Monsters Aren't Born Chapter 5 - Silence

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Dreama stood transfixed before the glass case, her breath catching in her throat as she stared at the sword. It pulsed with an eerie blue glow that seemed to reach out to her, calling to her soul with each throb of necromantic energy. Her skin prickled with awareness, tiny hairs rising along her arms as she sensed the power contained within the ancient blade. This was no ordinary weapon—it was a reservoir of death magic, the same kind that flowed through her veins and pulsed within her bloodcrystal.

And it was calling to her.

She hadn't come to the restricted section seeking a weapon, but somehow the sword felt... inevitable. Like the culmination of all her study and suffering. Dreama leaned closer, her eyes wide, her lips parted in unconscious fascination. Her fingers brushed against the glass case, leaving smudges on its immaculate surface. The bloodcrystal at her throat grew warm in response to her proximity to the blade, resonating with the energy there. "You know what I am," she whispered to the sword, her voice barely audible even in the silent archive. "And I know what you are."

The sword seemed to pulse brighter in response, the blue light intensifying for a brief moment before settling back into its regular rhythm. Whether coincidence or reaction, the effect sent a shiver down Dreama's spine. Something this powerful shouldn't be left gathering dust in an archive, locked away by men too afraid to use it. It should be in the hands of someone who understood its nature, someone who could wield its full potential.

Someone like her.

The case was sealed with both physical locks and magical wards—layers of protection designed to keep unauthorized hands from claiming the treasures within. Dreama studied the intricate patterns of energy surrounding the glass, her enhanced perception allowing her to see the strands of magic woven into a complex net. With practiced movements, Dreama extended her fingers toward the case's ward array. It was like untying a knot, feeling out and then unraveling the skilled spellwork. She whispered the words of counterspells under her breath, unwinding protective enchantments strand by strand.

As the last magical barrier collapsed with a sound like breaking glass, Dreama turned her attention to the physical locks. Simple enough. She channeled energy through her fingertips, heat building until the metal mechanisms began to glow red, then white, finally melting into useless slag that dripped onto the floor with a series of soft plinks. The smell of heated metal filled her nostrils, sharp and acrid, as it dripped onto the floor and made the carpet smoke. With the protections neutralized, she eased the case open. The hinges moved silently, testament to the magical maintenance routines that kept the archives pristine. The sword's blue glow intensified as the glass barrier was removed, casting eerie shadows across Dreama's face and making her emerald eyes seem to gleam with an unnatural light.

Dreama wrapped her fingers around the hilt.

The world stopped.

Cold energy surged up her arm like liquid ice being injected directly into her veins, freezing her in place. Her muscles locked, her breath caught in her lungs, her heart skipped several beats before resuming at a frantic pace. Power—something ancient, malevolent, and terrifying—flooded into her mind, overwhelming her defenses before she even realized they'd been breached.

Dreama had made a terrible mistake.

She tried to release the sword, to drop it and sever the connection, but her fingers remained locked around the hilt as if fused to the metal. The blue glow spread from the blade and up her arm, following the pathways of her veins like luminescent poison. Her skin crawled with the sensation of something foreign invading her body. Through the initial shock, one thought crystallized in Dreama's mind with terrible clarity: the sword wasn't simply an enchanted item like her rings, like her armor, like the crown she wore. It was something alive, something that had wants and needs of its own. It was conscious, it was intelligent, and it was filled with a hatred so ancient and consuming that it made her anger at those who had hurt her seem quaint and small.

And it wanted her dead.

The sword's consciousness continued to flood her mind, an ancient intelligence forcing its way into her thoughts with the same brutal efficiency as Rastin's cock had once forced its way into her unwilling body. The invasion left her mentally gasping, desperately trying to erect barriers against the onslaught, but the sword's will was relentless, crushing through her defenses like they were nothing more than cobwebs.

