The nightmare began with feathers.

Lira’s obsidian beads clattered as she jolted upright, her chest heaving. Sweat dripped from the moonlit tattoos spiraling her arms—the Weave was trembling. She’d seen it in the dream: black feathers raining from the sky, each dissolving into smoke that choked the village below. And him—Kael, her mentor—standing at the forest’s edge, his tattoos dark as rot.

“Another vision?” whispered a voice. Old Mara, Thorn Hollow’s eldest, hobbled into the hut, her gnarled hand gripping a lantern. “The children… they’re screaming in their sleep again. Sores on their necks. Shadows moving.”

Lira nodded, fingers brushing the owl-feather talisman Kael had given her when she was six. “Fear is a thread,” he’d said. “Pull it, and the whole web unravels.” But Kael had vanished three nights ago, leaving only his staff buried in the riverbank.

---

Thorn Hollow’s dream catcher had always been Kael—gentle, weathered Kael, who sang lullabies in the old tongue and warded off sickness with smoke from cedar twigs. He’d raised Lira after the fever took her parents, teaching her to walk the Weave, the shimmering net that cradled dreams.

“Not a net,” he’d chided once, smiling. “A bridge. Dreams need room to breathe.”

But lately, his smiles had frayed. His tattoos, once cobalt, turned ink-black. He’d begun muttering about “teeth in the fog” and sealed himself in his hut, weaving strange symbols with blood and ash. The night he disappeared, Lira found his journal: “The Hollowed Ones whisper to me. They say… I could make the pain stop.”

---

The village well was clogged with dead moths when Lira descended into the dreamscape that night. Swallowing a tincture of poppy and starlight, she pressed her palm to the village’s sacred stone—and fell.

The Weave was a kaleidoscope of threads: gold for joy, silver for hope, and pulsing crimson for fear. But now, black veins spiderwebbed through it, throbbing like infected wounds. Following them, Lira stepped into a memory not her own:

A younger Kael, weeping over a corpse—his sister, skin blighted with nightmare-sores. “I can save you,” he choked, slicing his palm. Blood dripped onto her lips. “Take my life instead. Take it!” The scene dissolved, replaced by shadows coiling around him. “Yes,” they hissed. “We’ll make you strong enough to save everyone.”

Lira gasped awake, bile in her throat. The journal’s last page flickered in her mind: “They’ve shown me how to end suffering. No more nightmares. Only… peace.”

---

She found him in the Obsidian Wastes, a desert where forgotten dreams withered to dust.

Kael stood atop a dune, silhouetted against a blood-red moon. His tattoos were now voids, sucking light into nothingness. Around him lay villagers—Thorn Hollow’s people—entranced, their eyes milky as they murmured in unison: “No more pain. No more fear.”

“You’re killing them,” Lira screamed, tears freezing in the unnatural cold. “This isn’t peace—it’s emptiness!”

Kael turned. His eyes were gone, replaced by swirling galaxies. “They wanted this, Little Owl. No nightmares. No grief. Just… stillness.” He gestured to a threadbare boy, his breath shallow. “Would you let him suffer?”

Lira’s heart splintered. She remembered the boy—Jarek, who’d lost his father to wolves. “But you’re stealing their souls,” she whispered. “Not all wounds should be ripped away.”

A flicker of Kael surfaced. “I… I couldn’t save her,” he rasped. “My little Nessa. The Hollowed Ones promised no one else would—”

“You taught me that scars make us whole!” Lira lunged, slashing her palm. Blood splattered the Weave, and the dreamscape shuddered. Golden threads erupted, weaving a cage around Kael.

He roared, darkness lashing like vipers. “You’ll doom them!”

“No,” she wept, clutching her feather talisman. “I’ll save you.”

---

The battle was silent, desperate—a dance of light and shadow. Lira wove memories into weapons: Kael teaching her to track deer, his laughter as she spilled soup on his robes, the way he’d held her when night terrors clawed at her mind. Each thread softened the void in him.

“Let go,” she pleaded, as her strength waned. “Come home.”

For a heartbeat, Kael’s eyes cleared. “Little Owl,” he sighed, touching her face. Then, with a shattered cry, he tore the darkness from his chest—a writhing mass of teeth and feathers—and impaled it on his own staff.

The explosion of light blinded her.

---

Dawn found Lira slumped by the village stone, Kael’s body cradled in her lap. His tattoos had faded to ash-gray, his face finally calm.

Old Mara approached, the villagers stirring behind her. Jarek blinked awake, confusion melting into quiet sorrow. “The nightmares… they’re gone. But I… I can feel again.”

Lira nodded, exhaustion weighting her bones. “The Weave is healed.”

As Thorn Hollow buried Kael beneath the cedar grove, Lira snapped his staff across her knee. “Never again,” she vowed. But as the sun dipped, she glimpsed her reflection in the river—her tattoos, once silver, now edged in black.

---

That night, a child’s whimper drew her to the dreamscape. A new thread pulsed—indigo, unfamiliar. Tracing it, Lira found a boy she didn’t recognize, his dream full of falling stars and a woman’s voice: “Find the Shattered Clan. They’re coming.”

When she touched the thread, cold seeped into her veins. Somewhere, the Hollowed Ones laughed.

But Lira straightened, Kael’s feather warm against her skin. “Fear is a thread,” she whispered. “Pull it.”

And she stepped into the unknown.