Beyond the voices that come from the garden,

  Beneath the endless ocean,

  After the darkness of the infinite path,

  Atop the unshakable empire;

  One as I shall be born;

  And shall open the Gates that inhabit the shadow,

  He shall scream and make the skies bleed,

  For one as I shall end this world.

  ***

  One hour before sunrise, I lose my life for the tenth time.

  Lactic, the moonlight stands over my eyes and kisses my equally pale skin. Its light restores consciousness to my crimson eyes that watched the twilight for so long; the tenderness of its embrace protects me from the causality of the reaper. Slave to the innate vicissitude of the Unknown and driven away by the shining silver, it is once again prevented from taking me to Charon.

  The physical hallucination vanishes like dust before the separation of the black sky and the emerald forest of Aldwyn, but he will not be swayed. He curses me with his gaze and silently promises me that he shall soon return. His attempts—as infinite as the world I wander through—are getting closer and closer to success, and the moonlight will soon no longer be enough to stop him.

  His words may lack virtue, but there is some truth in them. The Hero said that the most influential liars are those who pave the trophy of infidelity with truths.

  Day after day, the monsters return to this dream world to keep me from waking up, stronger and stronger. They consume the sanctuary I fought so hard to conquer, corrupting the divine oasis that protects me in order to reach out and devour what remains of my conscience.

  At the edge of the horizon, however, the sun shines and breaks through the glow of the night star, patiently waiting for its divinity to complement that of the satellite. Reaching the warm light that emanates from the morning is proof of my victory over the darkness.

  One hour.

  To reach it, I need to survive just one more hour.

  For now, I'm safe for a few more minutes. Having exterminated the monsters, the reaper can't capture me. The next time would be easier, and I could reach the sun. I would need to.

  My arms burn. The black blood pouring from my stomach stains the emerald field and makes my eyes water. The power that traps me in the nightmare is the same power that keeps me alive, mending my limbs and gluing organs together.

  Chaos stops the bleeding, then grows my right leg and remakes the burnt skin on my left. In some instances, it uses pre-existing flesh—in others, it creates new tissue. I can't predict what it will do: trying to order it is useless. Tentacles reattach my arms as I sweat, and I clench my teeth to wait for the process to finish.

  I try to follow the fireflies that hover among the uncorrupted trees, the rocks that cast shadows on the grass of the natural clearing where I lie. The certainty of regeneration comes when the chill of the night wind finally overcomes the heat on my face. I breathe in and let the air enter my lungs, no longer filled with water and blood. Remnants vaporize, severed from the connection that made up the 'me'.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, exhale and swallow dry, get down on my knees, and push my body up. I stagger from side to side and lean on one of the rocks to avoid falling into the lake in front of me.

  It doesn't hurt as much as it should. Perhaps this was the idea that a child who had never experienced an arm being torn off would have. It was when I purposely burned my hand with fire to compare the pain that I realized that the world of nightmares hurt me more “gently”. Otherwise, I'd already be dead from the shock of the pain, like the dismemberment I'd just suffered.

  I think it's deliberate. The Unknown not only refuses to let me win, but also to take the easy way out and let me die. No. It wants me to fight, it wants me to hope that I can reach the light that shines at the end of the depths. So he wants me to fail and despair, to lose my conscience to the demons that dwell in the abyss, to give them not my body but my soul.

  Tonight's biggest fear, however, seems much worse than the usual torture that comes over me.

  Something’s off.

  A shiver runs down my spine as I shake my head to regain my faculties. I gaze at the lake I've looked at for so long in the past, the almost magical oasis that stretches out behind the simplicity of beauty. Crystal-clear, it reflects the silver moonlight like glass, its calm waters adorned by the glow of fireflies and the hooting of owls. The melancholy happiness that always hits me when I look at it comes through more strongly this time.

  I hear the shapeless footsteps and the cacophony of whispers from the dark forest that surrounds the clearing. Normally, the lake would bring me calm. It would make me think harder about another strategy that could get me past the Unknown. For a plan that would give me a chance of outwitting or outrunning the demons approaching from outside the sanctuary.

  Tonight is different. A discomfort that goes beyond the itch of my flesh rebuilding itself. It makes me unable to take my eyes off what lies beyond the endless forest that surrounds me and straight into the light.

  The creatures march towards me, invisible above the foliage of the trees.

  I frown.

  In truth, going to meet the Unknown and passing from the forests of Aldwyn to the ocean of blood that awaits me on the other side is suicide. Yes, in truth, I can get used to the comfort. I can plug my ears and pretend that nothing would happen. I can sleep inside my nightmare and let it all end in the next few moments.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  However, this sensation—this restlessness—makes me force my body to stand up. I feel the bones crackle inside as if badly fitted, the reflux come and go. The flesh fights back—to convince me to let it go, to not force itself into the unbearable pain of losing another limb, the heartbreak of hearing my heart pounding in my ears and the rush of warm blood. So he struggles not to take pleasure in it, and finds himself at a dead end.

