Chapter Text

Prologue 

In the beginning, there was the Endless.

Before gods learned to kneel, before mortals learned to pray, there were the Endless — beings older than time, bound not by will but by purpose.

Among them was one called Dream of the Endless — Morpheus, the Shaper, the Prince of Stories. He ruled the realm between wake and sleep, where every thought took form, where every desire whispered itself into being. He weaved these tales before the word story existed.

He was infinite, immutable, and unbearably alone.

To dream was to believe, to fear, to hope. But to be Dream, it meant being alone.  He was meant to be a creator and an observer, never partaking  and always watching from afar. He  cradled the universe’s imaginings in his hands and never partake in them himself. He was dutybound and cold as starlight.

Yet even in the endless repetition of creation and decay, something within him stirred — a question that had no place in eternity.

What would it mean to change?

He would not know the answer, not yet.

Not until a mortal man dared to look Death in the eye and say, “No. I think I’ll have another hundred years.”

That single defiance would set the Drea12re`2ming itself trembling. And somewhere in the infinite dark, Dream — who had never envied mortals — would begin to wonder what it meant to be alive.
a

Chapter Text

There is no beginning in the Dreaming, only continuance.

The Dreaming breathed around him — an ocean of possibility that shimmered, folded, and stretched through endless eons. Each thought given form, each sigh given shape. It was beautiful and terrible, and it was his. Morpheus stood upon the balcony of his palace, the stars bending toward his presence. Spires of onyx and glass towers rose in graceful defiance against a permenant twilight sky that had never known the touch of the sun. Down below, rivers of dreams whispered the tales of humankind — longing, joy, hope, envy, terror — flowing and melding together into the vast current of imagination.

Dream watched. He always watched.

To be Dream of the Endless was to be infinite, immutable, a sovereign bound by duty. There was only obligation. Mortals on the other hand were defined by change. Mortal civilization was always reaching, striving and building even if it did not see completion. Their lives were like the flickering flames of a candle in a gale while he was like an enduring mountain. However, endurance was not peace. It was stasis. It was suffocation. And of late, his crown and the mantle of eternity felt oddly heavy.

Done with his musing, Dream turned his gaze inward, to the heart of his domain. Lucienne’s voice drifted from the library — calm, efficient, eternal as her master’s purpose. The ravens quarreled in the tower; the gates murmured with the soft gossip of sleeping minds. Everything was as it should be. And still, he felt… restless. That moment of unease was brief. The next moment the sound of a bright chiming laughter carried on the wind — a sound that was too warm, too vibrant, to belong to his realm. He knew who it belonged to before she appeared.

“Little brother,” Death greeted, stepping out of the air next to him as if it had invited her in. Her presence softened the edges of the Dreaming, made the world exhale.

“Sister.” Morpheus inclined his head as her turned to face her. “To what do I owe your visit?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” she said lightly, examining a dream-vine that popped up from the railing of the balcony to coil around her wrist while another tugged gently at a lock of her hair. “Someone dreamed of me again. Thought I’d drop in.”

He regarded her, cool and silent. A visit from his elder sister was never "just" casual. She smiled. “You look like you’ve been pacing eternity again.”

“I am ever at work,” he replied. “There are dreams to shape, nightmares to bind, stories to tend.”

“And yet you look bored out of your skull.”

His lips curved faintly — irritation or amusement, it was hard to tell. “I do not experience boredom.”

“Sure you don’t.”

They stood together, the quiet between them threaded with affection and centuries of shared knowing.

At last, she sighed. “There’s someone I want you to meet, a mortal.”

“A mortal?” His tone skeptical.

“Yes, a mortal,” she said, eyes glinting with humor and knowing. “I met him today. Smart fellow, mouthy. Doesn’t want to die.”

“Few do.” Morpheus retorted.

“This one’s different. He refused. Told me he’d rather live forever and see how it all turns out.”

He frowned. “Arrogance.”

“Curiosity,” she corrected. “I like him. He made me laugh. Thought maybe you’d like him too.”

“Unlikely.”

Death’s smile was soft but knowing. “He said something that made me think of you. He said life is too precious to waste by accepting the end too easily.”

Morpheus turned back to his stars, his cloak whispering like nightfall. “He would learn otherwise, in time.”

“Or maybe he’ll prove you wrong.” She started to fade, her form scattering into light. “Go see for yourself, brother. Make a game of it. You love those. Maybe you won't be bored out of your skull and so stuck all the time!"

And then she was gone. her challenge and taunt still hanging in the air.

He stood alone, the echo of her laughter lingering like warmth in cold air.

Curious. A mortal who refused to die not because he was afraid of death but because he had the gall to stare back at eternity. That night, the Dreaming rippled with his curiosity. He found his target easily — a spark in the weave of dreams, bright and defiant. A tavern, a century, a wager yet to be made.

Morpheus smiled faintly, a ghost of interest stirring beneath the solemn weight of his crown.

Perhaps eternity had not shown him everything after all.

“And thus begins the wager — between Dream, who knows the inevitability of endings, and a man who dares to defy it.”

Chapter Text

The White Horse Tavern was a cacophony of  raucous laughter,  jeering and good natured banter. The air itself was thick with the smell of woodsmoke, ale, and the sweat of a hundred lives forgetting their fleeting troubles. In a darkened corner, a man, if you can call him that, appeared to step out of the shadows. His arrival went unnoticed by all save one. Death smiled cheerily when she saw him, and raised her flagon in  greeting.

“Brother,” she said, sliding a tankard across the table that no one would remember was there. “You came.”

“I did,” Dream responded as the noise of the tavern dropped to a muted hum around them. “You spoke of a mortal who refuses the end. I decided to humor you.” Morpheus had a hint of arrogance in his tone. After all, what mortal could endure the endless centuries?

“There.” Death gestured with her chin toward the bar. “The loud one. Laughing as if time has no claim on him.”

Dream followed her gaze. Among the sea of bodies  sat a man — broad-shouldered, eyes alive with unearned confidence — laughing with a warmth that seemed to overflow. Hob Gadling, though Dream did not yet know the name. There was something insolent and defiant about him. Something that drew his attention more sharply than he expected. This man’s laughter did not mock Death. It taunted her.

Dream’s gaze lingered as Hob declared, half-drunk and wholly certain, “Only fools die! It’s a choice, dying is! Folk give up too easy!” His companions jeered, but Hob grinned through it, waving them off with a slosh of ale. “You lot just lack conviction. You believe you’ve got to die, and so you do. But me? I’ll not go that way. I’ll stay and see what comes next. Forever, if it suits me.”

Morpheus felt his sister's eyes on him, smug and knowing. “He reminds you of someone?” she murmured.

“I do not know what you are insinuating," he replied coolly. Although that was half a lie. There was a hint of steel under Hob Gadling’s words that was both familiar and unsettling — the arrogance of one who refused inevitability. The same arrogance Dream himself had lived by since creation’s first breath.

Morpheus stepped forward to approach this curiosity, crossing the  sawdust-strewn floor. Reality seemed to bend toward him. The laughter dimmed. The hearth’s light seemed to draw inward, shadows gathering in his wake. Sensing new scrutiny, Hob turned. He was caught mid-laugh, his expression faltering only for a moment before an easy grin took its place.

“You are bold,” Dream said softly, his voice like wind through old stone. “You would defy Death herself?”

Hob blinked, the ale fog burning off under that gaze. “Aye. Someone’s got to.”

Morpheus chose to ignore his sister's amusement as she approached leaning casually against the wall with her arms folded. The twitching of the corners of her lips told of her barely restrained mirth. folded. “Suppose,” Dream said, his tone smooth as silk, “that you were granted your wish. Suppose you lived and lived, never aging, never dying. Would you still believe it a blessing?”

“I would,” Hob said without hesitation. “I’d learn it all — what changes, what stays, how the world twists itself. Death’s no teacher, but life is.”

There was something in the words — the rhythm of defiance, the spark of belief — that sank under Dream’s skin. He tilted his head, studying him like a puzzle. “Very well. Let us see if you mean it.”

Hob laughed, assuming jest. “And who are you to grant it?”

Dream’s eyes caught the firelight. “I am Dream of the Endless. But she is my sister, Death. Remember me, Hob Gadling. I will come to you again in one hundred years. Let us see if you still wish to live then.”

And then he was gone, leaving behind the faint scent of rain and the hush of something vast retreating from the edges of the world. Death lingered long enough to finish her drink and then she rested her hand on Hob's shoulder. The room seemed to darken for a moment and time held still. Then everything resumed and she gave Hob a wry smile. “You have your wish. See you in a century Hob.”

“Was that real?” Hob whispered.

“More real than you’ll ever understand,” she said, and vanished too.

The tavern roared back to life, as if the world had forgotten the silence. Hob stared into his cup, a thrill rising in his chest like a secret. The name Dream echoed in his mind, strange and heavy, like something out of scripture.

That night, when sleep took him, Hob dreamed. The tavern melted into a dark expanse of stars, and there he stood on a shore of sand black as ink. The tide whispered, and the sky was alive with constellations that bent and turned like eyes. From the distance came a figure — tall, robed, his skin pale as moonlight. Dream’s gaze was unreadable.

“You begin to understand,” Dream said.

“Understand what?”Hob shot back.

“That what you have asked for cannot be undone.”

Hob knew he should have been afraid, yet he wasn’t. The man’s voice wrapped around him like silk and shadow, his presence terrible and beautiful all at once. “I said I’d live,” Hob replied. “I meant it.”

Dream stepped closer. His expression did not change, but something flickered — a spark of approval, or curiosity, or perhaps both. “Then live, Hob Gadling. Live well, if you can.” The words were both encouragement and a goad.

Hob awoke with a jolt. The entire interaction burned into his memory.

In the Dreaming, Morpheus stood beside the sea of stars, the echo of the mortal’s defiance still ringing in his mind. He told himself it was merely curiosity that drew him back to that moment again and again — curiosity about a soul who would choose endurance over rest. Yet, when he closed his eyes, he did not see Death’s smile or hear the laughter of the tavern. He saw the light in Hob’s eyes when he said I’ll live.

It was the same light that mortals carried into love, into art, into madness — the light of those who would dare the impossible just to feel something more.

Dream turned away, his cloak unfurling into the night. The Dreaming shifted with his thought, stars rearranging into constellations he did not name. He told himself this experiment, this wager, was nothing more than a study in persistence.

But even as the centuries turned, the echo of that laughter remained — bright and human, cutting through eternity’s silence like a heartbeat.

And for the first time in an age, Dream found himself waiting.