Her extensive education at Morninglight had never prepared her for this; such knowledge was reserved for advanced students years beyond her current level. Dreama hadn’t yet been allowed to know about true magical items, artifacts of the ancient Atlan Empire that contained living souls bound to them with necromancy and stayed as alive and aware as any person. Such artifacts were incredibly rare, incredibly old, and incredibly dangerous. These weapons chose their own masters, and after thousands of years buried in the ruins of the Atlan Wastes most of them had gone thoroughly mad, more than willing to destroy any that they deemed unworthy.

The sword called Silence was assessing her worthiness right now, its consciousness methodically examining her mind like a butcher inspecting a slab of meat.

Panic surged through her as she once again tried to release her grip on the sword, but her fingers wouldn't respond to her mental commands. She pulled with her other hand, trying physically to pry her fingers loose, but they might as well have been carved from stone.

"Shit," she hissed through clenched teeth, fear turning to anger in an instant. "Let go of me, you fucking piece of scrap metal!"

The sword's response wasn't in words but in sensation—a wave of cold, contemptuous amusement washing through her mind. It found her struggle pathetic, her command laughable. It had no intention of releasing her. Through their unwanted mental connection, Dreama felt the sword's ancient consciousness continuing its evaluation of her. What she perceived terrified her more than anything she'd experienced since her days in Rastin's ritual chamber. Silence hated her with an intensity that made her physically nauseous, its malevolence crashing against her mind like ocean waves, each carrying centuries of accumulated rage and contempt. The sword regarded her as an insect, a fleeting, insignificant speck of life unworthy of the power she sought to wield. To it, Dreama was nothing… less than nothing. Just another arrogant mortal for it to consume who would soon be forgotten.

The magical disturbance in the air intensified as the sword's power grew. Books on nearby shelves rattled slightly in their cases, and dust motes in the air seemed to freeze, suspended in the conflicting magical currents. The blue glow emanating from the blade spread further up Dreama's arm, creeping toward her shoulder with glacial inevitability.

She tried again to drop the blade, focusing all her willpower on the simple act of opening her fingers. Nothing. The connection remained unbroken, her flesh still fused to the ancient metal as if they had always been one. A new fear bloomed in her chest—what if she couldn't break free? What if the sword consumed her, adding her soul to its collection, leaving her body an empty husk on the archive floor for the masters to find in the morning? No. That would not be her fate. She hadn't survived Rastin's torture, hadn't clawed her way through years of degradation and struggle and risked everything just to die here, defeated by an ancient piece of metal with delusions of grandeur.

"Listen to me, you arrogant piece of shit," she snarled, her fear crystallizing into determination. "I don't care what you are, where you came from, or what you want. You will not have me.”

The sword's contempt washed over her again, stronger this time, tinged with amusement at her defiance. In that moment, Dreama understood with terrible clarity: there was no compromise possible here, no negotiation, no middle ground. This was a battle that could only end with either her death or the sword's submission, and the sword had no intention of submitting.

Dreama didn’t want to die.

The first real attack came without warning—a violent yank on Dreama's consciousness that felt like something was trying to tear her soul from her body. The agony was immediate and overwhelming, white-hot pain lancing through her mind as if a barbed hook had sunk deep into the very core of her being and was now pulling with relentless force. Her body arched involuntarily, spine bowing as the sword's power surged through her. Dreama bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from screaming, the taste of copper flooding her mouth as her teeth broke skin. It felt like being flayed alive from the inside, having pieces of her essence peeled away layer by layer. Her vision blurred, the archive around her dissolving into smears of shadow and moonlight as she struggled to maintain consciousness against the onslaught.

Dreama fought back instinctively, drawing on stolen necromantic knowledge, learned lessons, and the discipline of years of self-enforced study. She'd never faced an attack like this, but she understood pain and suffering better than most. Her mind constructed barriers of pure will, walls of determination hardened through years of survival against all odds, and the sword's power crashed against these defenses like a battering ram, each impact sending fresh waves of agony through her consciousness.

