowed around his feet, and wore a dark expression, his eyes smoldering with a vicious fire.
Shana could feel emotions and impressions rolling off of the vision. This was Sal before he became the Lord of Night. He was a man on a mission, a man who had left Grimoire behind after learning of the horrific attack that had befallen Sunset Square.
His mother was dead.
And he knew the man who had killed her — Leon. The man who dubbed himself and his followers the “Eternals,” who proclaimed himself to be a god, who Sal had fought with Blaise and Anastasia and so many others for the fate of Grimoire.
They had won that fight — barely. The Crystal King had taken Leon away, along with all of the Eternals.
That was supposed to have been the end of it. Leon and his followers should have been imprisoned, or better yet, executed.
But they weren’t.
Sal didn’t know all of the details. All he knew was that Leon and his followers had managed one last battle, taking their fury to the Enchanted Dominion, to Sunset Square, creating a massacre, killing Sal’s mother.
What more did he need to know?
Even after that, somehow, they were all still alive. All but Leon had been imprisoned. And while Leon was said to have been executed…
Rumors abounded. Rumors of a powerful being calling himself the Radiant King. This self-proclaimed King was going around finding and freeing the Eternals who had been imprisoned, the followers of Leon.
It was easy for Sal to work out. Leon had cheated death somehow. He was the Dreamer, after all. That was where his impossible powers had come from. Surely he could escape death, even at the hands of the Crystal King.
His mother’s murderer was still alive.
Sal’s heart was a clutch of coals, smoldering with indignation. Fury, kept in check, kept hot but contained.
Sal knew well how to direct his wrath, how to hold back his rage until the proper target was in his sights.
And so he was hunting. Traveling the Enchanted Dominion, alone — he had learned of the attack on Sunset Square and, after confirming the death of his mother, had begun his quest, not sending any word to Blaise, to Bronn, to Stride, to any of his dearest friends.
This was a quest he must undertake alone. This hunt was his, and it was not to be shared.
Shana, watching all of this, feeling all of this, suddenly understood. She wasn’t seeing one singular moment in time play out — she was seeing a montage of many moments along Sal’s vengeful hunt. He was in Eventide Archive, then Starlight Spires, then numerous other places she didn’t recognize.
He talked to many people. He asked questions about the Radiant King.
But also…
He visited libraries and bookshops. He read a great deal. Sal was a lover of stories, a lover of drama, of twists, of excitement. Stories were what kept him sane. Stories were what kept him from losing himself utterly to vengeance and rage.
But he started to encounter stories about prophecies. These prophecies largely pertained to the Light and the Darkness, calling to mind so many discussions he had shared with Blaise what seemed like a lifetime ago. The pair of them had always agreed with the leader of the Lunar Architects: One must walk in both Light and Darkness to understand the truth of the world.
But now Sal was reading, reading stories and prophecies he had never read before. And that belief was being shaken. Light and Darkness were at war with one another. They were great powers in eternal opposition.
There was no in-between.
Light, or Darkness. Everyone had to choose, had to face that cosmic war on a smaller scale within their own hearts. And the great truth was that the Light was destined to win. The natural order of the world was aligned towards Light, towards its victory.
But something was odd about all of that. Because there was another prophecy.
The Endless Night.
One prophecy in the midst of this war, a prophecy which spoke not of the Light’s triumph, but the Dark’s. Of night eternal, everlasting, endless. Darkness that swallowed up all life and light, led and orchestrated by the Lord of Night.
There was nowhere else where the Lord of Night was mentioned. Nowhere outside of this one prophecy and numerous discussions upon said prophecy.
Who was the Lord of Night?
Was Light truly destined to win? Or was there hope for the Darkness?
Was the eternal war’s outcome preordained, or could it yet be altered?
These questions fascinated Sal, sustained his need for stories and curiosity as his hunt for the Radiant King wore on. He wandered every corner of the Enchanted Dominion, searched far and wide. He would have lost hope, would have lost his endurance, would have tired if not for the books, the debates, the discussions, the stories of possibilities that now fascinated him.
There was no in-between. Light, or Darkness. One had to choose.
If one followed the natural order of the universe… the Light was the obvious choice. Yet so many people chose Darkness. So many people chased their own desires, the Darkness’ desires within them. “Evil,” people called it. And yet so many people pursued it.
If so many people, Humans, Enchanted, and Halfchant alike, pursued and relished in the Darkness…
Was it truly destined to fail?
