Death is stagnant of all kinds
Sleep eternal of tightest binds

A Coren. A Coren! Here, in the Dream? It can't be, yet as Aulka stares up at the horrid, corrupted creature, it is undeniably the same one from her nightmares. It's the same thick twist of black smoke winding through the trees, same misshapen wolfish head, same too-long snout, too-big teeth, too-round eyes. And as it opens its jaws far wider than any wolf can, revealing a pulsing blank void at the back of its throat, Aulka's hackles rise with bad-bad-bad.

The Coren keens a shrill, piercing note and lunges like a viper straight for her face.

Aulka throws herself to the ground, bracing for white hot bite of pain or the terrifying cold of emptiness, but a ring of metal ricochets directly overhead. Breath caught like a string in her teeth, she looks up.

The coal wolf stands above her, long sword with a fiery hilt gripped tightly in his jaws as he parries the Coren's maw in a sweeping arc that leaves behind a golden streak in the air in the dimness cast by the thick canopy.

With a scream, the Coren's serpentine body lashes back, mouth bleeding white smoke, gold particles clinging to the edges of the wound.

Go! To the narleap! the coal wolf barks, the sword dispersing into flakes as he drops it and whirls to shove his shoulder against hers, levering her to her paws.

She gapes at him, heart rabbit fast. You're a Shard?

Yes, he growls, headbutting her again, now move!

The Coren looms behind him, eyes wider than before. It bellows a challenge, the air rippling at its voice.

Her paws find life again and she turns tail and flees, the forest blurring into smudges of black and fading greens as her paws spur her onwards. Breath slaps in and out of her mouth, racing the pounding of her heart. She pushes her paws faster, her ears flatter, her lungs harder, even as it's-not-enough pounds through her mind.

A wolf is fast. A Coren is faster, better, stronger in all ways. It has no paws to run on, no legs to churn underneath heaving chest, no truly solid form to slow it down as it weaves its ribbon body in and out of the trees, making an unearthly skeeeeee as it does.

There is no outrunning Coren. There is no escape from Coren. There is only death from Coren.

Tears blurs her vision and she jerks her head to the side, nearly tumbling over a root. Death pursues her and there is only a Shard, the coal, between her and it. Only one Shard, where two are needed to take down the wretched creatures, creatures that shouldn't be here, here in the Dream where it was safe, safe where—

A black and white streak slashes out from the left, framed by fangs and pulsing void.

Aulka jerks right, but her legs seize along with a yelp in her throat and she slams into the dirt, grass and moss spraying up around her. No! Not now! Metal rings again and the coal is there, sword swinging and hackles and tail raised in change. He and the Coren blur as they dance around one another, strips of black and glowing particles left lingering in the dimness of the forest wherever either of them move.

Tearing her gaze away and forcing her limbs to shatter the ice of fear, she scrambles to her paws, shoulder aching and lungs heaving, and leaps forward, gold and black seared into her mind.

It's only a few bounds to the edge of the forest where trees give way to fields and hills, where the narleap crowns the highest crest that overlooks a steep drop into a lake below. She urges her paws faster towards the brightness, a feather of hope daring to flare in her frantic mind.

With a final bound, she breaks from the cover of trees and another Coren looms above her, this one with a single horn protruding from its head like a blade. It screams a challenge and lunges.

A gasp bursts from her and she dives left and leaps over its smoky form, scrambling for the first steps hewn into the hill and the circle of stone at the top. Seven bounds, six, five—jaws rear in her vision and she skids right to avoid it, but its body is there.

She spins to go back and the tail whips out, catching her back leg and yanking it clean out from under her. Her jaw smashes to the ground, teeth snapping together with a painful clack and knocking the breath out of her.

Before she can get out even a yelp, the cold rage of absence wraps around her flank and squeezes. It burns like fire, like nothing, like her very existence is being eaten away, and she screams, flailing against the thing wrapped around her belly.

It is as solid as smoke, and each time her paws make contact it is like they vanish entirely and are replaced with a hundred thousand needles with the sharpest mouths. Jaws part and overtake her vision, that horrid pulsing blank void eclipsing all else and—

Gold slashes the void in half.

Absence vanishes in streaks of smoke, the jaws and teeth and pulsing void going with it, leaving Aulka gasping on the ground, fur tingling and heart racing around the face of the planet, eyes fixed on the golden gleam of the coal's sword above her.

Are you—Quick, move, there's more!

His voice shatters the ice encasing her body and a fresh stab of cold fear fills her ribcage, spurring her tingling body to scramble up and lunge for the dais. As soon as her paws hit the stone, the symbols etched into the circumference light up and her fur rises, weightless. She crouches, and with the coal beside her, leaps for the sky.