Chapter Text

The Dreaming was vast. It was a tapestry of endless possibility that was woven from the minds of sleeping mortals. It shifted and morphed into new forms with every human that joined the collective dreaming or left it. Kingdoms fell and rose again in the span of a sigh, oceans boiled, and stars sang lullabies to the void. In all of this, Morpheus walked alone. Time had no weight here, yet it pressed against him all the same. The years in the waking world had passed like water, but he felt each ripple that mortal imagination made, each dream that reached for eternity and fell short.

Among the countless mindscapes, one soul stood out night after night and called his attention. Tonight, he gave to that urge, following the faint, stubborn pulse that refused to fade. Hob Gadling. The man who had laughed in Death’s face, who had declared his refusal of mortality as though it were a choice easily cast aside. Dream had expected the man to crumble — to succumb to despair, to seek death’s mercy once the novelty of endless days wore thin. Instead, Hob had endured. He had lived through plague and famine, through war and winter, and still, the spark of defiance had not dimmed.

Morpheus told himself his interest was academic. What became of a man unmoored from death’s final kindness? Would he decay inwardly, his mind corroded by eternity? Or would he evolve into something else entirely — a creature not of one world or the next? Dream found himself seeking the answer more often than he cared to admit.

Tonight, he stood within Hob’s dream. It was a battlefield soaked in mud and blood, the cries of men ringing through the fog. Hob, armored and scarred, raised a sword against an unseen enemy. His face was older, hardened by grief, yet there was a strange light in his eyes — not madness, but certainty. He fought not for glory or god, but for the simple act of surviving.

Dream watched from the mist’s edge. This was not intervention, he told himself. It was observation. However, when the nightmare shifted towards terror. When Hob’s sword arm shook and faltered — Dream extended a hand, reshaping the vision. The battlefield dissolved into a quiet meadow. The grass was long and silver beneath the stars. Hob, panting, looked around, his sword lowering. “What…?”

Dream stepped forward, his form half-veiled by starlight. “Your dream was darkening,” he said. “You did not need to endure that particular memory tonight.”

Hob blinked, recognition flickering at the edge of his thoughts. “I know you,” he murmured. “Or I’ve dreamt of you before.”

Dream tilted his head. “Perhaps you have.”

Hob frowned. “You were there. In the tavern. The one who said I’d live forever.”

“Not forever,” Dream corrected softly. “Merely until you tire of life.”

“Right,” Hob said with a laugh that was not entirely steady. “Well, it hasn’t bored me yet.”

Dream studied him in silence. Hob met his gaze without flinching. That same defiance still lived there, tempered now by loss and experience, but it remained unbroken.

“I thought you’d forgotten,” Hob said after a moment, breaking the uneasy silence.

“I forget nothing,” Dream replied, though the words were softer than he intended. “I am Dream. I am memory itself.”

“Then you’ve been watching me all this time?” Hob gave Dream an assessing look.

Dream hesitated. The truth was complicated. He had not watched constantly, but he had found himself drawn, again and again, to the edges of Hob’s mindscape. There was a steadiness in the man that felt… grounding. In the wake of endless centuries, where even stars flickered and gods fell silent, Hob Gadling simply was.

“I have seen you,” Dream admitted.

Hob’s expression shifted — curiosity first, then a faint smile. “Well then. I suppose I should thank you for the dream. The battlefield was getting a bit grim.”

Dream inclined his head. “You owe me no gratitude.”

“Still,” Hob said. “Thank you. You could’ve left me to it. Most nights I do relive the worst of them.”

Dream turned his gaze toward the horizon. “You do not dream of peace easily.”

“Peace doesn’t come easily to those who live long enough to see too much,” Hob said quietly. “But I try.”

The two stood in silence as the dream’s sky deepened into indigo. Dream could have dissolved it with a thought, but something about the stillness felt rare — the sound of a mortal heart beating not in fear or grief, but in persistence. Hob had lost more than any mortal should. And yet he remained.

Finally, Dream said, “You should wake soon.”

Hob smiled faintly. “Aye. And in a hundred years, I suppose I’ll see you again in the waking world?”

Dream’s lips curved in something that might have been the ghost of a smile. “Indeed.”

When Hob awoke, the dream faded from his mind like morning mist — but the feeling of it remained. For days afterward, he caught glimpses of pale figures in his peripheral vision, shadows that watched but did not threaten. He found himself speaking into the silence sometimes, as though the stranger might answer.

In the Dreaming, Morpheus returned to his palace, to the endless corridors and shifting halls that mirrored his thoughts. Lucienne met him by the library steps, her arms full of books that had never been written. “You seem… distracted, my lord,” she said.

“I am not,” Dream replied too quickly.

Lucienne raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She had served him too long to press when he did not wish it. Yet as he walked away, she murmured, “It’s unlike you to linger in a single mortal’s dream.”

Dream paused only a moment before vanishing into the shadows.

In his private chamber, he stood before the glass window that looked upon the collective sky of all dreamers. Hob’s thread shone faintly among the constellations of mortal thought — not bright like a child’s, nor fading like the elderly. A steady glow. Balanced. Mortal, and yet… not. Hob was proving himself to be enduring.

Moprheus told himself again that this was intellectual curiosity and nothing more.  Maybe if he repeated it enough, it would be true. He found himself tracing Hob’s life through the dreams of others — the soldiers who fought beside him, the lovers who touched his life for a moment and were gone. In each of their dreams, Hob appeared like a fixed point in the storm, a man too stubborn to fall.

When Dream slept — if such a being could — he dreamed of the tavern. Of laughter and firelight, of Hob’s voice declaring I’ll live. The sound carried into eternity like an echo, reverberating through the chambers of his mind.

He was not used to the idea of waiting. For gods, waiting was patience; for Endless, it was inevitability. But for Dream, waiting for Hob felt like something else — a thread of anticipation he could not name. He was new to that feeling.

Years later, Hob found himself wandering through the aftermath of yet another war. His hands were calloused from the forge, his face lined with years that refused to progress further. He had seen empires rise and fall, watched the invention of the printing press, the slow stirrings of what men called “progress.” And through it all, he lived. Sometimes, when he closed his eyes, he could still hear the voice of that strange, beautiful being from his dreams — the one who had promised him time.

He dreamt of him again one night, though he could not tell if it was memory or desire. In the dream, the tavern was empty. The fire had gone cold, but Dream sat at the table nonetheless, waiting.

“You’re early,” Dream said when Hob entered.

“Couldn’t wait another fifty years,” Hob replied, grinning. “Didn’t know if you’d still want to see me.”

Dream regarded him with that same unreadable gaze. “I said I would come. I do not break my word.”

“Right. Course not. You’re— what did you call yourself again? Dream of the Endless?”

“Correct.”

“And you just… do this? Watch over folk? Grant them… whatever this is?”

Dream tilted his head slightly. “What this is,” he said, “is a wager. You wished to live. I wished to see what becomes of a mortal unburdened by death. Nothing more.”

Hob frowned, but there was no real anger in it. “If that’s true, then why do you sound like you care?”

Dream’s expression flickered, the barest hint of emotion crossing his face before he smoothed it away. “You presume too much, Hob Gadling.”

“Maybe,” Hob said, smiling. “But I’m usually right.”

The dream wavered then, the tavern fading into darkness. Hob reached out instinctively — and his hand brushed against Dream’s. It was cold, impossibly so, but solid. When he looked up, Dream was already gone, the space around him collapsing into the quiet hum of morning.

He woke with the impression of starlight lingering on his skin.

In the Dreaming, Morpheus stood on his balcony where his sister visited him all those years ago, his cloak flowing like a storm behind him. He had not meant to touch the mortal. It had been instinct — a moment of connection that slipped past his control. He told himself it was meaningless, a reflex born of curiosity. Yet, when he lifted his hand, he could still feel the echo of warmth where their fingers had met.

He turned toward the endless night. “You are foolish, brother,” he murmured to himself. But the word brother did not sound right. It was something softer, more uncertain.

Dream’s palace was silent. The stars pulsed faintly in the distance, carrying the dreams of a billion souls. And somewhere among them, Hob Gadling dreamed of him still.

Dream closed his eyes and whispered, “Then live, Hob Gadling. Live well.”

But even as he said it, he knew he was not speaking as a lord to a subject, or even a god to a mortal. He was speaking as something lonelier — a creature who had begun to wonder if eternity, in all its perfection, was meant to be shared.

Chapter Text

The White Horse Tavern had changed, but not so much as to be unrecognizable. Hob  sat in the same corner where he’d once laughed at death, tracing the rim of his cup with a thumb that had seen centuries. The smell of ale and woodsmoke still permeated the air although the laughter seemed quieter now. Or perhaps it only seemed quieter because he had learned to listen for other things. Two hundred years had passed since his encounter with the strange siblings. He still half wondered at times if this was all an incredible fever-dream. However he still stood as a testament to that night. He had survived plague, fire, and war. He had watched monarchs rise and fall, and the ink of new worlds stain the edges of old maps. He had built fortunes and lost them, loved and buried those loves in quiet graves. He had thought that immortality would feel like victory — to stand where others had fallen. But there were nights, too many now, when the silence and emptiness threatened to overwhelm. 

He told himself he didn’t need anyone. That was the rule of it, wasn’t it? To live forever, one must be willing to watch everything else die. But as he sat there, alone at that table, he realized he’d been lying to himself for decades. He needed something — someone — to make eternity make sense.

And he knew who that someone was.

It had been a hundred years since Dream had last appeared to him in person. A hundred years of half-remembered dreams, of pale figures with impossibly dark eyes glimpsed in the shadows of his sleep. Sometimes, when Hob dreamed of the sea or of battle, Dream was there — silent, distant, always watching. He never spoke, but Hob felt his presence like the whisper of a storm before the rain.

Tonight, he waited again.

He had tried to tell himself that this was foolish, that Dream was a being beyond mortal affection — a god, a concept, an idea given form. But Hob remembered the way Dream had looked at him during their first encounter and the countless times he intervened in the dreaming world preventing a nightmare from progressing to outright terror. With all of this, he couldn’t help but feel tethered. He could hope for something more.

Just then, the tavern door opened, interrupting his musing. The draft that followed was colder than it should have been. Hob looked up, and the years fell away. Dream stood in the doorway, unchanged — no older, no wearier.

“You came,” Hob said, his voice rough with something like relief.

Dream inclined his head, his expression unreadable. “I said I would.” His voice still held that odd quality, as if the deep ocean depths had spoken.

Hob gestured to the seat across from him. “And I kept the table warm.”

Dream sat, his movements fluid, otherworldly. The noise of the tavern dimmed again, as though the world itself held its breath.

“You have lived,” Dream said softly.

“I have,” Hob answered. “Though I can’t say I’ve enjoyed all of it.” He laughed, but it sounded hollow even to him. “It gets lonely, you know. Folk come and go. The world keeps changing, and you start to feel like a ghost haunting your own life.”