Who was the Lord of Night?
Questions. Questions that kept him going. Questions that made the long hunt of decades pass in what felt like hours.
That was why Shana saw all of this in such a swift, blurred fashion, saw these moments that stretched over half a Human’s lifetime pass by in minutes.
This was what the journey looked like to Sal. This was what experiencing it had been for him.
With those questions at the forefront of his mind, Sal soldiered on, seeking his prey.
And the vision in the window came to an end.
Shana stepped back, taking a moment just to breathe. With the vision of Bronn on the phone, the first time she’d looked through one of these windows, all she’d gotten were the external facts. Like watching a movie, she could see and hear what was happening, but she hadn’t gotten any added context, she hadn’t gotten inside anyone’s head. It was strange, then coming out of that state and back to the Dreamworld.
And yet there were still two more windows.
Shana took a deep breath, then let it out. She scooped Altair into her arms, and his warmth and presence — and a couple of loving face licks — helped ground her in herself.
She moved to the next window.
Within it was a new scene, a startlingly different one.
It was a scene of defeat.
Sal stood upon a precipice, his back to a golden sky and a precipitous fall. His face was burned and bruised so badly that only his right eye — a gleaming blue iris containing a silver spiral — could open. His clothes hung in bloody tatters, and numerous lacerations and puncture wounds bled freely.
By all rights, he shouldn’t even be standing. Only fury and desperation kept him standing.
That, and a pause from his attackers.
In front of Sal, blocking all avenues of escape, were figures Shana recognized.
The Radiant King and his Royal Guard — all of his Royal Guardsmen, all still loyal to him back then. Though the sky was a gaudy, overly-bright golden gleam, and the floor and walls of this high tower were a similar blinding gold, this was not the Radiant Palace. The Radiant King had freed his Royal Guards, but he had not yet attacked the Crystal Palace and taken it for his own. For now, this tower served as his temporary seat of power, a staging area from which to expand — carefully, strategically, over time.
Immortal and having cheated death, the Radiant King had patience in abundance.
Sal was an invader. He had stepped onto the Radiance’s territory, found their secret place, and launched a vicious attack with all the power he had.
It had been as nothing to the Radiant King. Sal could have taken on two or three of the Royal Guards alone — he had in the battle for Grimoire. But Leon…
Leon had become more powerful than anyone could imagine.
The Radiant King, his face wrapped in light, was unharmed and unfazed. His Royal Guards were likewise unharmed, every last one of them. Not even a smudge of dirt on their pristine white uniforms.
Sal was beaten. And he knew it.
But he refused to accept it.
His breathing ragged, his body failing, he glared at the Radiant King — at Leon — with unquenchable fury.
“This isn’t over,” he said. He choked, coughed, spat out blood to add to the growing pool around his feet.
“It is entirely over,” said the Radiant King, his voice warm, rich, authoritative. After so long, Shana was struck by that voice, a voice unlike any she’d ever heard, or would hear again. She thought she’d heard the last of it, and yet here it was again, bringing forth so many of her own painful memories. “Alexander —”
“Call me Sal,” Sal spat, gritting his teeth.
“For your sinful quest of vengeance,” the Radiant King continued, “you will not die swiftly. You will fall. A fall that will never end, not until you breathe your last, alone in the radiance. Farewell.”
The Radiant King didn’t even lift a hand, or a finger, or move his head.
All he needed was a thought to flex his awesome power.
Sal was blasted back by sheer magical force, and he fell off the edge.
And fell. And fell.
And fell.
He had no strength of his own left, no power to call upon his own magic and arrest his fall. There was nothing to grab onto, nothing to stop him, and no ground or floor beneath him.
He was falling. And he would continue to fall.
Forever.
Shana reeled as the vision ended, shuddering from the weight of Sal’s despair at having failed, from the weight of the Radiant King’s voice and a reminder of the power he had once wielded.
A gentle hand rested on her shoulder. Shana didn’t have to look to know.
It was Shias.
Shana reached up and took his hand in hers, holding onto it tightly. After a quiet moment, she moved on to the final window.
Sal was falling. Falling, falling, falling forever, through gaudy golden skies that went on for eternity.
He had failed utterly. Despite his fury, despite having nothing to lose and everything to fight for…
He hadn’t stood a chance.
Shana’s heart clenched as she heard a scream, a horrible scream of pain — a final scream. It was a woman’s voice, terrified, alone, and in awful pain.