They rise like birds, shooting upwards into the blue, past the clouds, and into the ink of night speckled with stars and swirls of nebulae beyond. Nar's round, silver-grey form looms before them, growing in size as they fall towards it with the grace and speed of a landing swan. When her paws touch the smooth stone of Nar's surface, relief hits like a boulder fallen from a cliff, and she sinks to the ground with a shaky whine.

The stone is cool to the touch and she focuses her attention on its smoothness, the swirls of minerals creating eddies like bone fragments carried in currents, the faint scent of snow and milk on an expecting mother's fur, until her heart stops trying to squeeze itself between her ribs and the flock of her thoughts settles into a coherent order.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she forces out all her breath and thinks about smooth stone, stars above, Nar blinking in the sky, peace. Instead, she sees Coren.

Coren and their white, pulsing mouths, their piercing cries, their serpentine bodies, their ruthless rage as they tear through her home, her pack, like a teething pup does to a scroll scrap. Coren that strike into dens and pull out mothers and fathers, pups and littermates, and swallow them whole. Coren that destroy all she knows, that take all she has, that ravage the world and any wolf that stands in their way.

Coren that shouldn't exist in the Dream.

A nose touches her forepaw and a quiet whuff of air weaves through her fur. Hey, the coal wolf's low woof sounds overhead. We're safe now. They can't get all the way up here.

Aulka peeks up at him, blinking to rid herself of echoes, ears flattening to her skull again as her tail weaves between her legs. They're not supposed to be able to be here at all. She licks her nose, forcing the Coren in her mind back to the tight, dark crevice she keeps them in.

The coal wolf sighs, ears falling. The Dream's supposed to be safe, I know. But there's only so much Maikai can do for so long. The yellow scarf tied around his neck ripples behind him in non-existent wind like a snake.

She shudders, pulling her tongue across her nose and jowls as smoke twists her insides. What do you mean?

Is the Dream failing? She flicks her gaze to where they came from, the round form of the Dream below swathed in clouds and color, the glowing, tiny rings of narleap runes speckling the surface, and the bright, shimmering form of Maikai's star perched over the only mountain in the Dream. Light pours from its tips, cascading below into a bank of swirling clouds. Is Maikai okay, sleeping below the star? Is something wrong with him?

Is he lonely, like the stars?

I mean that Maikai is dying.

Lightning bolts through her bones, scattering the flock of her thoughts, and Aulka snaps her head around to stare at the coal wolf. Dying? How? Why? If he is dying, then the Dream dies along with him! And then—then they would be pushed back into the real world and into the jaws of the Coren and—

The coal wolf winces and sits down, curling his white-tipped tail around his paws, deep blue shawl with white embroidery rippling with the movement. Ah. Let's not start with that. Introductions, shall we? He offers a tentative smile.

Aulka forces the stiffness out of her body. Introductions. What do those matter if someone else, someone from her pack, despite her distance from him, is dying? But her ama taught her that pleasantries and manners were not things to skip, so with a flick of her tail she nods, pushes herself into sitting, and flicks her tail towards him to sniff. I'm Aulka.

His ears perk up and he waves his tail, pleased, as he lifts his nose away from hers. Aulka! I've been looking for you.

Hesitation grates like thorns in fur and she stills, tongue flicking over her muzzle. Looking for me?

He nods, pointing his snouts towards the Dream below. You're the Healer, right?

Healer. Her gaze drops to her white paws. Normal coloured, just like the rest of her gray and brown-streaked pelt, nothing to hint at any shard of power lying underneath her spine, nothing to say that any part of her healing knowledge is exceptional. It isn't. She is a normal wolf, not one blessed with a fragment of power, a healer of normal means.

Except the Dream had given her the gift of Healing by a single touch of her nose, not herbs or bandages or remedies. How ironic, she thinks, such power gifted in a world where the need for healing is absent. How concerning that one would be looking for the Dream-dubbed Healer in a Dream of no pain. Aulka shakes off the flock of her thoughts with a mental flick and raises her eyes to the coal's. Why have you been looking for me?

A flicker of a grimace passes the coal's face and he shakes his head. I'm Kaone, he offers her his tail next, pale nose twitching, Dream-dubbed Hero. I need you to heal Maikai.

Time flickers, blipping to the stutter of her lungs and freezing a noseful of Kaone's charcoal-pine-bough-in-mist scent mid sniff. Is he hurt? Did a Coren get him too?

Kaone's ears flick back. Yes and no. His mouth closes as he sobers, golden eyes gleaming in the ambient light from the stars and the Dream below. You see, Maikai's asleep both here and in the real world. He can't wake up to eat or drink or defend himself, and it's been sersteps out there.

His voice drops to a low serious tone. He's dying, Aulka, and the Dream with him.