"Fuck… you…" she gasped through clenched teeth, sweat beading on her forehead as she poured more energy into her mental shields. "You think you're the first thing that's tried to break me?"

The battle was a titanic clash of wills, invisible to any observer who might have entered the archive but apocalyptic in scale within the confines of Dreama's mind. Silence pulled relentlessly, never tiring, never wavering, and growing stronger and more irresistible by the second. A lesser opponent would have broken in moments, but Dreama held firm, even as each assault required more concentration, more determination to repel.

The sword began to laugh in her mind—a cruel, confident sound that echoed through the chambers of her consciousness like ice cracking. "You will tire, mortal," it told her, the words appearing in her mind with no need for communication or language. The tone was unmistakable: mockery, certainty, the arrogant confidence of an immortal entity facing a fragile mortal. It was winning, and it knew it.

Panic clawed at her throat as the reality of her situation sank deeper. She was trapped. The sword would never tire, never falter in its assault. Sooner or later, her concentration would slip, her defenses would crack, and that cold power would pour through the breach like floodwater, drowning her consciousness and adding her soul to its collection.

But as the terror reached its peak, something strange happened within Dreama—a transformation she had experienced once before, in Rastin's dungeon. Fear crystallized into fury, desperation transmuted into determination. After all she had survived, all she had sacrificed, all the degradation and struggle and pain she had endured to reach this point, she refused to die here, defeated by a thing. Terror became a cold, hard rage that spread through her veins like ice water, dousing the panic and clearing her mind. She had crawled from the ruins of her life, had licked boots and spread her legs and killed to get here. She’d made herself a whore for coins and for books, all for the chance at finding a way to fix things. She would not fall here.

Drawing on her rage, Dreama constructed a mental fortress of pure defiance—a red wall of hatred and determination that stood against the sword's assault. "You… picked… the wrong bitch… to fuck with…" she snarled, the words barely audible in the silent archive.

As she fought, Dreama noticed something she hadn't seen before. The blade now glowed with swirling patterns that resembled faces—dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, pressing against the surface of the metal like drowning people against a frozen lake. The sword had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of souls inside of it. Every wielder who had tried to hold it. Every victim who had felt its edge. They roiled within its enchanted form, their power feeding its strength. It had power… so much power. Power enough for a necromancer to raise an army. Power enough to change the world.

"Give them… to me…" she commanded, focusing her will on the trapped souls within the blade. "Your prisoners. Your power. Give them to me now!"

The sword's response was immediate and violent—a surge of energy that slammed into her mental defenses with the force of a battering ram, nearly shattering her concentration. Rage and fear mingled in the sword's assault, and Dreama realized she'd struck a nerve. It feared her power over souls, feared what she might do if she managed to wrest control of its captives. That slight hesitation in Silence’s assault gave Dreama the opening she needed. She pressed her advantage, focusing her will with laser precision on the boundary between herself and the invading consciousness. Instead of trying to expel the sword completely, she began constructing walls around it, containing its influence to a smaller and smaller portion of her mind.

The sword fought back furiously, but Dreama found herself growing calmer as her confidence rose. The initial shock had passed, and now her analytical mind was taking over, approaching this as a problem to be solved rather than a terror to be endured. It was just one more barrier to overcome, one more puzzle for her to reason out in her study. "I am not… some weak-willed… apprentice… that you can bully," she told it silently, her mental voice growing steadier. "I am Dreama, and I have survived worse than you."

The sword's assault continued, but Dreama had found her footing now. She settled into a more controlled defense, preparing for a longer mental siege as Silence hammered against her will. The battle was far from over, but for the first time since grasping the hilt, Dreama felt something other than terror. She felt hope. If the battle progressed this way, she could win it.

The only problem was that the sword knew it, too.

