The dream kept haunting me. Every time I'd close my eyes I'd see it. Always the same.

I was reaching out to take her hand and from the moment mine connected with hers, I'd keep holding onto it.

It kept slipping out of my grasp.

Someone was calling her name. I realized it belonged to a man. He was shouting for her to come to him, to return where she belonged. He kept saying it, repeating words that broke my heart again and again.

"It's not him, please, believe it's not him..." A litany rising from beneath our feet up to the skies above, from somewhere down the precipice we were standing over, then up to the heavenly creatures watching over us .

Again, her name sounded with his voice shouting it.

That name, every living fiber in me craved it.

It was the name which my lips were helpless to say.

I don't know that name.

She was standing inches away from me but I couldn't see her. Her form in front of me enveloped in darkness, only her eyes visible.

Grey, like the sky that was heaving under the clouds hanging on top of it, that same sky that was ready to break on us and pour out its rage.

The Sun was missing today. His divine grace was nowhere to be found, absent from the dark depths, and I felt like I was standing naked outside in the cold.

Shivering.

A lightning descended to the earth, to where our hands were clasped together, the moment too brief for me to really make sense of what was happening before our hands broke apart. Thunder followed in a rupture of sound, tearing the very texture of the quiet.

"Lucas..." Like an echo, her voice came.

Ripped off of me, I saw her freefalling into the abyss, her frame having been illuminated by the sudden light for just a moment, suddenly swallowed back inside the darkness.

I was already starting to forget her face.

"I'm sorry." Her whisper came seconds later.

Falling to my knees, staring down, everything that my eyes could see was a pit of black as they kept searching for her shape inside the darkness.

She was gone.

Covering my face with my hands, teardrops saturated my skin as I wished the next lighting strike to hit the earth would instead collide with my body.

The skies breaking again and again, drops of water splattering the ground underneath my feet like tears trying to wash the grief away, that thunder never returned.

Letting the rain wash up the pieces of broken heart inside my chest, feeling the fabric of my clothes cold and wet against my skin, shivering inside my own body, I stayed there for a long time even though I knew it was no longer than just a couple minutes. Breathing in despair, I let my hands fall down noticing just then...

I was disappearing.

And then, I woke up.

It was always the same dream. Every time I laid my head down I sunk inside that dream and, in the end, I was always looking at my hands disintegrating before my eyes.

It usually took me hours to bury it inside my mind and not think what it meant, not wonder when it was going to happen or if it was going to happen the way it did in that dream. Today I didn't have the time to look for the answers I wasn't going to find.

Walking to the Oracle's cabin in the woods, I found myself preoccupied with questions none of which were even remotely related to my private torment.

Why was I being summoned in the middle of the night? What was so important that she would interrupt my rest?

Her place was the same I remembered it. Fireflies flickering around in the night, trees that opened up to make space for the garden she kept alive even in the coldest seasons, herbs which she grew from small seeds saturated the air with their medicinal scent.

She had painted the wooden bench next to her door green now, the new colour shining under the light of her doorstep.

She always kept that light on. Every single night. 'A charm,' she'd say with conviction when asked about it.

Walking on the stone path that led to her door, the moment I stopped in front of it, she appeared on the doorstep as if she'd known when I'd come. And she probably had.

"Come in, Lucas," she said, rushing me in before I could utter a single word of greeting.

Her white hair was fastened in a tight braid on her back, few hairs here and there escaping the knots she'd made with her small fingers. Her frail, elderly frame wore one of her usual robes – white and reaching down to her toes. She was a woman who never showed any skin. Even in summer, when the temperatures grew so hot that you could hardly put more than a thin layer of cloth over your body, she'd wear the same long-sleeve robes that would cover her up from head to toe.

"I have a request, Lucas," she started once we were inside her meeting room.

Her house arrangement was simple. There was one room where she welcomed her visitors, performed her readings and occasionally worked her magic. The rest of the rooms were used as her private quarters where no one but she was allowed.

The room we stood in barely held any furniture. A few cushions were spread on the floor so people could sit comfortable when they came to pay her a visit or, at least, as comfortably as sitting on a hardwood froor could allow. She didn't want them to overstay their welcome.

Beside the cushions, there was the cabinet in which she kept the stuff she used for her readings and charmcraft. A few trinklets and papers hung on the walls. Aside from this humble number of objects and the woman with deeply wrinkled face in ghostly attire, there was nothing else but the unnervingly vast and empty space that occupied the room.

Turning towards me, she motioned at one of the cushions. "Please, sit."

"Yes, Oracle," I said, taking her invitation and shrinking my body down the best I could. However, at six feet two, the easy task was not at all easy to perform without seeming awkward or clumsy.

Then again, this wasn't my place so it didn't need to suit me.

"Why did you call me here at this time of the night, Oracle?" Once again, I found myself eager to get this over with and get back to the camp and, hopefully, sleep. Whether it would be dreamful or not.

"Why do I ever call you here, Lucas?" A sigh tore out of her lips, her face taking the thoughtful expression by now I was used to see on her when she looked at me.

Slumping down on the cushion opposite me, she regarded me with her sky blue eyes, that gaze lingering for a few seconds longer than it should have as if trying to see right through the flesh and into my very soul.

"Look for the moon-kissed girl," she spoke, snapping out of her thoughts.

"Who?"

"The moon-kissed girl, Lucas. I already told you so don't make me repeat myself and just listen to what I have to say. Look for a place of death, then look amongst the lingering. That's where you're going to find her. Bring her back. Don't you let her leave for the other side but bring her back. Bring everyone you can back. Bring them all if you can."

I shook my head. "I'm sorry. I don't think I understand what you're asking from me."

Her words were not making any sense. Bring her back? Bring them all back? Didn't she know how hard it was to guide a single person from the other side to this one that she would ask me to guide more than just one?

"She needs to stay." It was the first time I'd heard Oracle raise her voice. Always speaking in a whisper, now when she wasn't, she sounded like she was on the verge of panic.

She had finally lost it. No less, but over some girl she didn't even know. There was no other explanation to this madness.

"She's still at the beginning of her path. She needs to do so much more... She can't... She must not... die."

"What it is so important that she must do for you to be asking me to bring her back?"

I felt so tired after the last rescue. Helping those who were in need, fighting for others' lives before they could be lost, guiding those who held magic inside where they belonged – with us, I was so tired of fighting for others' future and never finding my own.

And she was asking me to do it again.

When was I going to be able to take a breath of peace? Was I always going to be returning into that pit of chaos my life had turned into?

Watching me with a plea in her eyes, pools of tears that she was swallowing back instead of letting them roam her face, I could see her doing it again.

Pulling the strings of what she called my humanity.

She was succeeding.

"Go, Lucas." A master in the game of commanding a person's heart. "You're wasting time you don't have."

Just a moment of hesitation, a second in which I considered going against this order dressed like a plea before realizing that I could never do that.

"Save her."

A magical never went against the Oracle.