Dream’s gaze was steady, but there was a flicker of something in it — empathy, or perhaps recognition. “And yet you endure.” A brief pause, “Or are you done Hob Gadling?”

“No. I am not done. What else is there to do but to endure?” Hob said. “You said I’d live until I tired of it. But what if I don’t? What if I just keep… going?”

“Then you are as I am,” Dream murmured.

Hob met his eyes. “And are you happy, being as you are?”

Dream’s jaw tightened. He looked away, toward the fire. “Happiness is a mortal concept. I do not concern myself with it.”

“Maybe you should,” Hob said quietly. “You look like a man who’s forgotten what it feels like.”

It was as if a flip had switched. Dream’s gaze snapped back to him, sharp as glass. “I am not a man!”

The words landed like a slap, but Hob didn’t flinch. He had learned by now that anger, even divine anger, could be weathered. “No,” he said, “you’re not. But you still came back. Which means something brought you here.”

Dream’s silence was heavy.

Hob leaned forward, his voice low, challenging. “You could’ve left me to rot. But you didn’t. Why?”

For a long moment, Dream said nothing. Then, with the faintest tremor in his voice like cracks beginning to appear in ice, he said, “Because you asked for eternity. And eternity is not meant to be endured alone.”

Hob’s breath caught. “You… you mean that?”

Dream’s expression softened, only for a moment. “Do not make the mistake of thinking I feel as you do.”

“But you do feel,” Hob said, smiling faintly. “That’s more than most immortals I’ve met.”

Dream stood suddenly, his cloak stirring though there was no wind. “You know nothing of what I feel.”

Hob rose too, frustration breaking through his calm. “Then tell me! Because I’ve spent two centuries trying to make sense of you — of why I’m still here, of why I keep waiting for you to walk through that door.”

The tavern’s light flickered, as though the air itself shuddered. Dream’s eyes glowed faintly, like the heart of a storm. “Do not presume familiarity with me, Hob Gadling. I am not your companion.”

The words cut deep. Hob’s chest tightened, his throat thickening. “Then what am I!? Your pet project? Some experiment to watch rot from a distance?”

Dream hesitated — and that, more than anything, made the silence unbearable.

Hob’s voice cracked as he said, “You could’ve just said you don’t care.”

Dream’s eyes softened imperceptibly. “If I did not care,” he said, “I would not have come.”

And then he was gone, leaving behind only the faint smell of rain and the echo of something that might have been regret.

Hob didn’t go home that night. He walked through the sleeping city until dawn, his steps hollow against the cobblestones. The streets glowed with mist, the air sharp and cold.

He told himself he was angry. Angry at Dream for his arrogance, for his distance, for that unbearable calm that felt like dismissal. But beneath the anger was something else — a raw ache he couldn’t name.

He thought of Dream’s voice, the way it carried the weight of ages. He thought of the loneliness he’d glimpsed there, the weariness that even an Endless couldn’t hide. And he realized something then: for all his otherworldliness, Dream was just as trapped by time as Hob was.

He wanted to hate him for it. He couldn’t.

That night, Hob dreamed again. He stood in the same meadow as before, silver grass swaying under starlight. But Dream wasn’t there. Only the echo of his voice, soft and distant — You are not meant to be alone.

When Hob woke, his pillow was wet with tears. He didn’t remember when he’d last wept.

In the Dreaming, Morpheus stood by the edge of the sea of stars, the sound of Hob’s grief reverberating through his realm. He told himself it was right to keep his distance — that attachments to mortals only led to suffering. He had seen it before, countless times. Love, in the hands of Endless, became a weapon turned inward.

And yet…

When he closed his eyes, he saw Hob’s face — the anger, the hurt, the hope that refused to die. He could still feel the echo of Hob’s heartbeat through the Dreaming.

“Why do you linger in my mind?” he whispered to the void. The stars gave no answer.

He thought of Death, her laughter warm and human, and how she had once told him that mortals were stronger than they seemed. They love knowing it will end, she’d said. You could stand to learn from that. Her words were haunting even more so now than they were then.

Dream looked toward the mortal realm, where Hob’s soul flickered like a stubborn flame. He could not admit — not even to himself — that it comforted him to know it was still there.

And somewhere, faintly, as if from the waking world itself, he thought he heard a voice — rough, human, and unbreakable — singing against the silence.

I’d stay forever if forever was you.

Dream closed his eyes. He would see Hob again. He always did.

But for the first time in eternity, he was not certain what he would say when he did.

Chapter Text

There was a persistent drizzle throughout the day. It was the kind of day that  left behind a cold that sunk into your bones as if you would never get warm again. Inside the White Horse Tavern it was as if time stood still. The air was thick with the smell of woodsmoke and ale just as it was all those centuries ago. Hob Gadling sat alone in the corner nursing a glass of ale  just like he had three hundred years previously. The years had softened but not broken him. The lines around his mouth spoke of laughter, and the faint streaks of silver in his hair spoke of time that refused to claim him. This century, he had built a quiet, steady life again — a small printing press, a few apprentices, and a modest home filled with ink-stained pages. He liked the rhythm of it. The steady hum of machinery, the permanence of words pressed to paper. But even in the comfort of his craft, there was always an emptiness in the room where silence lingered too long.

He told himself it didn’t matter. That ethereal being that granted him immortality and fostered a friendship with him only to deny that same friendship many years later — was gone for good. He had even begun to believe it, sometimes. But still, he waited. Every hundred years, without fail, he found himself at this table. As the hours passed, he tried to convince himself it was a habit. Nothing more. He was keeping his end of the bargain.

When the door opened, the noise of the tavern fell away like a breath caught in the throat.

Dream entered soundlessly like a wraith. Reality bent around him, shielding him from the notice of other tavern patrons. The only mark of his presence was the unexplainable cold and shiver that ran down the spine of those he passed by. In Hob's eyes, the years had not touched him. He was as he had always been — tall and lithe, skin glowing like moonlight and eyes dark as the abyss. 

Hob did not stand. He only looked up, heart hammering in a way he thought he’d forgotten. Morpheus found him almost immediately. For a long moment, they simply stared at each other across the tavern, two constants in a world that refused to stand still. Dream approached, each step soundless, and stopped at the table. The silence between them was a living thing.

“You came,” Hob said finally, voice rough from disuse.

“I did as I said I would.” Dream replied, his tone quiet, unreadable.

“I wasn’t sure you would.”

“Nor was I,” Dream said after a pause. “And yet, here I am.”

Something simultaneously released and tightened in his chest at that admission. He gestured to the empty seat across from him. “Well, don’t just stand there. It’s your turn to buy.”

A ghost of a smile whispered across Morpheus's lips. Dream took his seat with slightly wooden and hesitant movements - not quite sure what to make of the situation. When the serving girl brought ale, Dream regarded it distastefully. Hob had to bite back a grin.

“Still pretending you drink?” Hob asked.

“I find that mortals expect it,” Dream murmured. “It is easier to oblige than explain.”

Hob laughed, the sound surprising them both. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Dream’s gaze lifted, steady and searching. “And yet you have.”

Hob tilted his head. “For the better, I hope.”

Dream did not answer immediately. “For the truer,” he said at last.

The words hung heavily between them. Neither sure what to do next. Hob looked down into his cup seeking answers to questions he did not know how to ask. The silence stretched and warmth began to creep into his cheeks.

When Dream spoke again, his voice was softer. “You were angry with me.”

Hob huffed out a laugh. “You told me you weren’t my friend. I suppose I was allowed to be a bit cross about it.”

“I did not intend cruelty.”

“You managed it anyway,” said flatly. 

Morpheus’s eyes lowered. The firelight turned his expression fragile, almost human. “I thought distance would protect us both.”

“Protect us from what?”

Dream looked at him, and for a heartbeat, the full weight of endlessness stared through him. “Attachment,” he said simply.

Hob leaned back, studying him. “You know, that’s the difference between us. You treat attachment  like it’s a wound. I call it the reason to keep breathing.”

A faint furrow formed between Dream’s brows. “You are mortal. You must attach to endure.”

“I’m immortal now,” Hob said, voice soft but firm. “And still I choose to.”

For a long while, Dream said nothing. The sounds of the tavern seemed to recede, leaving only the two of them suspended in the hush of something unspoken. Finally, he exhaled, a sound almost too small to be heard.

“I have missed our talks,” Dream said.

Hob froze. He had imagined those words a thousand times, never expecting to hear them aloud.

“I’d ask if that’s your way of apologizing,” Hob said lightly, though his throat felt tight. “But I think I’ll take it either way.”

Dream inclined his head, solemn. “Then take it as such.”

The rain outside had eased to a mist. The window beside them reflected the faint outline of their faces — the mortal and the Endless, both etched by time in their own ways.

“Funny thing,” Hob said quietly. “I thought this past century that eternity might not be all I thought it would be. Turns out, it’s only unbearable when you’re alone.”

Dream’s gaze lingered on the reflection. “And yet, you are not alone.”

Hob smiled faintly. “No. Not tonight.”

The words settled between them like a promise neither dared to name.

They talked until the fire burned low. Hob told stories — absurd ones, tragic ones, ones that made Dream’s lips twitch in ways that almost resembled laughter. When Hob spoke of the printing press, Dream listened with unexpected curiosity, asking questions about ink and the permanence of words. Hob thought of telling him that he, too, was a kind of story — something written into the world that refused to fade — but the thought felt too intimate, so he let it stay unspoken.

When the night waned, they rose together. Dream’s movements were as fluid as mist; Hob’s felt heavier, rooted in earth. They stood near the door, the last two souls in a tavern gone quiet.

“You’ll come again?” Hob asked, keeping his tone casual, though his pulse betrayed him.

“I will,” Dream said. His eyes met Hob’s, endless and dark and full of something that might have been tenderness. “If you wish it.”

Hob smiled, a little sad and a little amused. “Of course I wish it. You don’t need to make it sound like a royal decree.”

Dream’s lips curved, just slightly. “Then it is settled.”

He stepped back, and the edges of him began to blur, dissolving into the pale wash of dawn leaking through the tavern door.

“Dream,” Hob said quietly.

The Endless paused.

Hob hesitated showing a glimmer of vunerabilty, then simply said, “I’m glad you came back.”

Dream’s voice, when it came, was a naked new thing. “As am I.”

And then he was gone.

Hob stood for a while in the doorway, the smell of rain and woodsmoke lingering around him. The street beyond was still wet, the sky streaked with the pale silver of morning. He felt, for the first time in a long while, not the weight of eternity — but the shape of something gentler, something like belonging.

He smiled to himself and turned toward home.