The change in Silence's tactics was sudden and brutally harsh… no longer seeking to simply rip her mental fortress down. Instead, it plunged needle-thing skewers of thought and emotion into her, dragging through her thoughts, questing deep into her memories to extract the most painful weak points it could to undermine her defense. Before Dreama could think of a way to counter that attack, she was no longer standing in Morninglight's archives. Instead, she found her awareness suddenly transported back to Rastin's ritual chamber and chained naked to the familiar metal table. The transition was so abrupt, so realistic, that for a terrifying moment the sense memory and dream and trauma were such a visceral thing that she simply forgot that she had left this place behind years ago… it was pathetically easy to convince her she was still there, still in the place where she had suffered so much.

"No," she whispered, the word escaping her lips as a strangled gasp. "This isn't happening. I escaped this place. This… this isn't real!"

She knew… or was almost certain… that she was right, but her protests did nothing to dispel the vision. The familiar manacles bit into her wrists and ankles, pressing right against the sensitive spots on her limbs where they had dug into them six years ago. Every detail was perfect—from the pattern of cracks in the stone ceiling to the distinctive mixture of incense and blood in the air to the precise arrangement of candles in their concentric circles around the table. The sword had pulled this scene directly from her memories, reconstructing it with excruciating accuracy.

She knew what she would find before she turned her head.

Footsteps approached the table, and Dreama's heart hammered against her ribs as a familiar silhouette loomed over her. Rastin's face looked down at her. "Did you really think you had escaped me?" he whispered, his voice reverberating unnaturally, seeming to come from everywhere at once. "You’ll never be free of me. You'll be my toy until the day I use your soul for kindling."

His hands were just like she remembered as they moved over her body, possessive and cruel. Dreama felt her skin crawl beneath his touch, revulsion rising in her throat like bile. His fingers traced the curves of her breasts, pinching her nipples hard enough to make her gasp, before sliding down over her ribs to her hips. Despite knowing this was just a vision, her body responded with genuine terror, muscles tensing as he spread her thighs with rough hands. "Stop," she choked out, struggling against the restraints until her wrists bled. "This isn't real. You're dead. I saw your corpse."

"Am I?" Rastin's grotesque face loomed closer, his breath hot against her cheek. "I am a necromancer, after all. Death can be a rather… fluid… state. Or perhaps I never died at all, and you are simply where you belong? Perhaps this is the truth and everything else was the dream—your escape, your years of study, your pathetic attempts to pretend at my power. Perhaps you never left here at all."

Outrage flooded into Dreama's mind, but doubt crept in as well. What if he was right? What if everything since that night had been nothing but a fantasy her broken mind had constructed to cope with endless torture? No. She refused to believe it. She had escaped. She had survived. This was… Silence. The sword was trying to break her will. She knew that, but even so her certainty wavered as Rastin positioned himself between her spread thighs, his cock ready as ever. She could feel the heat of it pressing against her entrance, could see the cruel satisfaction in his distorted face as he prepared to thrust into her. "You belong to me," he hissed, grabbing her hips with bruising force. "You always have. You always will."

He thrust forward brutally, driving into her dry passage with savage force. The pain was immediate and intense, her unprepared body screaming in protest as he buried himself to the hilt inside her. Dreama bit back a scream, her back arching off the table as he began a vicious rhythm, fucking her with methodical cruelty while leaning over to whisper in her ear. "Does it feel familiar, little girl? Do you remember what you are?"

Each thrust sent fresh waves of agony through her body, the friction of the first dick she had ever taken scraped against her dry tissues, creating a burning sensation that radiated outward from her core. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, tracking down her temples to disappear into her hair. This felt too real—the weight of his body on hers, the brutal invasion between her legs, the smell of his sweat mingling with the ritual herbs.

