It was a dream.
Or perhaps it was more than that — a fractured memory of a past long forgotten, a terrifying glimpse of a future yet to be forged, or a present reality occurring in some distant, unreachable corner of the world. In the grand, terrifying tapestry of the Nightmare Spell, the line between what was real and what was dreamt was often as thin as a razor's edge.
Asteria had not truly dreamed since her Awakening. As an Ascended, sleep was often a sterile affair — a brief, black intermission between bouts of violence and the constant, crushing weight of survival. She had missed the simple, human luxury of dozing off without a blade within reach, head cushioned by her hands, staring up at an endless blue sky whilst surrounded by the heady, sweet scent of wildflowers.
It's not like she couldn't choose to dream either.
Asteria just didn't have time for it.
This, however, was something entirely different. It was nostalgic yet fundamentally alien, a tantalising fragment of a fantasy she had never known she possessed. It was the raw essence of her — the very thing that made Asteria, Asteria. It was her dreaming — her consistent habit of dozing off in fantasy that had manifested.
She floated, a silent, ethereal observer adrift amidst a thick fog of tattered banners and a vast sea of cold, uncaring stars. She was a voyeur in a place where she did not belong, a ghost haunting a city that felt as though it had been built by the hands of giants and abandoned by the hearts of men.
Below her sprawled a city that had claimed dozens of islands, each one a jagged shard of rock connected by cyclopean bridges of weathered stone. Great banners snapped and hissed in the violent wind, their sigils obscured by the mist, and waterfalls cascaded into an endless, terrifying abyss below that seemed to swallow light itself. Aqueducts, like the bleached veins of a dead titan, drained the city's lifeblood into the void in a constant roar.
It was a kingdom of worship and a city of desperate desire, built upon Chained Isles — a place where the land itself had been shackled to keep it from drifting into the stars.
The architecture was largely plain, repetitive in its ancient, haunting austerity, yet several landmarks seized the Daydreamer's attention.
To the west sat a colosseum of staggering proportions, bathed in perpetual shadow and the iron-scent of old blood. It felt like a hungry thing, a stone mouth that had swallowed thousands of lives and remained unsatisfied.
To the north, a massive altar hosted a statue captured in the frantic, eternal throes of combat, its stone muscles bulging with a desperation that felt far too real.
In a stark, jarring contrast, the eastern reaches were dominated by a city of shimmering ivory stone and floating bridges that looked like spun glass. It was a place of breathtaking beauty, yet at its very heart sat a fortress that felt like a prison — a cage of white marble designed to hold something that could not be killed.
Three temples stood in a silent, triangular vigil across the islands, each representing a different facet of a forgotten hope.
The first was a forest of rock, its stone walls painted a violent, visceral red that seemed to pulse in the twilight. Surrounding it were thousands upon thousands of swords thrust into the earth, rising like a graveyard of rusted steel that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no wind here, only the heavy, metallic silence of a battlefield that had never ended.
The second temple paid homage to the moon that hung bloated and silver above their heads; it was a tranquil expanse of pale stone and marble altars, shaded by the sprawling, protective canopy of an ancient, silver-leafed tree. The roots of the tree moved slowly, like sleeping serpents, and the air smelled of the night and tasted cold water.
The third was a complex of concentric rings, sanctums, and circular settlements that spiralled inward toward a central point.
But it was the Bell Tower that made Asteria's skin crawl with an instinctive dread.
'I loathe those things,' she mused, her consciousness drifting lazily through the dreamscape like a leaf on a pond. 'Is this a dream or a nightmare? Are you going to haunt me even when I'm trying to find some peace? Why is there always a bell?!'
The Bell Tower was constructed of dark, lifeless stone, its hexagonal shape casted long, distorted shadows that seemed to move independently of the light. It was a parlour of deep shadows, arranged with a geometric precision that felt wrong to the human eye. At each of its seven corners, a massive mirror frame stood empty, like an open mouth waiting to swallow the reflection of anyone foolish enough to look.
Further away, a grand hall stood in opulent defiance of the harrowing horrors nearby. The ceiling was perfectly flat, polished to a mirror finish, but the floor was a contradiction — it arched downwards like a shallow bowl, with seams protruding from the sides like the ribs of a beast or ancient, forgotten roads. The hall was silent, empty of life, yet decorated with a lavishness that bordered on the obscene. Gold filigree traced the walls, and silken tapestries told stories of gods who had died before the sun was born. And in the centre, predictably, stood another altar.
'Three altars...' Asteria noted, her mind working with a slow, dream-like friction. 'One for war, one for the moon, and one for... what?'
The dream shifted with the sudden, jarring motion, carrying her toward a distant stronghold on the furthest island. This ancient fortress was bathed in a pale, sickly moonlight that turned the stone the colour of bone. It appeared foreboding and cruel — or it would have, had it not been nestled beside a field of white flowers so beautiful and pure they felt like a child's wish made manifest in the dirt.
The fortress walls were made of towering grey stone that rose high into the night sky, the massive gates sealed tight with an air of finality. Inside, the stronghold was a tomb. Dirt and grime layered every surface, and the silence was heavy with the weight of decades or centuries of abandonment.