Far away, in the Dreaming, Morpheus stood before an expanse of stars that pulsed faintly in time with the mortal world. Lucienne waited nearby, an open ledger in her hands, but he had not spoken since returning.

“Was it worth it?” she asked eventually, her tone neutral, though curiosity flickered beneath it.

Dream’s gaze remained on the horizon. “Yes.”

“Shall I note this meeting as a continuation of the wager?”

After a pause, he shook his head. “No,” he said softly. “The wager is long since ended.”

Lucienne tilted her head. “And what is it now, then?”

Dream turned, and though his expression was unreadable, there was a faintness to his voice that almost resembled warmth.

“A meeting between friends.”

He looked up once more, and in the boundless sky of the Dreaming, a single star burned brighter — a light that did not fade, no matter how the centuries turned.

Chapter Text

The modular segments of the  Dreaming took on the shape of its inhabitants' subconscious. Hence why the border between reality and dreams can be so blurred. This was the case with Hob. He came to his surroundings as gently as one falls into the arms of sleep. It came as the quiet familiarity of a late summer afternoon. Soft golden light filtered through the leaves overhead. The warm scent of warming baking bread and lavender assailed his senses as he walked down a particular path. Hob walked through it without questioning where he was or why. Dreams had their own logic, and memory had its own gravity.

As the path cleared, a house came into view. It was one he had not seen in centuries but he recognized it instantly. It was one of the many he had lived in but this one felt the most like home since he started on this path of immortality. Seeing it again felt like wearing a well-worn sweater that was comfortable in all the right places. The vines creeping up the outside facade of the house, the old wood floors, the uneven stone path through the garden, and the kettle humming against the heat of the stove. He knew the sound of its whistle before it came. Just like he knew the scent of warm bread wafting through the afternoon air originated from that kitchen - the kitchen that was the heart of his family's home with someone always cooking or gathering there. Memory lived in the bones, not the mind.

As with the way of dreams, he found himself sitting on a little bench in the garden not questioning how he got there.  A woman’s laughter floated from inside — bright, familiar, beloved. It belonged to his wife from that life. She was not his first nor his last. However, she was one whose memory had stayed with  him like a favorite book that was dog-eared with affection.  She stepped through the doorway and looked at him the way one looks at something cherished and precious. Her hair was pinned loosely with tendrils framing her face, a face was shaped not by age but by joy and her eyes held warmth that time could not erase. Hob’s breath caught, and his smile rose without conscious effort.

Then came the sound of running children — two of them — chasing each other down the hallway and out into the garden past their mother. Their voices were raised with shrieks of delight. Hob watched with amusement as they ran through the grass that was a little too tall. His wife, Racheal, meandered her way through the garden to him.  She joined him on the bench and rested her head on his shoulder. Together they watched as their children tumbled through summer-green grass. Hob laughed — real laughter, the kind that curved came from the bottom of your soul and lights up your entire being. It was happiness without analysis, joy without fear of its end. It was the moment humans never realize is precious until later, when memory is all that remains.

The Dreaming let the memory play out slowly, without cruelty. It allowed him warmth before sorrow. But eventually, the golden light thinned, dimmed. The edges of the house blurred. The laughter grew faint, like voices in another room. His wife’s hand slipped from his, fingers dissolving like mist pulled by a gentle breeze. The children faded next. The garden dimmed. The world softened into a quiet field of tall grass under a late dusk sky.

Hob stood alone.

He didn’t break. The grief that came was not the grief of fresh loss — not sharp, not consuming. It was an ache that had softened over centuries, worn smooth like sea glass. A bruise, not a wound. He inhaled slowly, letting it settle through him. They had lived. They had loved. They had died. He had continued on. That was the price of immortality. But, it was also his reward to find these different loves through the years.

A presence settled beside him. Not arrival — simply revealing. Morpheus had been there the entire time, observing. His expression held no judgment, no pity. Only attention, deep and steady and ancient.

“I knew you were there,” Hob said quietly. “Near the end of it.”

Dream inclined his head. A yes.

“Your dream carried joy,” he said. “And grief. Both called to me.”

Hob let his gaze travel across the field. “They were good years,” he murmured. “Better than I ever expected to have. I wouldn’t trade them. Not any of it. Even knowing how it ended.”

Dream’s eyes followed the breeze moving through the tall grass. “Your grief does not consume you.” It was said as a statement but Hob could tell the underlying question that was there.

“It used to,” Hob admitted. “But I learned. Grief doesn’t mean the love was wrong. It means the love mattered.” He paused. “I can be sad they’re gone and still be glad they were here.”

Dream was quiet for a long moment — the kind of silence that meant thinking, not absence.

“I loved someone once,” he said. Not lightly. Not casually. A truth pried open from somewhere deep. “Her name was Nada.”

The air shifted. The Dreaming responded not to his words but to the weight of them. The field dissolved into heat, bright sky, and red stone. They stood atop a sun-warmed cliff overlooking a city carved of gold and sandstone, alive with market sounds, distant drums, children’s chatter, the heartbeat of community. It was beautiful. Vibrant. Alive.

And in the heart of it stood a woman like dawn embodied surrounded by bustling people all needing her attention.

Nada.

She stood tall, sure-footed, and powerful. Her presence radiated the devotion and responsibility she felt toward her people.  You could tell she did not view it as a burden but as a blessing she was bestowed with. Her gaze held wisdom and strength and a gentleness that did not soften her power. She looked out over her city with love — not possessive, but protective.

Dream’s memory-self stood beside her, wrapped in night and starlight, dark to her bright. They were close, but not touching. The space between them was charged, sacred.

“She saw me,” Dream said. “Not as ruler. Not as power. Simply as myself.”

The scene shifted — a conversation in a quiet courtyard, whispered laughter under a flowering tree, hands reaching almost but not quite touching.

Then the refusal.

Nada’s face was grief-struck, but certain as stone. She cupped Dream’s cheek, thumb brushing gently under his eye. Her love was unmistakable. But so was her resolve.

“She chose her people. Her mortal world. Her responsibility.” Dream’s voice trembled and fell to a thin rasp although his face remained neutral. “She believed love should not ask one to abandon their life.”

The scene fractured like glass struck from within.

They returned to the field — only now the sky was darker, heavy with dusk.

“I did not understand,” Dream said. “I believed love should be answered. That devotion justified itself. That her refusal was rejection of me.”

His voice sharpened, just slightly.

“I was wounded,” he said. “And I believed my pain to be the truth of the matter.”

Hob listened carefully, without interruption.

“And I punished her,” Dream said finally. “For choosing her life. For choosing herself. I condemned her soul to the Sun.”

Silence. Real and sacred.

Hob spoke gently. “You were wrong.”

Dream’s eyes flicked toward him — sharp, sudden — a flash of pride, of the instinct to defend himself, to assert power, to avoid vulnerability.

“I was not entirely wrong,” he said, voice gone cool. “She turned from what we could have been—”

Hob didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t harden his tone. He simply met Dream where he was.

“She didn’t owe you herself,” he said. “Even if she loved you. Especially because she loved you.”

Dream’s jaw tightened — only slightly, but enough that the Dreaming dimmed around them.

“I—” Dream began.

“You don’t need to defend yourself to me,” Hob said quietly. “I’m not judging you. I’m just seeing you. That’s all.”

Morpheus froze.

Not visibly. Not dramatically. But Hob felt the shift. The sudden closing of doors. The drawing up of walls older than nations.

“I have said too much,” Dream said — but the words meant I have allowed myself to be seen.

Hob took a step forward. “You haven’t.”

Dream stepped back. “This is not—” His voice fractured, collected, hardened. “I should not have—”

He did not flee like a frightened creature he told himself, he withdrew like a king retreating into fortress walls. Formal. Controlled. Devastatingly distant.

“Hob Gadling. We will meet again.”

The Dreaming pulled away from Hob — color and sound and warmth collapsing inward like breath exhaled into cold air. Dream vanished.

Hob stood alone once more.

The field was quiet. The sky was dark now, a deep ocean blue with no stars.

He let out a slow breath. Not shaken — saddened. The kind of sadness that comes from seeing someone almost reach for your hand before pulling back.

“You’re not ready yet,” he murmured into the quiet. “But you will be.”

The Dreaming didn’t answer.

And somewhere beyond it — in a cold, unseen corner of the waking world — a circle was being drawn.

A spell was being prepared.

A trap was being set.

Dream, now raw and unguarded, would walk directly toward it.

And Hob, though he could not yet know it, would be the one who tried to find him in the dark.

Chapter Text

The Dreaming was restless. It was a mirror of its creator although he did not acknowledge his role in the current turmoil.

Morpheus stood at the highest balcony of his castle, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out unseeing across the vast expanse of his realm. What once stretched in serene perfection now shifted with unease. Hills heaved up and down like the chest of a sleeping giant, clouds twisted into unfamiliar forms, and the great river that ran through the valley shimmered with conflicting tides. The Dreaming had always reflected him—his moods, his thoughts, his choices—but this was different. It felt heavier. Disjointed.

He did not like to acknowledge that he was the cause.

Lucienne interrupted his musings. Appearing quietly beside him with a book held close to her chest she suspiciously commented, “You have returned early, my lord.” After no immediate response, she followed up with a slightly sharper tone and an arched brow, “Is something amiss in the waking world? Perhaps with a certain human.”

Morpheus shot his librarian a quick side-way glare that she didn't flinch away from. Before he could reply, the landscape pulled his attention away again. He was seeing the Dreaming but not wholly present yet. His eyes followed a flight of dream-birds that circled a collapsing spire, reforming it into a twisted version of itself. “The waking world is… noisy,” he said finally. His voice was calm, but his jaw was tight, his posture coiled. “Mortals are unpredictable.”

Lucienne regarded him for a moment longer before bowing her head. “If I may, the Dreaming has felt your preoccupation keenly. And your return here,” she said, glancing out at the warped horizon— “has stirred it further. Perhaps a time of stillness would do you good.”

He said nothing, merely inclined his head, and she took that as dismissal. When she left, the air around him seemed to grow heavier still.

---

Later, he found himself wandering the long corridors of his palace, the echo of his own footsteps following like a rebuke. He was halfway to the throne room when a flutter of wings broke the silence.

“Hey, boss.”

Matthew landed on a railing, head cocked, feathers ruffled. “The place is having… what’s the word? A meltdown. Got rivers flowing backward, trees crying, and I swear I saw one of the nightmares turn itself inside out. That normal?”

Morpheus did not stop walking. “The Dreaming is self-correcting.”

“Uhh, sure let's go with that,” Matthew said. Not to be deterred, Matthew glided after Morpheus adding,“But you know, maybe it’s picking up on some—uh—emotional turbulence? You wanna talk about it?”