Then, without warning, Rastin's chest suddenly split open from within, his ribcage cracking apart like a flower as his heart ripped its way out of her body. Blood erupted from his mouth as a shadow fell over him. Dreama felt suddenly ice cold as she remembered something she had resolutely put out of her mind for years… the mysterious killer that had slaughtered Rastin and his cult—or at least, what Dreama's terrified mind imagined it might have been. The shadow rose up over Rastin's body, a silhouette of absolute darkness with eyes that glowed like twin suns. It was humanoid but wrong, its proportions subtly off, its limbs too long, its fingers ending in points that weren't quite claws. It looked at her with those burning eyes, and Dreama felt it recognize her, felt its interest sharpen like a predator scenting blood.

Rastin died with his cock inside of her, but the other creature reached down for her as she screamed, its long fingers wrapping around her throat. One tendril of the shadowy smoke snaked its way between her lips, forcing her jaw open as it pushed into her mouth. Through the fog of pain and terror a small, rational part of Dreama's mind clung to awareness. This isn't real, she reminded herself, focusing on that thought with desperate intensity even as every instinct in her body and mind insisted otherwise. Then her own heart began to tug against her chest as the killer ripped it out of her rib cage one tug at a time with Dreama screaming in agony the whole time.

She didn’t feel the moment she died… but she knew that she did.

The next thing she knew, Deama found herself lying in bed in the Mayor's house—not as she was now, but as she had been six years ago, a terrified girl who had just lost her parents. Her body felt smaller, younger, more vulnerable compared to the strong woman she had become. Her heart was still racing from what had happened to her and Rastin but she remembered this night against the soft mattress that had once seemed such a luxury after her family's humble farm. This was the night after the fire, after the Mayor’s family had offered her shelter when she had nowhere else to go.

In reality, he had been kind… and his family had died tonight before he became a short-lived slave destined for sacrifice. Dreama heard heavy footsteps approaching her bedroom door, the floorboards creaking under deliberate weight. Her heart began to race as the door handle turned slowly, the hinges protesting as the door swung. She expected to see Rastin once again, the man who had murdered this house’s occupants before he had taken her. Instead, it opened to reveal the Mayor's bulky silhouette backlit by the hallway lamp.

"Are you awake, child?" the Mayor's voice carried none of the genuine concern she remembered—instead, it dripped with false sympathy that barely concealed darker intent. He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him with a soft click that sounded like a death sentence in the quiet darkness. "I thought I heard you crying," he continued, approaching the bed. "Poor little orphan. So alone in the world now."

Dreama's throat constricted with fear as he sat on the edge of the mattress, his weight causing her to roll slightly toward him. This wasn't how it had happened. The real Mayor had been nothing but kind and merciful, and he had treated her well during her rare experiences with him. This man wasn’t that man, though. Dreama wanted to flee, but she was so young, so weak, so fragile. "Let me comfort you," he whispered, reaching out to stroke her hair. His hand felt huge against her scalp, heavy as it trailed down to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed across her lips in a gesture that was unmistakably inappropriate, nothing like the paternal affection the real man had shown her.

Dreama tried to pull away, but her body in this vision was as weak as she had been back then, paralyzed by grief and shock. The Mayor interpreted her stillness as submission, his hand growing bolder as it slid down her neck to her collarbone, then lower to cup one of the Unburned Girl’s young breasts through her thin nightgown. "Don't," she whispered, her voice coming out as a frightened squeak that belonged to her younger self. "Please don't…"

"Shh," he soothed, his other hand now covering her mouth, pressing down hard enough that she could taste the salt of his skin. "You don't want to wake the others, do you? My wife wouldn't understand what a special girl you are, how much you need to be comforted."

Before she could struggle further, he was on top of her, his substantial weight pinning her to the mattress. She felt small beneath him, fragile and powerless, her limbs trapped by his bulk. His hand remained firmly over her mouth as he used the other to roughly push her nightgown up, exposing her lower body to the cool night air. "Such a pretty thing," he murmured, his eyes glinting in the darkness as he positioned himself between her legs. "I'm going to take good care of you, Dreama. You'll be my special little girl from now on. I’ll be your new daddy."

