I was running, but not out of fear.

The wind whispered like silk against my skin, and the trees above me weren’t trees at all—they were ribbons, strung like banners across the sky. Pale gold and opalescent white, they fluttered without ever tangling. The world was hushed, surreal. No roots to trip over, no screams behind me. Only a soft path of glimmering moss that sprang up wherever my feet touched down.

I wore no mask.

I wasn’t aware of putting it aside. I wasn’t even aware of my own face. But in the way dreams let you know things without needing proof, I knew I was bare—and yet not afraid.

I came to a clearing.

A frozen lake stretched out before me, untouched and glasslike, stars swimming beneath its surface like koi. The sky above it swirled with northern lights in impossible colors—pale greens and oranges, deep violets that pulsed in time with my breath. I approached the edge and knelt, trying to glimpse my reflection.

But the lake didn’t show me. Not exactly.

I saw someone that might have been me—had my face, but…taller, elegant, crowned with faint frost. My hair was long, silver-white, and caught the light like crystal threads. My skin had a glow, not from makeup or spellwork, but as if I had absorbed moonlight into my bones. My eyes—no mask to cover them—shone like cut sapphires rimmed with snow. An eladrin. A winter one.

I wasn’t smiling. But I wasn’t unhappy.

There was weight to her—me—but a graceful weight. Like someone who had survived many winters, and carried their frost with dignity.

A sound behind me.

Snow crunching. I stood, instinctively brushing my skirt clean, though there was no snow on it. And there he was—he, in that vague, unspoken way dreams name someone without needing to say it.

Raph’æl.

But not in his armor. He wore something simpler. A tunic, the sleeves rolled. No journal in hand. Just him, looking hesitant and utterly out of place in this starlit ice-realm.

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came.

I moved closer, and in a moment of dream-logic clarity, I understood: if he spoke, the illusion would shatter. The lake would crack. The ribbons would fray. So I raised a hand instead, touching his chest where the chain would usually rest beneath his armor.

The warmth of him startled me.

He looked down at my fingers. Then—gently—took them in his. Not in romance. Not in desire. But something stranger. Something harder to name.

Recognition.

He nodded, just once, and suddenly I felt that same weight in me. Not the painful kind I usually carried, but the kind that roots a tree into place. I wanted to ask him something. Anything. But the wind changed.

It carried a voice. A cry. A beast? No—something more ancient. Above us. The colors in the sky began to dim. The stars beneath the ice scattered.

He squeezed my hand.

And I woke up.