That earned him a look. A quiet, dangerous kind of look.

Landing on a nearby perch, Matthew fluffed his feathers. “Or we could not. Look. Don't kill the messenger! I’m just saying, whatever’s going on in your head is leaking out into the landscape. And it’s kinda freaking everyone out.”

“I am aware,” Morpheus said curtly. His tone was glacial and the look he sent the raven was enough to send shivers down his non-existent human spine. 

Matthew took that as the end of the conversation. He may be a Raven in this life but he liked this form and had no desire to be changed into a beetle - thank you very much. The raven hesitated, then muttered under his breath, “Man needs a vacation.”

Morpheus almost smiled at that—almost—but the moment passed. He waved a hand, dismissing Matthew, who took the opportunity to flee his seemingly irate king. Matthew whispered under his breath as he escaped,“Lucienne, you so owe me for this. I almost got turned into a beetle!”

---

By the time Fiddler’s Green arrived, the castle’s main hall had begun to subtly shift again. The floor was now an intricate mosaic of mirrored glass, and the columns leaned as if bowing under invisible weight. Mervyn Pumpkinhead trudged in behind the green man, hands on his hips, muttering about structural instability.

“Morning, boss,” Merv said, cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Or, uh—whatever time it is here. Place is acting up again. We got an entire field that turned into ocean mist, and the Dreamers in sector nine are seeing double. Thought you oughta know.”

Fiddler’s Green nodded in polite agreement. “And the flora along the edge of the fields are wilting, then sprouting anew, as though uncertain what form to take. The Dreaming is in a state of flux, Lord Morpheus.”

“It reflects its master,” Lucienne snarked as she strode into the throne room with a thick folder clutched in her arms. “I see we still haven't taken a quiet moment, my lord,” she added. Brandishing the thick folder to the room she continued, “This, this is just a fraction of all of the anomalies that are popping up in the Dreaming. Someone should do something about it.”

Merv snorted. “No kidding. Look, no offense, but maybe take a nap or something? Or—what’s the word—self-care?”

The corner of Fiddler’s Green’s mouth twitched. “I think what Merv means, my lord, is that your state of mind seems to be influencing more than just the weather.”

Morpheus fixed the three of them with a measured stare. “The Dreaming is under control.”

None of them believed that, but they knew better than to push it further. They left in their own ways—Merv grumbling, Fiddler’s Green bowing with soft-spoken grace, and Lucienne retreated to her library.

When they were gone, silence returned, but it wasn’t peaceful. It pressed in on him.

---

He retreated to his throne. Sitting there, surrounded by the shifting expanse of his domain, Morpheus felt the weight of his thoughts settle. Hob’s voice haunted him still—the human’s calm insistence that grief need not be punishment, that forgiveness was not surrender. He had spoken of his lost loves, of his mortality, of acceptance. Dream had listened and, for the first time in countless centuries, had felt seen. And then, foolishly, he had opened himself—spoken of Nada, of love turned to wrath, of punishment disguised as justice.

He could still see her face in his mind, as vividly as when the earth swallowed her beneath his command. He closed his eyes and the Dreaming responded, reshaping itself around his thoughts. The walls of his throne room dissolved into a vast red desert. The air shimmered with heat, the sky burning gold. In the distance, the outline of a city stood—once proud, now half-buried by sand.

He stood there, alone in that remembered place.

Nada’s laughter echoed faintly across the dunes, soft and warm. He turned toward the sound and saw her—just a memory, a figment drawn by his own guilt. She was radiant as he remembered, her eyes alive with the fire of her people.

“You would not let me love you,” he said quietly, almost to himself.

Her voice carried back to him, though she was not truly there. “You would not let me live.”

The words hit harder than he expected.

He looked away. “I offered you eternity. I offered you all that I am.”

“And I asked for what you are not,” she whispered, the mirage flickering. “Mercy.”

The desert wind rose, scattering her image like sand. When he returned to himself, the throne room had been rebuilt around him. His hands were trembling slightly, though he would never admit it. He spoke aloud, as if testing the thought in the air: “I was wrong.”

The Dreaming seemed to still for a heartbeat, as though listening.

Then, softer: “And yet, I believed I was right. I… believed I was preserving balance.”

The admission felt like swallowing glass.

He thought of Hob again—how the mortal had not judged him, only listened. How his compassion had felt almost unbearable in its simplicity. How his words had pierced the armor of his pride. He 7had fled from that, too. From kindness. From understanding. Because it felt too much like exposure.

Now, sitting in his throne, he understood what that meant.

He had been lonely for so long that he’d mistaken it for strength.

---

The air in the castle shifted suddenly, colder now, heavier. The lamps dimmed, and for a moment, it felt as though the Dreaming itself was holding its breath.

Morpheus frowned. This was not his doing.

He reached out, touching the fabric of his realm, seeking the source of the disturbance. The response was… strange. Not resistance, exactly, but something foreign—like oil spreading slowly across clear water.

Then it was gone. The Dreaming quieted again, though the silence felt less like peace and more like the moment before a storm breaks.

He stood, the faintest furrow between his brows.

“Something stirs,” he murmured.

But he was tired—too mired in his own turmoil to chase shadows. He turned away from the balcony, from the unease, from the faint sense of warning curling at the edges of his awareness.

And far away, in the waking world, a circle was being drawn. Candles flickered. Words of summoning whispered through the dark.

The Dreaming held its breath.

Chapter Text

The Dreaming was unnaturally still. Days had passed since the last upheaval, yet the silence that hung over the hills, rivers, and endless skies was wrong—too heavy, too suffocating. It was ominous. Even the familiar patterns of dreams forming, shifting, and fading seemed hesitant, as if the realm itself had begun to question the certainty of its own existence. 

Inside the castle, Lucienne moved carefully through the library halls, the echo of her footsteps soft on the mosaic floors. The shelves whispered faintly under her touch, though no breeze disturbed the air. She internally debated whether or not to disturb her lord again about the inconsistencies in the realm. The Dreaming had always been erratic but this was something else entirely. Corridors ended in walls that had never been there, ceilings winked in and out of existence, the constellations above trembling like leaves in a still wind. She paused, glancing toward the throne room worriedly,  fully noting with unease the subtle pulse of instability threading through the Dreaming’s architecture.

Later that day, Lucienne made up her mind to address the issue and she sought out Morpheus. She found him  standing behind the throne with his arms braced on it.  The usually meticulous Dream Lord was staring off into the distance tracing patterns that were not there. It was apparent that although he was physically present, mentally he was in an altogether other world. 

Matthew chose that moment  to fly through a nearby window to perch on the stairway leading to the throne. Landing and feathers ruffling he muttered, “I’m telling you everything is crazy! The stars are off. The rivers are twisting like snakes, and I swear one of the nightmares was chewing its own teeth this morning.” He turned toward Lucienne, an apologetic shrug in his posture. “And the trees… rearranging themselves? Like some sort of botany committee? Not helpful.”

Lucienne just gave him an arched look but kept most of her attention on Morpheus who still hadn’t reacted. “You are disturbed,” Lucienne said softly when she approached. Her voice carried no accusation, only observation.

Finally Dream stirred as if waking from a deep slumber. “I am well,” Dream replied slowly with a measured voice. The brittle edge in his tone was evident only to those who knew him well.

Matthew muttered under his breath, “Well, he looks about as ‘well’ as a hurricane in a teacup.”

Fiddler’s Green and Merv, who were also in search of their Master, walked in during the interaction. They had wanted to report their strange observations of the Dreaming as well. Fiddler’s Green, who rarely spoke plainly about such matters, commented with unusual frankness, “My lord, I have observed hesitation among the dreams. They linger in fog and silence. The borders of thought hesitate to form. The Dreaming itself questions what is possible.”

Mervyn Pumpkinhead scowled. “Yeah. Even the nightmares are… off. Everything’s jittery. Haven’t seen the place this twitchy since—well, you know.”

Dream did not respond. He could feel their concern, yes, but he could not meet it. Not yet. The ache of vulnerability, Hob’s words, and the heavy weight of his own remorse over Nada pressed down on him.

---

Meanwhile, in the waking world, Hob Gadling slept fitfully. The days had been ordinary—coffee, work, the hum of life—but the absence of Dream from his thoughts left an aching void. He dreamed of fog and shadow, a strange, stifling gray that seemed to stretch infinitely. Within it, familiar shapes flickered: a city he recognized, streets empty except for whispers of memory, a figure tall and pale observing from the distance.

Hob jolted awake with the Endless’s name on his lips.  He had a white knuckled grip on the edges of his blanket. “Dream?” he whispered into the darkness of his bedroom, words swallowed by the quiet. His mind rebelled against the implausibility of it all. It was only a dream, he told himself. And yet, there was an ache in his chest he could not place. An absence he could not name. With the fog of fatigue still lingering, he fell back into a restless sleep. The images came back and pressed further: glimpses of the Dreaming, of towers bending and cracking, rivers halting mid-flow. He saw the silhouette of Dream again, closer now, as if reaching out, and yet unable to touch him. Hob awoke with a start, sweating, the early light of morning striking cold against his skin.

Something is wrong, he thought, the logical part of him fighting with instinct. And I can’t reach him.

---

Back in the Dreaming, the quiet finally broke. A whisper spread through the halls and corridors, so faint at first that only Morpheus noticed. It was a pulse from the mortal world, alien, forceful, a summoning. He paused mid-step. Something was calling. Not a dream, not a thought, but a deliberate incantation reaching out toward him.

Matthew cawed sharply. “Boss… I think there’s something coming through. And it’s not… you.”

Lucienne’s lips pressed together, eyes narrowing. “I feel it too. Something is reaching out…not of this realm.”

Dream nodded, eyes narrowing. “Then it must be answered. No mortal should touch the borders of my domain without consequence.”

The Dreaming quivered beneath him. Rivers warped, the sky fractured into jagged shards of black and gold, and a wind that smelled faintly of iron swept through the halls. Fiddler’s Green appeared beside him, calm yet alert. “It is not the Dreaming that stirs in rebellion, my lord. Something else approaches, and it carries a weight even you may find...unfamiliar.”

The summons pulsed stronger. Dream’s form flickered with it, and the air itself seemed to pull at him. He placed both hands on the floor, drawing threads of his power to stabilize the realm, but the pull persisted. It was external, alien, relentless, and insistent.

---

After a fitful night's sleep, Hob found that he couldn't quite keep his eyes open. Dozing off again on his armchair, dreams that felt like a nightmare seized him again. This time it was a darker, heavier dream. He was aware of it immediately—a pressing, suffocating presence, like an invisible cage closing around something vast. He saw shapes bending unnaturally, walls that were not walls, floors that fell away into nothingness. The air smelled of smoke, ash, and something acrid like burnt iron.

