Prologue: Dreams Aflame
A thousand screaming voices layering in a cacophony of agony, echoing in the endless abyss filled with crimson and emerald flames. Blue-white lightning crackles and spits, lighting the gaping maw just enough for the familiar forms to take shape in their never-ending macabre dance—
The toad man, leering, with his small black eyes peeping through the swirling emerald flames that make up his face. "Delicious," he slurps, his long, lumpy tongue rolling toward me as if I were the juiciest fly. My shoulders start to shake as a familiar nausea rises within me.
The claw woman, who has shiny metal claws instead of fingers, flicks them so fast in flashes of burning orange, a wicked grin slashing her gorgeous face. "Ha...ha!" she shouts, dragging the claws down her cheeks. "You did this! You! YOU!" Her hysterical laughter rises to a scream as she combusts in a cloud of sparks that I swear I can feel peppering my skin.
The drowning child, who I can never save. His screams are always silent as his small form of rolling, indigo smoke sinks into the pit of nightmares. His hand dissolves in mine as I try to reach him, knowing all the while I'll fail him over, and over again.
Make it stop.
For a moment, I hear a faint roar in the distance, a single thread of sanity—the dragon. Sometimes I can find it—a giant ghost-like being made of clouds and auroras. They are the only entity who can bring me a moment of peace in this hellscape. But whatever binds them to this space is weak and the clouds dissipate before long, leaving only the faintest, tiniest sparkling stars in their wake. Even those will fade.
How long have I been here? This place crackles and spits and shrieks, so I run in the darkness with nowhere to go. Over stone and under charred branches. My bare feet have long since hardened to such abuse.
Make it stop.
Is this real? Is it? I try to raise my hands in front of my face, but there is nothing but shadows.
And yet, my throat burns.