She felt him pressing against her, hot and insistent, his cock pushing at her entrance with growing force. The violation was excruciating, his thick member stretching her unprepared body as he grunted and thrust. Tears streamed down her face as he fucked her with brutal efficiency, each movement driving her deeper into the mattress. His hand muffled her screams as he violated her, his other hand now gripping her throat with enough pressure to make dark spots dance at the edges of her vision.

Dreama's mind rebelled against the vision, fury rising at this desecration of her memory. The real Mayor had been kind, a good man. This grotesque parody was an insult to his memory, a slap in the face to the one person who had shown her genuine compassion after her parents' death. It wasn’t real… even as this version of the Mayor continued to thrust into her, she knew it. He had never touched her. He never would have. He was a good one, one of the people who hadn’t deserved to die, one of the people she would bring back. This sword couldn’t take that from her.

With tremendous effort, Dreama pushed against the hallucination, focusing on the truth rather than the sword's lies. The scene wavered, the Mayor's form growing transparent for a moment before resolving again, his features shifting and blurring like wax melting under flame. For an instant, she glimpsed the archives through the dissolving vision, felt the weight of the sword still clutched in her hand. Then reality slipped away again as the sword forced her into an even more devastating scenario.

The fire.

Heat assaulted her senses immediately, the temperature in the vision rising until sweat beaded on her skin and ran in rivulets down her temples. She was back in her childhood bedroom, flames licking up the walls, consuming the simple wooden furniture and the drawings she'd pinned above her bed. Smoke filled her lungs, making each breath a struggle against the urge to cough. The crackle and roar of the fire nearly drowned out the sounds of screaming wood from elsewhere in the small house.

This was the night her magic had first manifested—her "Sparking," as the sorcerers called it. The night her uncontrolled power had accidentally set their humble home ablaze. The night her parents had died .

The bedroom door crashed down as it had six years ago, and through the billowing smoke Dreama saw her father. In reality, he had rushed in heroically, scooped her from bed, and carried her toward safety before dying in the dirt. In this twisted vision though, his eyes, once kind and gentle, now blazed with fury as he staggered toward her bed. "You did this," he growled, his voice a ragged thing that bore little resemblance to the warm tones she remembered. "You killed us with your magic. You killed your mother. Now you'll pay for that, witch!"

He reached the bed in three lurching steps and tore away her sheets and bedclothes with charred hands. The stench of burning flesh filled her nostrils as he loomed over her, a nightmare version of the man who had loved her more than life itself.

"No," Dreama whispered, tears streaming down her face. She didn’t even think about how this couldn’t be real… seeing her father again was too painful, too raw a wound that had never scabbed over. "Father, please. It was an accident. I didn't know—"

His ruined hand clamped over her mouth, silencing her pleas. With his other hand, he forced her legs apart, positioning himself between them. "Accident?" he snarled, his face so close she could feel the heat radiating from his burned skin. "You destroyed everything. You killed your mother, you worthless whore! You deserve everything that happened to you! You deserve this!"

The violation was worse than anything that had come before: Not just because of the physical pain as he forced himself inside her, but because this was her father, the man who had read her stories at night and taught her to ride their old plow horse, who had never raised a hand to her in anger. Each thrust was accompanied by flakes of his charred skin falling onto her naked body, the ash of his burning flesh settling on her breasts and stomach like obscene snowflakes. Dreama screamed in anguish, more emotional than physical. No no no no no no. Not this. Not her father. Not him.

He had died dragging her out of this inferno… and it had been for nothing. She hadn’t been burned in her own blaze. For years, she wondered… if he had just ran out, would he have been fine? Would she have crawled out of the burned wreckage and found him there? She didn’t know… and that hurt worse than anything. He had given his life so that she might live, and she would not die pathetically on the floor of the archives. Her father’s sacrifice and belief in his daughter would not be for nothing! She would not let this wretched thing break her, twist the people she loved into something vile and unrecognizable.