And there, in the shifting shadow, stood Dream. Tall, pale, rigid—but the calm authority that usually radiated from him was gone, replaced with tension, unease, and exhaustion. Hob’s chest tightened as he realized the truth: Dream was in danger.

He reached out instinctively. “Dream?” His voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried through the dreamscape, touching the edges of the unseen, the fragile reality of the Dreaming. The figure did not respond, only turned slowly, the faintest flicker of recognition passing in his eyes before the summoning’s pressure pulled him away.

Hob startled awake again. Cold sweat gripped and an unknown terror gripped him. He stared at the ceiling. “Dream…” he whispered again, unable to shake the sense of dread pressing on him. Even awake, he felt the pull, the unnatural weight, the wrongness that he could neither name nor stop. His logical mind was still at war with his emotions.  A part of his mind was still whispering that it was improbable that something wrong could happen to the Endless. He kept telling himself that Dream was ok and simply stewing in a little emotional turmoil.

---

In the waking world, deep beneath the earth, Roderick Burgess chanted. Candles guttered in the stale air, their smoke curling like living fingers. Symbols etched in blood and wax glowed faintly on the stone floor. His followers chanted in unison, a rhythm older than the city above, older than the stones themselves.

The name he spoke was ancient, binding, and reverberated across the fragile barrier separating mortal and Endless. Each syllable tore at the fabric of the Dreaming like claws across velvet. Something immense stirred within the Dreaming, feeling the threads tighten around it, the very air thickening with unnatural tension.

Morpheus felt the first shiver of fear begin to grow. The faint pulling he felt morphed into a grotesque tearing sensation at his core. He tried to tether himself to the Dreaming by threading his power into the very fabric of the realm. However, even this was not enough.  The summoning was slow, deliberate, and relentless. It had a far stronger pull than any mortal had a right to command. Around him the Dreaming began to unravel. Stars winked out of existence, giant fissures opened in the ground and the inhabitants of the realm began to dissolve.  The Dreaming was becoming undone.

Lucienne’s voice suddenly cut through the chaos, loud and urgent. “Lord Morpheus! Focus! Stabilize!”

Matthew flapped wildly, talons scraping the floors. “This isn’t just moods anymore! Something’s out there—something real!”

But Dream was already resisting with every ounce of his being. His form flickered like a candle struggling against a storm. And then, in the midst of it, a thought broke through, pure and piercing: Hob. The mortal’s presence had always been a tether to his own humanity, to empathy and connection. Now, even that thread could not hold him steady.

The ritual’s final incantation struck the Dreaming like a thunderclap. Reality ruptured. Dream’s body was pulled, twisted, torn from the fabric of his realm. For a heartbeat, he glimpsed everything—the trembling trees, the quaking rivers, the silent stars—and a cold, hollow despair settled deep in his chest.

And then, nothing.

The Dreaming shuddered violently. The threads that had been anchored to Dream snapped, flaring into shadows and sparks. Lucienne called, voice echoing across the empty halls, but only silence answered. Matthew hovered, wings trembling, and even Fiddler’s Green, for once, had no words.

Hob, awake in his small flat, felt it through the dream-space that tethered him to his old friend. The weight of absence pressed down, cold and unnatural, and he whispered, “Dream…” but there was no reply. Only the echo of something vast being ripped away, and the knowledge that he could do nothing to stop it.

Somewhere else in the waking world, Roderick Burgess smiled, unaware that he had reached across eternity itself and snatched a god from his throne. The Dreaming quaked as a living thing that was mortally wounded. It, too, felt the loss of its Master's presence. 

Chapter Text

The world had gone still in a way that did not belong to any natural silence.

In the Dreaming, the horizon sagged like wet paper. Stars that usually burned brightly dimmed to a pale, aching flicker. The gates to the realm that once hummed with soft cosmic resonance now groaned under the weight of a sudden and unnatural pressure, as if the entire realm sensed the absence of its sovereign and did not yet understand how to exist without him.

Morpheus realized what was happening only after it was far too late. He had been too distracted. He had felt the summons a fraction of a moment before it took him. It was as if an invisible hook had sunk into the very center of his being to drag him off. He had been moving through the palace halls when the air thinned around him, turning viscous, suffocating. A vibration rippled through the Dreaming to reach him. It was deliberate, yearning and catastrophic. 

Someone was calling him. No, someone was binding him.

His first thought had been confusion. Mortals had not dared attempt this in over a century. His second was disbelief. No one should have been able to reach him at the heart of his kingdom. His third was a cold, crushing realization that he noticed the attempt too late.

The binding circle snapped shut.

Agony clawed through him. The pulling was relentless. He tried to brace, to resist, to anchor himself to the Dreaming.  But he was already overwhelmed. Humans were not meant to wield this kind of power. The force that dragged him downward was crude and violent. 

Morpheus reached for the Dreaming—instinctively, desperately—as the world above dissolved into a vortex of tearing light. The palace floors trembled. Walls blurred. His form fractured around the edges, pulled apart like mist in a windstorm.

And for the first time in a very long time, fear struck him.

He did not breathe, yet he felt the tightening sensation of breath undone. He did not panic, yet panic threaded itself through every fraying piece of consciousness being ripped from him.

He was being dragged into the waking world.

He was being trapped.

He was being unmade.

And he could do nothing to stop it.

The last thing he saw was the Dreaming collapsing into darkness behind him.

Lucienne felt Morpheus's absence before she fully understood what she had witnessed. 

“Your Majesty?” she whispered as Morpheus was torn away.. 

The Dreaming did not answer.

Her breath tightened. She stepped out into the main hall just as the first cracks appeared in the air—hairline fractures that glowed with sickly white light, hissing softly like wounds unable to close. She had seen the Dreaming wounded before, during war and rebellion, but never had it recoiled as if recoiling from itself.

Then the gates thundered.

A deep, ancient boom rattled through the foundations, the kind that signaled either the king’s return or his violent undoing. But the gates did not open. They only heaved once, then sagged inward as if bowing beneath a sudden and unbearable weight.

That was when the truth reached her, crawling along her spine like an icy hand.

He was not here.

He was gone.

Not wandering, not weakened, not obscured by metaphor or oath.

Removed.

“For Dream’s sake…” Lucienne breathed.

Her words were swallowed by the sound of the palace groaning under its own collapsing weight.

She forced herself into motion, skirts snapping against her legs as she ran toward the heart of the Dreaming, past stained-glass windows that flickered like dying lanterns. Servitors—raven-like, book-bound, dream-born—stumbled in the halls, their forms glitching, eyes wild.

“Remain calm,” Lucienne ordered, though her voice wavered. “The king will return. He always returns.”

But she did not believe it. Not this time. Not with the raw, gaping absence she felt echoing through the realm like a missing heartbeat.

Something was wrong. Something was terribly, monstrously wrong.

And the Dreaming knew it.

In the waking world, Hob Gadling awoke screaming.

He did not remember falling asleep. He remembered sitting at his desk, grading papers, the quiet hum of rain against his windows. Suddenly an inescapable pressure settled in his chest followed by a gnawing ache. It was as though something essential to him had been severed from one moment to the next. 

His scream escaped from him before awareness had fully returned.

He sat upright, drenched in sweat, chest heaving, heart thrashing like a trapped bird.

Dream.

Hob didn’t know why the name burst into his mind so violently. He didn’t know why his hands shook, why a raw, electric grief gripped him by the throat. Dream had left abruptly, yes—but Hob had told himself it was nothing unusual. Their meetings did not follow human logic. Their dance had stretched across centuries and this should have been just another loop. 

Hob pressed a trembling palm to his forehead.

“What the hell… Dream? What’s happened?”

He stood and nearly collapsed.

A disorienting sensation pulled at him like gravity had shifted sideways. His vision blurred, edges swimming. He felt unmoored, as if part of himself had been carved away and thrown into the void. Not a physical wound but a metaphysical one.

Hob had experienced many things in eight centuries, but he had never felt this.

He had never felt Dream’s absence like a hole punched through his gut.

He grabbed his coat before he fully understood why. There was nothing rational in the impulse, no address to go to, no path to follow. Only an instinct older than his current body, older than half the countries on the map. Something in him knew that Dream was in danger.

And that if Hob didn’t move—didn’t do something—he would shatter.

—---

Morpheus hit the mortal plane like a man falling through glass.

One moment he was being dragged through blinding, churning void; the next he crashed into a cold stone floor, his form half-materialized and flickering. The summoning circle glowed beneath him with intricate, ancient runes pulsing with a violent, greedy hunger.

Hands seized him. Mortal hands.

They were shaking not with fear but triumph.

“Hold him steady!” someone barked.

Morpheus tried to rise, to speak, to dissolve, to do anything but the circle constricted. He felt the restraints bite into him, sinking deep into the symbolic architecture of his being. Mortals should not have been able to create bindings of this magnitude. Not anymore. Not in this age.

But they had.

And he was trapped.

His thoughts fractured. His vision dimmed. His form flickered violently as the circle stole his power, leeching it drop by drop.

He tasted horror.

Not because he feared suffering. He was an Endless. He had endured eternity, war, and cosmic exile. No. Fear stole its way through him because he had never been caged. Owned. It should not have been possible. But here, he was bound against his will. 

A figure stepped forward.

Roderick Burgess.

“I did it,” Burgess whispered, awe trembling in his voice. “I summoned Death.”

The horror in Morpheus’s chest collapsed into something colder, tighter.

They did not even know who they had taken.

They had reached into the cosmos with clumsy, covetous fingers, and they had stolen the wrong Endless.

Morpheus tried to speak. Tried to warn them. Tried to summon even a fraction of his former authority.

His voice died unformed.

The binding held.

Helplessness—real, undiluted helplessness—swept through him like ice water.

---

In the Dreaming, the sky split open.

Not in a crack or a storm, but in a long, silent tear that revealed nothing beyond—no stars, no color, no texture. Just void. A blank, endless void swallowing the painted heavens.

Dreamcreatures cried out as they dissolved mid-flight. Rivers drained to dust. Forests wilted, leaves turning brittle and gray. Sand fountains collapsed in on themselves.

The Dreaming had begun to die.

And Lucienne, standing before the sagging gates, whispered the truth aloud for the first time:

“He has been taken.”

Chapter Text

Time had always bent for Morpheus. It had always responded to his will, halting, speeding up, or just warping.  But inside his glass prison, time did nothing at all. It simply ceased to exist in a way that defied even Endless comprehension. Dream floated in a suspended state where he couldn't feel the passage of time. The prison also distorted his perception of physical reality. He had hands. He saw them, felt them but they didn't feel as if they belonged to him. His form flickered at the edges, unable to hold its shape beneath the pressure of a prison that was never meant to contain anything so ancient.

