The End of the Dream

Chapter 22

The core.

It was as black as the void—black ground, black sky—but illuminated by a familiar soft glow. The light seemed to shine from somewhere distant and not quite comprehensible, silhouetting the landscape. Pitch, shadowed features were haloed by brilliant white-blue, like the sun's corona during an eclipse.

There was a lake, vast and still. The shallow shore at its edge, where you found yourself stood upon, was comprised of glistening black sand, as though made up of weathered pumice. In the far distance, rugged mountains marked the opposite shoreline.

Countless stars glimmered against the velvet eternal night, a spread as great as the Milky Way and more. The placid water was full of their reflections. An island jutted from the centre of the lake. It was nothing grand; in area, it could not have much larger than the Manor's living room.

A single tree grew upon the rocky outcrop. A weathered, wizened thing, reminiscent of an ancient oak that had seen too many a century pass, heavy boughs leaning back to the ground like an old man shifting his weight to his walking stick.

It bore crystals instead of leaves. They sprouted from branches and gnarls, and grew amongst the stones of the island itself like clusters of prismatic flowers.

"That's it," you breathed. The commentary was unnecessary. You all knew.

The core was stark, but beautiful. Dark though it was, the blackness felt gentle and kind. The beauty of a deep, gorgeous night, of a vast and vibrant universe beyond the outer reaches of space. It was the darkness a seed slept in beneath the earth as it waited to germinate. It teemed with the possibility of life, quietly, softly nurturing it.

How completely opposite to the devouring, malicious emptiness of the Manor's black void.

You trod lightly—it felt too serene to disturb the air much, unbecoming—but tread you did down to the edge of the water.

A fog was gathering over it. It had started at the island, then swept slowly out to meet you, growing in height and thickness, dancing like motes of dust in a sunbeam.

A figure formed from it, wrought of that same crystalline blue glow. Translucent, but distinct. And familiar. A woman, with short hair swept across her forehead, a veiled pillbox hat, and draped shawl.

"Celine?" Wilford's voice wavered. The figure stood a distance away from the shoreline yet, floating above the surface of the water. This did nothing to deter Wilford. He plunged towards her, uncaring if he would have to wade the whole way. He didn't. The water rippled beneath his flurried feet, but he walked above it just the same.

He grasped both of Celine's hands in his, raising them to his chest and kissing her knuckles. They weren't quite solid. Wilford's fingers dipped through her aetheric form, but he quickly adjusted to cup the space her hands ought have occupied as if this slight incorporeality weren't the slightest hindrance.

"Oh, Celine." His eyes gleamed, reflecting the stars in their welling tears. "So, this is where you've been sleeping all this time."

The spirit smiled gently. "William," she acknowledged.

At Dark's side, you hesitated. "Is it really...?"

He seemed frozen to the spot, silent and sombre. "Yes," he answered eventually, dragging himself back from somewhere miles away. A thousand different thoughts warred tumultuously in his expression.

"How?" Wasn't Celine's fractured soul part of Dark?

She extracted her hands from Wilford's. "I am merely a fragment. A sliver of her soul left behind. It fused with the mother crystal..." her gaze turned to you "...as you fused with yours."