Silence had made a mistake.

Using Rastin against her had been expected… he had violated her in reality, had taken pleasure in her pain and humiliation. The Mayor was a stretch, a cruel perversion of a decent man's memory, taking advantage of a moment when she had been helpless. But to stain the memory of her father? The man who had loved her unconditionally, who had died with her name on his lips as he pushed her to safety? Something broke inside Dreama. It wasn’t her will to resist… instead, it was the restraints she had placed on her own fury. Her grief transformed into white-hot rage, a burning hatred so intense it scorched away the vision like paper thrown into flame. Her uncontrolled spark had once burned the real man away, now her rage did the same to this fake. The hallucination wavered, her father's monstrous form flickering as her anger built to unprecedented levels.

"You dare?" she snarled, her voice no longer that of a frightened child but of a woman who had endured hell and emerged tempered by its fires. "You fucking dare!?"

The bedroom began to dissolve around her, reality breaking through the sword's illusion as Dreama's fury strengthened her mental defenses. Her father's form blurred and distorted, becoming transparent before dissolving completely. The flames receded, the heat fading as the archives began to reassert themselves in her perception. The sword's presence in her mind recoiled slightly from the intensity of her rage, but then surged forward again, determined to crush her resistance once and for all. But it had miscalculated badly. By desecrating her father's memory, it had not weakened Dreama but galvanized her, transforming her fear into a weapon more potent than any the sword could wield against her.

As the vision of her burning home faded completely, Dreama stood once more in the archives, her body trembling not with fear but with murderous resolve. The sword would pay for what it had shown her. It would submit, or be destroyed.

In a way, Silence had achieved what it aimed for: Her mental fortress was gone as Dreama’s will marched inexorably forward, pressing on the sword rather than defending against it. It struck back in a mighty assault, channeling every bit of its stored energy into a single overwhelming attack meant to incinerate Dreama's undefended consciousness. She felt it coming, felt the sword gathering power like a wave drawing back before crashing against the shore. This was it, the killing stroke meant to end their battle once and for all. Dreama had only seconds to decide how to respond, how to handle this tsunami of necromantic energy bearing down on her mind. In that crucial moment, her instincts led her to a counterintuitive choice: Instead of strengthening her barriers or attempting to deflect the attack, she opened herself completely, dropping every defense and welcoming the energy rather than resisting it and channeling it like any other sorcery.

Then the blade’s power flooded into her like a river breaching its banks, an overwhelming torrent that threatened to wash away everything that made her Dreama. The pain was immediate, white-hot agony that blazed along every nerve ending in her body and made her body arch and tremble uncontrollably. She was so angry she barely felt it at first, but it was so overwhelming it burned through that anger in just a few seconds. Her vision went dark, then exploded with colors. Her ears filled with a high-pitched keening that might have been her own scream, though she couldn't feel her throat or lips anymore. Everything that was Dreama threatened to dissolve in that terrible flood of ancient power.

But instead of fighting against the current, she swam with it.

With desperate intuition, she channeled the energy through her own magical pathways, claiming it for herself rather than letting it destroy her. She was a sorcerer, and that power was her birthright. It was the power that had sparked in her and killed her parents. The power that had drawn Rastin to her village and led to the deaths of everyone she had ever known. Now she used that affinity to redirect the sword's attack, absorbing what was meant to annihilate her, directing it with raw will. The sensation was simultaneously agonizing and ecstatic, like being fucked by lightning as every nerve ending in her body fired at once. Her back arched so violently she thought her spine might snap, her teeth clenching hard enough to make her jaw ache. Somewhere in the distance, she heard a sound like crystal cracking… though whether that was in the physical world or inside her mind, she couldn't tell.