He reached again for the Dreaming, and again the sphere devoured the attempt. It absorbed the call so cleanly that he felt his own power dissolve into nothing. The backlash came in a heartbeat later. A tidal wave of force crashed against his mental walls that left him gasping, lungs useless in weightless space. A cold bloom of pain blossomed beneath his ribs, creeping up his spine. The sphere did not merely hold him. It unmade him with every attempt to exert his nature.

He tried again. He always tried again.

With this last attempt, the recoil was sharp enough that his vision faltered. The edges of his being frayed and unraveled like a torn cloth in gale force winds. He reached to steady himself, and the sphere denied the notion of touch entirely. His fingers passed through shimmering resistance, never allowed to connect.

Then he felt it: a tremor, thin but unmistakable. The Dreaming cried out to him. It was not in the form of spoken words, not even in sensation, but in a collapsing fluctuation across the tether that had always bound them. A dying kingdom calling to a king who could not answer. Dream pressed his palm to the sphere, or tried to. Something inside him cracked.

Just as the fingers of despair began to curl around his soul, he felt the flicker of a familiar mind brush against his. 

Jessamy.

Hope, small and trembling, stirred inside him for the first time since his imprisonment.

He closed his eyes and whispered her name, though the sphere swallowed every sound the moment it formed.

---

Burgess believed he had won because he needed to believe it. He paced the length of his basement with the false swagger of a man who mistook ambition for the divine. The sphere, Dream's prison, glowed faintly at the center of the room. He was entranced by it with all the possessiveness of a  zealot. “The chaos in people’s dreams is a sign,” he told his gathered faithful, voice magnanimous. “The barrier between realms has thinned. The entity is weakening. Soon, it will yield.”

However not all of the assembled shared his zeal. Many shifted uneasily. They whispered of nightmares glimpsed at the edges of waking, of shadows crawling across the walls when no candles burned, of eyes opening in the dark and blinking once before vanishing. Their uncertainty rose like a living thing. One man claimed his sleep had dissolved into a blank void for two nights straight. Another swore a figure made of sand had stood beside her bed.

Burgess dismissed them all, scolding their fear as weakness.

“You are witnessing the unraveling of a god,” he said, smiling with too many teeth. “Rejoice.”

But even he began to have doubts that he could not completely drown out. No one admitted to but everyone felt the strange hum that pulsed up from the floorboards, as if the house had begun to resonate with a frequency it was never meant to endure. Burgess told himself that he had nothing to fear. The god was under his total control.

Yet, that night, when the flames dimmed and the house went silent, he heard wingbeats. Thin, sharp, circling the perimeter like a warning he refused to heed.

---

Jessamy flew through rain that was not rain, through wind that tasted of dissolution. She had never known terror. Fear was for lesser creatures, and she was ravensworn to the Dream King. But tonight everything had changed. Terror lodged deep in her breast, scraping at her insides with every flap of her wings. 

The Dreaming was becoming unmoored without its sovereign. The borderlands were thinning. The sky flickered between starfields and a black yawning abyss. From her vantage she saw an entire district crumble inward, folding into a pit of static before knitting itself back in twisted new shapes. She dove and found a nightmare weeping sand from its eye sockets. In the Forest of Forgetting, trees collapsed into puddles of ink. In the Library, books screamed as their stories vanished from their pages.

She felt the Dreaming searching—stretching—calling for a Hob Gadling again.

She did not understand it. She only understood that her king had vanished from the realm.

And…everything was dying without him.

Jessamy burst into the waking world with a scream of desperation. Her wings materialized through the veil, cutting through the sky above Wych Cross as if ripping cloth. The manor glowed beneath her, a rotten orb of human ambition, magic, and arrogance.

Inside, she sensed Dream’s aura. It was almost unrecognizable as dimmed and mangaled as it was. Her cry of fury and sorrow pierced the air as she dove toward the study window like a missile. She hit the glass and found it barred with enchantments, lines of crude power snaking along its edge. She perched, talons scraping against the frame, and surveyed the pattern. It was sloppy work. It was brutish and crude rather like its composer. Despite this, it was effective.

Jessamy circled the house twice, wings beating harder with each pass. She saw sigils carved into the earth, symbols scratched into walls, charms hung like diseased ornaments. Madness clung to the entire property.

The third time she circled, she saw it: a weakness in the protection.

A thin seam of raw magic where the patterns didn't quite meet.

Jessamy dove for it.

The air whistled around her in the descent. She was so close to freeing her master!

The circle reacted instantly. It lashed out with a flare of anti-magic so violent that it tore through Jessamy’s form, unraveling the metaphor of her body. Black feathers ignited into white flame. Her cry split the night, a desperate, agonized sound that echoed through the Dreaming and the waking world at once. Her wings fractured, light bursting through each feather as the sphere’s containment magic flared in retaliation. She tried to pull back, tried to escape, but the circle seized her like a drowning man.

Her talons scraped desperately against air that refused to hold her.

Her form shimmered, then broke.

With a final, distorted cry, Jessamy dissolved into fragments of shadow and light.

Her essence scattered across realms.

The world went silent.

---

Dream felt her die.

There was no distance between them, no barrier nor mortal command strong enough to blunt that specific pain. Her death hit him like a blade sledgehammer to the chest. His entire body convulsed and his form flickered in and out of existence. His lungs contracted and a soundless scream escaped him. 

Dream reached out, hands slamming against the sphere that refused to let him touch anything at all.

“Jessamy!”

The sphere swallowed the scream, but the emotion behind it rippled outward, deeper than magic, deeper than identity.

Jessamy was dead.

His Jessamy.

Loyal. Clever. Fierce. Faithful.

Gone.

The grief tore through him with a magnitude that shook the realm inside the sphere. For the first time since his imprisonment, Dream’s control shattered entirely.

The sphere responded with lethal precision. Every flare of his power was turned inward; every attempt to expand his form was crushed back into him. The magic forced him into submission, into containment, into suffocation.

Jessamy’s last moments replayed inside him—her terror, her determination, the way she flung herself toward him with blind devotion.

He pressed both palms to the sphere and felt nothing.

And then he felt everything all at once.

It was not merely grief. It was the realization that Burgess had not merely imprisoned him.

He had killed one of Dream’s own.

A cold stillness overtook him—not calm, but the absence of anything recognizable as emotion. A void masquerading as composure.

The realm inside the sphere dimmed as Dream went still.

Too still.

Dangerously still.

---

Lucienne had always been composed, but now her calm was carved out of necessity rather than confidence. The library acutely felt Jessamy’s death. It manifested as a violent ripple that tore through shelves, scattering the contents of books like torn feathers. Scrolls unwound themselves and dissolved into sand. Lucienne stumbled, bracing herself against a shelf that flickered between existence and nonexistence. She inhaled a steadying breath, though the air itself trembled.

“Matthew,” she whispered, and the raven dropped from above, wings disheveled, eyes bright with panic.

“You felt it too?” he asked, voice thin.

She nodded once, sharply. “Jessamy is gone.”

Matthew’s feathers fluffed in fear. “Dream…?”

Lucienne closed her eyes. “He will have felt everything.”

A tremor ran through the Dreaming then—violent, systemic, catastrophic. Cities collapsed into dunes. Rivers reversed their flow. The sky split into fractures of broken constellations. Nightmares shrieked, dreams flickered, and the ground itself refused to hold shape.

Lucienne steadied herself, though her whole being trembled with dread.

The Dreaming was not a realm failing.

The Dreaming was a realm mourning.

And through that grief pulsed a strange, impossible sensation. She inhaled deeply, almost disbelieving.

Hob Gadling.

The realm reached for him instinctively, like a wounded animal seeking the only familiar hand it could sense in the dark.

“Why him?” Matthew asked, panicked.

Lucienne did not know.

But she feared the answer.

---

Hob Gadling’s nightmare tore itself into existence with the force of a world-ending scream.

He found himself in a hall of glass, each pane showing a different sky—starless, shattered, bleeding shadows. Sand poured in heavy waves across the floor. A raven’s silhouette streaked past him, wings on fire, dissolving into bright shards.

A name rose unbidden on his lips.

“Jessamy?” he whispered, though he did not know her name.

A glass wall cracked. A shadow behind it slammed a hand against the barrier. Dream’s face appeared—pale, strained, flickering in and out of form.

The hall quaked.

Sand surged upward like a wave, swallowing Hob to the thighs. The sky broke open in a spray of black light. He heard a scream—high, sharp, avian—cut off mid-note.

Dream vanished.

Everything else exploded.

Hob woke choking on his own breath. He clawed at the sheets, body trembling violently, and rolled onto the floor, where he pressed his palms to the cool wood as though grounding himself in the waking world.

His chest ached. His heart thrashed. Tears blurred his vision.

Jessamy’s scream echoed in his skull.

But worse—far worse—was the hollow sensation beneath it.

A void.

A wound.

A certainty as cold as the grave.

Dream had been hurt.

Dream was trapped.

Dream was breaking.

Hob pressed a hand to his sternum, gasping.

“I’m coming,” he whispered before he understood the words.

“I’m going to find you.”

He had no map, no plan, no sense of how or why he knew.

But the certainty rooted itself inside him like fate.

---

In the sphere, Dream went still enough to frighten even himself.

His grief crystallized into something sharp and quiet.

Jessamy had died reaching for him.

He had not saved her.

He could save nothing.

For the first time in his endless existence, Dream of the Endless considered the possibility that he might not survive.

Not because he doubted his nature.

Not because he feared death.

But because this time, he was alone.

Truly, utterly, irreparably alone.

And the sphere hummed around him, as if it knew.

Chapter Text

Hob Gadling sunk into sleep like a stone dropped into a pond. This was in stark contrast to the restless nights that had plagued him for the past few weeks. He had grown used to nights where dreams began and ended abruptly, to a semi-permanent cold ball of dread lodged in his chest, and even stranger phantoms of nightmares that hovered in his peripherals even during his waking hours. But tonight was different. Tonight there was no drifting, no vague images, no soft texture of dreaming. One moment he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and the next he was somewhere…….entirely different. 

Hob realized he was in the Dreaming but it was all very wrong. The air around him held a faint metallic tang as if the land itself was bleeding. He stood on a narrow path of pale grass that swayed without wind, each blade faintly luminous, lit from within by something thin and failing. The horizon, normally sweeping and endless, curved inward like bowed glass. Subtle, wrong, the way an old portrait warps after too many years in a damp environment.