It was the voice of Sal’s mother. A voice that he heard over, and over, and over again in his mind. A heart-wrenching reminder of his failure. Of all that he had fought for, all that he had hoped for…
All that was now lost to him. Forever.
The scream suddenly cut off, with a firm finality that stung Shana’s eyes with tears.
Sal fell. Through light, gaudy, bright, painful light. A light that would never let him go.
And then, suddenly, after falling for so long…
Darkness.
Darkness, black as the blackest night, reached out for him. Inky black tendrils pierced the golden light, enfolded him, embraced him. They wrapped him up and pulled him gently out of that endless fall.
The burning heat, the blinding brightness of the light was gone, melting away in the cool, soothing embrace of the dark.
Lying in a pool of inky black darkness, Sal took slow, ragged breaths. Over time, his breathing began to calm, began to sound soft and healthy.
The Darkness was healing him.
Footsteps sounded on black stone. Into the vision stepped a man. Shana had never seen him before, not with her own eyes, but she knew him instantly from descriptions. The scar running diagonally across his face. The white, slicked back hair. The hard, cold eyes.
Jormungand.
Sal turned, looking at the new arrival. “Who are you?” he asked. The bruises and burns on the left side of his face had faded, so he could glare at Jormungand with both eyes. “I was much happier being alone.”
“So,” Jormungand said, his voice as dark and inky as the pool that comforted Sal. “The Darkness chose you.”
Sal’s eyes flickered with something. Was it… excitement?
His lips curved upwards in a small smile.
“So it’s the other way around,” he said softly. He rose from the pool, healed of his wounds, rejuvenated and restored. “Well, stranger? What else do you know?”
Jormungand spoke, but at that moment, all sound vanished from the scene. A moment later…
The scene was gone entirely. Shana was staring through glass at the Dreamworld beyond.
“It’s over already?” Kathryn asked. She slumped her shoulders with a sigh. “And just when we were getting to the good part.”
No one else spoke for several moments. It was a lot to take in. Shana held Shias’ hand, anchoring herself in the steadfast, reliable strength of her twin.
“The Darkness ‘chose’ him,” Shana finally said. There was a lot to puzzle over from what her wish had granted her, but that stuck out most in her mind. “But what does that mean?”
“The Darkness wasn’t doing anything any of us have seen before,” Shias said. “It was healing him.”
“I’ve only ever seen or heard of it as a destructive, corruptive force,” Annabelle said. She gazed at the window that had shown the vision. “But… I think it makes sense.”
“Makes sense?” Kathryn asked, frowning. “How’s that?”
“The Darkness is opportunistic,” Annabelle said. “It leeches off of the wickedness in people’s hearts, and in the world. It must have seen something in Sal — maybe his rage, maybe his despair, maybe something we didn’t see — and latched onto an opportunity. It must have decided that it would best serve its own interests by partnering with him rather than just consuming him like Darkness so often does.”
“It took advantage of him,” Shana said angrily.
“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Shias said. “There was a lot we saw, especially in the first window. It’s not so simple as that.”
“So we learned a lot, but still don’t know enough,” Rae said, bowing her head.
Shana stood on the very edge of the platform, gazing out into the distance.
The Darkness chose him.
And he…
…he was okay with it. He was happy.
He read a lot, but… how much did he really know? How much did he understand?
Whatever he knew back then, he’s the Lord of Night now. He must understand everything now, right? And he’s still going through with all of this. He’s trying to destroy everything.
I still don’t… understand him.
She’d made a wish. In the end, she’d gotten what she’d wanted. And yet…
She hadn’t.
She shivered. There was a chill in the air. A chill that had never before been present in Dreamworld.
It felt like an omen.
——
Sal awoke.
It had been a long time since he’d slept. That was who he was, now. He rarely needed to sleep, but sometimes…
Well, sometimes he did it out of curiosity. To remember, just a little bit, what it felt like.
Because in sleep, every so often…
…came dreams.
And this last dream… something was different.
To his surprise, he wasn’t certain what was different. Dreams were such fleeting, fickle things. But impressions, emotions, vestiges of Alexander Salazar Greyson, of the man before the Lord of Night, echoed in his mind.
Yes… it had been a very long time since he had thought of such things. Since he had dwelt on such memories.
How very… fascinating.
Sal smiled. So that’s what was happening. If he was right, then with the right push…
“Ah, yes,” he murmured, his smile deepening. “Yes. I can work with this.”