Scattered across the floors like discarded toys were eerie corpses — human skeletons still draped in archaic garments and polished armour that might have shone, had the dust of ages not claimed them.
Asteria drifted closer, her ghostly form passing through the stone walls. There were no wounds on the bones, no signs of struggle, no marks of pestilence. It appeared as though the guards of the stronghold had simply lowered themselves to the ground, leaned against the walls, and ceased to be. They had died without reason, without purpose.
Somewhere near this silent tomb, a divine grove lay rooted in glory. Ancient trees rustled in a cool, phantom breeze, their silver leaves whispering a greeting to the being who observed them so closely. A thick, milky fog rolled between their mighty trunks, and birdsong rang out with a clarity that felt almost violent in the stillness.
'Just what is that doing here?' Asteria felt a shiver of genuine cold course through her ethereal form. 'It's so utterly out of place. It's repulsive...'
The shivering ceased abruptly as the fog parted to reveal dazzling figures standing upon the islands — beings that radiated a power so vast it made the Queen of Nightmare feel like a flickering candle in a hurricane.
First, a woman with skin like cream and a face of such exquisite, haunting beauty that it hurt to look upon her. Her chestnut hair streamed over her bare shoulders like a river of bronze, and she wore a simple red tunic, devoid of any weapon or armour. Yet, her presence was staggering. She looked like a being men would burn empires for, a figure for whom millions would gladly march into the abyss. She looked like the embodiment of War, not as a soldier, but as the cause of it.
Near her stood another, clad in green silk with a girdle of tree bark cinching her narrow waist. She seemed older, wiser, carrying the scent of damp earth and the sacred grove. Her eyes held the depth of ancient forests, and where she stepped, the stone seemed to yearn for the touch of moss.
On the island of ivory, Asteria found a pair of twins. One was the image of regal conviction: tall, noble, with skin as white as the stone beneath him and amber eyes that burned with a fierce, golden light. He stood with the poise of a prince who had never known a rival. The other was a colossus of iron, his beautiful face expressionless and cold, his armour polished to a mirror sheen that reflected two suns that weren't there. He was towering, silent, and utterly terrifying.
The final figure, however, was different. He stood apart from the others, watching the horizon with a look of idle amusement.
'Just his gaze... he reminds me of that silver-tongued conman, Valerius.'
He was young and strikingly beautiful, with silken black hair and a carefree, luminous smile that reached his bright, humorous eyes. He looked like a pampered prince in expensive silks who had just stepped out of a palace, his hands soft and uncalloused as if he had never known a day's hardship or a single moment of pain.
Most notably, a silver crescent moon was etched upon his forehead, glowing faintly against his smooth skin.
Like the others, he possessed an otherworldly presence that transcended the physical. It was plain to see that he was infinitely more dangerous than his slender, petite frame suggested. He was a beast draped in twilight.
A question began to swirl in Asteria's mind, threatening to break the fragile trance of the dream.
Well, maybe more than one.
"Where is this?"
"This isn't a dream is it?"
"Why should I care?"
The scene warped violently and pulled her out of her dazed questioning, the islands blurring into streaks of grey and green, pulling her into the dark, cold heart of the ivory fortress.
Chains.
They were everywhere. Daunting, unfathomably large, and made of a material that seemed to hum with the power of infinity. They were chains that looked like they could wrap around the world and squeeze the life from it — chains designed to capture and hold a Divine being.
And they had.
The chains held a woman of such staggering, alien beauty that Asteria felt her very soul tremble. The figure was almost human, yet entirely beyond the definition of the word. Her shapes and contours were a paradox — at once perfect and imperfect, pleasing to the eye and yet utterly revolting to the spirit.
She radiated a warmth like a midsummer afternoon, and an invisible gaze that felt like a mother watching her only child. She offered an understanding so deep, so profound, that it made Asteria question her own desires, her own identity, her own name.
Desire... Yes, it was desire. It was the only word for it. She was Desire. She was the longing in every heart, the hunger in every gut, the greed in every soul.
She was one of the most terrifying things Asteria has ever seen.
She was the most beautiful thing Asteria had ever seen.
The being lived up to every terrifying legend of what a Divine being should be. Beautiful and hideous. Unknowing and unknowable. Something a mortal could see a thousand times and never truly understand — an unfathomable ocean of intent.
She was Divine. She was a Goddess, bound in iron, waiting for freedom.
The dream began to fracture at the edges, the image of the shackled goddess dissolving into a swirl of grey mist and cold light. The islands drifted away, the bridges crumbling into the abyss.
In the final, fading moments of the vision, before the darkness of a dreamless sleep could reclaim her, the Beast of Twilight appeared once more.
His foolish smile was gone. He stood alone on a crumbling pier, clutching his beating heart in his hands while muttering prayers to a being he couldn't see.
The once proud man looked up from his prayer, a wry smile returning to his face before speaking in a loud, melodius voice.
"Hail Weaver, Demon of Fate. Firstborn of the Forgotten God!"
The being made themselves known.
A harrowing voice of a thousand whispers echoed into the man's ears.
"Beast of Twilight... I am not at all happy to meet you again."