Through the haze of pain and wild euphoria, Dreama noticed something she hadn't seen before… the empty socket on the sword's pommel. Dreama had a sudden, impulsive certainty as to what that socket was for. Acting on that instinct, she tore the bloodcrystal from her neck with her free hand, the leather cord snapping under the force of her movement… and she slammed the onyx gem into the hollow in the hilt.

The connection was immediate and overwhelming. Power surged between the crystal born of her blood and life energy and the sword, flowing through Dreama as the conduit. Every cell in her body ignited simultaneously, overloaded with energy that threatened to consume her from within. Her vision whited out completely, leaving her blind in a sea of burning light. Her ears filled with a roar like an ocean trapped in a seashell, drowning out all other sound. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the maelstrom subsided. Dreama's vision cleared, her hearing returned, and she found herself still standing in the restricted section of the archives, the sword clutched in her hand. But everything had changed.

"You have not won," the sword's voice whispered in her mind, though its tone belied its words. "You have merely delayed the inevitable. One day you will falter, and I will consume you."

Dreama laughed aloud, the sound echoing slightly in the cavernous archives. The pure release of tension made her feel almost drunk with victory, light-headed after the intense battle for her very soul. The blade no longer felt like a foreign object she was struggling to hold. Now it was an extension of her arm, responding to her thoughts as naturally as her own fingers. The blue glow had spread throughout the metal, no longer pulsing but shining with steady blue brilliance that cast sharp shadows across the room. Most importantly, the sword's presence in her mind had changed. It was still there, but Silence was subdued and sullen, like a beaten animal that recognized its new master but seethed with resentment.

"You're mine now," she responded silently, tightening her grip on the hilt. "Your power is my power. Your knowledge is my knowledge. Your souls are my souls."

She took several deep breaths, steadying herself after the ordeal. Her body still tingled with residual energy, muscles occasionally twitching with aftershocks of the massive power transfer. The sword's blue glow cast her shadow long and distorted across the bookshelves, making her appear larger and more menacing than she actually was. She could sense the power… and the knowledge. It knew secrets of necromancy far beyond anything in the books she had stolen. Insights into the nature of souls and their manipulation. Methods of working with a bloodcrystal that made Rastin's crude manipulation of life energy seem like a child's finger painting beside a master's canvas.

She laughed, victorious. “You will tell me everything,” she said triumphantly. “Together, we will be great.”

As Dreama stood absorbing this flood of ancient knowledge, she heard voices outside the archive… Angry and alarmed voices echoing through the corridors of Morninglight Academy. Surprised, she glanced out the window and she saw that the sky was lightening and the light of dawn was breaking over the eastern spires, painting the stone in shades of pink and gold. She had been here, battling Silence, for hours… and in that time, Master Tarrelin's body had been discovered.

The distant shouts reached her ears, enhanced by the magical earrings she wore. She could hear people moving through the building, doors slamming, voices raised in alarm and outrage. Soon they would organize a methodical search of the academy, and it wouldn't take them long to realize the archivist’s key was missing. That would bring them right here.

Very well. Let them come.

Dreama felt a surge of confidence bordering on arrogance. With Silence in her hand and its power flowing through her, she was going to march right out of here. And if anyone got in her way…

She raised the blade, its edge catching the early morning light, and tested its weight with a few experimental movements. The sword moved through the air with impossible grace, almost as if it were guiding her hand rather than the reverse. Despite its size, it felt perfectly balanced in her grip, the enchanted bracers on her wrists augmenting her strength to wield it effortlessly.

Dreama moved toward the archive door with predatory grace. Her enchanted armor adjusted to her movements, the light plates shifting to protect vital areas. As she reached for the handle, Dreama felt a strange sense of liberation. There was no more need for pretense, for playing the obedient student or hiding her true nature. She was a necromancer now and she wasn’t going to hide it anymore. Now, finally, she had the power to be that without shame or fear. With Silence in her hand and its ancient knowledge filling her mind, she could pursue her true goal without restriction.

…Then they would regret it.

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