The Five Realms

Chapter 8: Chyna IV

Chapter 8:The Boy in the Glass Temple

It began with frost.

Chyna stood barefoot in a corridor made of glass—walls that pulsed with light, as if the stars themselves had bled into crystal. The floor beneath her shimmered with every step, warping her reflection in unnatural ways.

She wasn't cold. Not really. But the chill sank deeper than her skin, like it was pressing into the marrow of her soul.

She wasn't supposed to be here. Not really.

But she was.

Somewhere beyond this corridor, someone was breathing hard, shallow, labored. Each inhale echoed through the glass like thunder wrapped in fog.

William.

Chyna moved faster. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew. His name was a drumbeat in her chest.

She turned a corner and stopped.

There, slumped against a column carved from smoky quartz, was William.

His hair was longer. A cut above his eye had dried but not healed. His wrists were marked with faint silver lines that pulsed like veins of mercury. One hand clutched a sleek, unnatural device—round and strange. The other gripped something wrapped in cloth and shadow.

A dragon egg. She didn't recognize it as such. Not yet. To her, it was just a stone. Pale silver, faintly pulsing. Breathing, maybe.

He looked up. Saw her.

But his expression didn't shift.

He couldn't see her.

This wasn't a shared dream. It was a trespass.

Then the glass rippled.

Something entered the room behind him. No footsteps. Just the suggestion of presence.

A tall figure cloaked in black. Face obscured. Eyes like fog lit from within.

"Still dreaming of rescue?" the voice rasped. Genderless. Ageless. Wrong.

William stood, shaky. "You can keep the chains. You won't get the rest of me."

The figure stepped closer. "We already have it."

Their shadow reached out—and brushed the stone.

The silver shell pulsed violently.

Chyna cried out.

The sound cracked the dream.

William turned suddenly, directly toward where she stood—through the walls of the dream.

For one impossible second, their eyes met.

And then she woke, gasping, the cold still clinging to her lungs like smoke.

The cold stayed with her.

Even after the dream had broken. Even after she'd slipped out of bed, wrapped herself in a flannel hoodie, and crept barefoot to her window, it remained—lodged behind her ribs like a shard of ice.

Outside, the sky was just beginning to smudge with pale lavender. Fog hugged the ground, thick enough to blur the pinewoods beyond the fence. Dew clung to everything.

But that wasn't what held her attention.

Beyond the trees, crooked and half-swallowed by vines, the old watchtower loomed.

No one remembered who built it. It wasn't listed on any maps. Katherine used to call it "a weird architectural hiccup," but their father had once warned them not to go near it.