  My power over Chaos fluctuates, and yet I control it better here than in the real world. If he lets me have that power, then I would learn to use it to defeat him.

  I breathe in, my eyes fixed on the forest in front of me. Something before me whispers in the bushes of the forest, something that cursed me before I came to be. It isn't content with a small piece of paradise, and control over a single cloud wouldn't stop its storm.

  The long-forgotten—and recent—feeling runs through my body in a shiver that leaves my fingertips numb. My heart skips a beat only to beat harder, the taste of iron returning along with the nervousness of prey falling into a trap.

  They shouldn't have rebuilt so quickly. The urge to protest against reality and let myself die rushes through my chest—but that would be just what you want.

  Fight.

  Even if they surround me, survival is more likely inside the clearing. My victory would only be to endure, then I would wake up again. I don't need demons lacerating my flesh and driving me mad, like in every other nightmare, nor hear the deafening screams of people I once knew, killed by someone I don't remember being.

  I breathe in and feel the divine authority pass through my veins until it’s manifested. The paradoxical-umbral blade is anointed pristine by the moonlight, but it corrupts the surrounding earth.

  As long as the sun didn't rise, as long as my mind didn't wake up from its hellish nightmare, as long as reality didn't drag me out of what doesn't exist, what shouldn't exist and everything in between, there would be no escape.

  It's madness—yet they scream. Still, my chest begs. Behind the cacophony of whispers, there’s an explanation for my existence that makes me clench my fist.

  Fight!

  Once again, all there is death or victory.

  Once.

  Just one more time.

  Fight!

  Because it's the right thing to do.

  FIGH-

  Something’s off.

  “…?”

  I frown.

  The whispering of the forest, the hooting of the owls, and the wandering of fireflies stop. Monsters freeze, even more suddenly than their movements. In my senses, all threat disappears, and, in return, an unusual mistrust creeps over the infertile soil of the dying forest.

  Far beyond the flesh, at the edge of my conscience, I feel the tearing of the night veil that separates reality from dream and the invasion of the forests of the Unknown. The air shatters like glass, its deformed substance becoming liquid and solid at the same time. The tormentor's terror is replaced by the new moon—a moon of confusion and invasion—created by the creature's gaze in the skies. Deep, bitter, and lonely, it is coupled in a dark, humanoid form, distinguished from the sky only by the delineation of its blue cloak and the glow that comes from the reality hidden behind its invasion.

  At one point, he looks at me like a god. He stares at the ant that is my presence in front of his, then retreats in front of it. The invader decays like a hurricane over the emerald forest in smoke and starlight. The shards that divide my consciousness, now torn apart, give way to the outside.

  Chaos. Figures and powers that I can't recognize—that I can't understand—bathed in red behind the black of the wound that made the sky weep blood. Just as a body regenerates with magic, however, the cosmos regenerated, and the celestial black regained its space.

  Paralyzed, I wait for a reaction—but it's pointless trying to think about what it is or what it was. I resume my forgetful breathing and squeeze my eyes shut to regain concentration on what is to come.

  Beyond the woods, there is no hailing of demons or wild hunting, no fighting, no pain. In one step, a silhouette appears in front of me—not a demon or a herald, but a child staring at me.

  Eyes as yellow as gold gleam under the silver of the moon behind the wet wooden mask. Dark brown rags wrapped around her, but her simple form cannot fool the eyes that see behind reality.

  My head hurts when I look directly at it. Its shape is blurred in the same way that dreams are blurred. I squeeze my eyes shut. I might have thought it was just another manifestation of the Unknown, that Chaos was playing a trick on me.

  But that's not how I feel. That's different.

  He shouldn't be here.

  “Who are you?”

  I can see a smile behind the hood that obscures his face. His unsteady silhouette points its index finger in my direction, and then at him.

  The creature clasps both hands together.

  A feeling of recognition. Something itches in my head.

  “Do I know you…?”

  He doesn't react. Instead, she points to the woods beyond the village, to Aldwyn's black forest that hides in the twilight of the night. Its emerald leaves twist and decay as in winter.

  “Wait.” I say, but the silhouette turns back to the forest. “Wait!”

  I shout at the creature in vain. I run towards it and prepare to use the chaos, but the fertile soil is never extinguished. As if alive, the clearing distorts with every step: the closer we get, the greater the distance between us becomes.

  Impossible to catch, the silhouette grabs the veil of night like a cloth and pulls it away to be swallowed up by the shadows beside itself. Diluted by the forests that gave it birth, the melancholy presence disappears and takes with it the entire structure of the nightmare world.

  Without its nocturnal firmament, the sun of the Unknown shines as it hasn't done in decades. The birds sing joyfully, bells of the boy's victory and survival against hell. Finally, hell crumbles into the same chaotic emptiness of its beginnings;

  And the slave who refused to die survives.