He looked around slowly, brow furrowing. The few times his friend had let him see “behind the curtain” so to speak, the Dreaming had never felt ordinary. It had always felt alive. Pulsing with imagination, shifting but intentional, shaped by something greater than any mortal mind. This… this was different. The colors were washed-out as though warmth had been drained from the world and forgotten somewhere. The shadows lay too still. Even the sky felt taut and silent, a surface stretched too thin.

Something brushed against Hob. It was not a touch, but the memory of something echoing back at him. A tremor raced down his spine, soft but unmistakable, a resonance he hadn’t forgotten. That night. The inexplicable terror that had jolted him awake. A pull behind his ribs, sharp and silent. Dread that wasn’t his.

“Dream?” Hob called softly.

His voice dissolved before it could travel, swallowed by dense air around him.

A figure appeared ahead on the path—not emerging, exactly, but revealed, as though Hob had only now become capable of seeing him. A gentle-faced man in greens and browns, the shape of a landscape made human. Fiddler’s Green. Even he looked diminished. His outline flickered faintly at the edges, as if the Dreaming had forgotten how to anchor him.

“Hob Gadling,” Fiddler’s Green said in a quiet, careful tone. “You’ve come a long way.”

Hob exhaled shakily. “Didn’t mean to. I was just… dreaming?” His voice petered out not knowing if he wanted to ask a question or make a statement. 

“Yes,” Fiddler’s Green said, eyes drifting toward the horizon. “And the Dreaming answered.”

“That doesn’t explain why I’m here.”

A tremor rolled under the ground. Small, almost polite, but deeply wrong. A nearby tree shed its leaves in one sudden exhale; the leaves turned gray mid-fall and vanished before touching the earth.

Hob took a startled step backward. “That’s not normal.”

“No,” Fiddler’s Green murmured. “It isn’t.” He went quiet for a moment, then drew a soft breath as if gathering courage. “Our master is gone.”

The words struck Hob like a physical blow. “Gone?” he echoed. “What do you mean, gone?”

“Taken,” Fiddler’s Green said gently. “Torn out of the Dreaming by mortals who sought to bind an Endless.”

Hob’s gut lurched. The memory of that night returned with brutal clarity. The choking terror, the sense of something collapsing inward while simultaneously being torn apart. “I felt it,” he whispered. “Didn’t know what it was, but—God—it felt like drowning.”

Fiddler’s Green nodded once. “You felt more of it than most.”

Hob looked at him sharply with narrowed eyes. “Why?”

“Because he called out to you. He considers you his anchor,” Fiddler’s Green said simply. 

The path pulsed beneath their feet as if in agreement. In the distance, the mountains that had been struggling to hold their shape briefly became solid. However just a moment later, they flickered out as if the realm just spent the last of its energy. The world looked thinner. Frayed. 

“Is that why I’m here?” Hob asked. “Did I walk into this place by accident or—”

“No accident,” Fiddler’s Green whispered. “The Dreaming is wounded. Lost. It reached for the clearest memory of him it could find. It found you; his anchoring point.”

Hob went still. “Me?”

“Yes.”

It made no sense. He was just a man. A simple mortal man. Who happened to know Dream. Who had met him across centuries. Who had carried him, drunken and laughing, through cobblestoned streets once. Who had worried for him more times than he admitted. Who had felt something sharp and wordless the last time they spoke. ‘So…perhaps not just a man’ Hob thought to himself. But he still didn’t think he was extraordinary in any way…especially not measuring oneself against an Endless. 

“Because he’s gone,” Hob murmured. “And the Dreaming doesn’t know what else to do.”

Fiddler’s Green nodded.

A flicker of movement caught Hob’s eye. What he saw caused him to freeze in horror. As they were talking, Fiddler's Green was leading him to the palace. Instead of the whimsical majestic spiraling towers, all that remained was a sad shell. Its spires rose in shivering fits, half-formed, sometimes dissolving mid-air only to reassemble seconds later in warped configurations. A tower buckled inward, folding like softened clay. Bridges hung suspended without supports. The whole structure flickered like an image caught between two memories.

“Jesus,” Hob whispered. “It looks… wounded.”

“The palace is his heart,” Fiddler’s Green said. “His mind made manifest. Without him, it remembers him only imperfectly.”

In that pause, a sudden screech rented the air. Matthew swooped down, landing with a messy flutter on a broken column. “Oh shit—oh shit. You’re awake. You’re here. You’re conscious. That’s—this is—Lucienne needs to see this.”

Hob lifted both hands, defensive. “Why is everyone acting like I’m a ghost?”

“Because you shouldn’t be here,” Matthew shot back. “Mortals don’t show up awake. Ever. If you’re here—like this—it means. It means bad things are happening!"

Fiddler’s Green murmured, “It reached for him.”

Matthew cawed sharply. “Oh, that’s bad. That’s so bad.”

Hob stared at them, helpless, frightened. “Please just tell me what’s happening.”

Before Hob could receive an answer, the assembled group heard sharp clicking steps that heralded Lucienne's appearance. “Matthew!” Lucienne called as she strode through the doors. “ Why are you raising a ruckus? It is not as if I do not have enough to deal with!” She brandished the overflowing binder that she held in her hands for emphasis. She looked like herself—but disassembled. Glasses slightly crooked. Coat wrinkled. Posture taut with exhaustion she refused to surrender to. Her gaze swept the hall with clinical precision until it landed on Hob.

She froze.

“Hob Gadling,” she whispered, voice cracking. 

She moved toward him slowly, as though approaching a ticking bomb. Her eyes flitted over his form in a quick examination and they slowly widened with horror. “You are here. You are conscious. That should be impossible.” Her voice trailed off at the end of her sentence as the implications began to set in. 

“No,” she breathed. “No. You cannot be here.”

Hob felt something cold settle in his stomach. “Lucienne—”

Her composure shattered as cleanly as breaking glass. “If you are here, awake, inside the Dreaming… then our lord is not merely missing.”

“He is dying,” she whispered as if it took all of her strength to say what everyone feared.

Silence pressed in around them.

Matthew fluttered helplessly. Fiddler’s Green bowed his head. Hob felt the world tilt, though his feet remained planted. The hall behind him flickered and dimmed.

Snapping back to attention, Lucienne forced herself to steady. After all, Morpheus trusted her to keep the Dreaming together in his absence. She mentally reprimanded herself for falling apart. Shifting gears in true librarian fashion, Lucienne started questioning Hob. 

“When did you first sense something wrong?”

Hob swallowed, voice hoarse. “A few weeks ago. I woke with terror that wasn’t mine. It felt like something being ripped away.”

“That was the moment of his capture,” she said softly. “The Dreaming felt it through you.”

Another tremor rolled beneath their feet—stronger this time. A chandelier cracked with a brittle sound that echoed down the length of the hall. Hob reached for a pillar to steady himself.

Lucienne continued, her voice nearly inaudible. “The Dreaming is losing itself. Without him, it unravels. And it clings to anything familiar.”

“Me,” Hob whispered.

“Yes,” Lucienne said. “Because you endure. Because you are steady. Because you were… close to him.”

Hob looked away, blinking hard.

The floor pulsed again.

“The poet’s quarter has vanished,” Lucienne murmured, scanning her ledger with shaking hands. “Entire regions are dissolving.”

Hob felt nausea rise. “Can he feel that?”

“I hope not,” Lucienne muttered.

Lucienne nodded, but something in her posture faltered—her shoulders tightening, her breath catching. “I did not wish to believe it,” she said quietly. “Not until seeing you.”

Hob’s heart pounded. “Believe what?”

She turned to him fully, eyes bright with fear she could no longer mask. Her voice trembled.

“Your presence here means the tether that kept him alive is failing.”

Hob froze.

Lucienne stepped closer, the truth dropping between them like a stone. “If the Dreaming has reached for you—if it has anchored itself to your memory of him—then it is because it no longer feels his.”

The palace groaned around them.

“And if it cannot feel him,” she whispered, “then he is slipping beyond even our reach.”

Hob felt something splinter inside him.

Lucienne drew in a shuddering breath. “Hob Gadling… if he dies, the Dreaming dies with him.”

Fiddler’s Green bowed his head in grief. Matthew screeched somewhere in the rafters. Lucienne steadied herself, but her voice was barely more than breath. “We have little time left. Come. There is something you must see.”

Hob followed her, numb, terrified, aching with a grief he did not yet know how to hold. Behind them, the corridor dissolved into nothing. Ahead of them, the Dreaming waited, wounded, unraveling, and reaching for whatever remained of its absent king. And as Hob stepped deeper into the failing palace, one truth beat in his chest like a second, painful heartbeat:

Dream was dying.

And Hob was running out of time to save him.

Chapter Text

Time passed in a steady march as it always did.

In the waking world, it passed with the indifference of history: decades marched on one after another. Cities expanding and collapsing, names forgotten. Hob Gadling moved through it physically unchanged as with all the previous centuries. However this past century, in Dream’s absence, time seemed to weigh more heavily on his soul. 

In the Dreaming, time passed as damage.

Lucienne tracked it not by calendars but by stress fractures. By the way certain halls resisted holding their shape. By how the palace sometimes reverted to older architectures without warning, as though the realm were reaching backward for stability it could no longer sustain. Dreams arrived thinner now, less certain of themselves. Nightmares grew blunt and repetitive, their symbolism eroding into raw fear.

And sometimes—more often now—Hob Gadling appeared.

It did not happen every night. There was no rhythm Lucienne could discern. But when it happened, the Dreaming reacted as though a familiar pressure had been reapplied to a wound that never healed.

Hob did not arrive confused anymore.

The first time, months ago, he had been disoriented, overwhelmed by the sheer unreality of the place. The second time, he recognized the sky. The third, he recognized the palace. Now, he simply was there, standing somewhere between intention and accident, as if the realm had exhaled and found him waiting.

For Hob, the visits stretched.

What began as hours lengthened into days, then weeks. Once, he spent what felt like an entire season wandering ruined gardens and half-remembered cities, speaking to dreams that no longer knew how to end. When he finally woke in the waking world, it had been morning—only one night gone.

Each return lasted longer.

Each departure hurt more.

Fiddler’s Green watched him carefully.

“You remain,” he said one evening, not as a question.

Hob laughed weakly. “Doesn’t feel like I get much say in it.”

The land around them sagged, colors muted, edges blurring. The Dreaming leaned toward Hob in subtle ways—paths forming beneath his feet, shadows aligning with his movement. Not welcoming. Using.

Lucienne feared what it meant.

A mortal mind could not survive sustained proximity to the Dreaming unless something was profoundly wrong. The realm should have rejected him. Instead, it adapted.

Which suggested a vacancy. 

----------------------

Moepheus had a different experience altogether. 

Time passed, though not in any way Dream could have named.

Within the sphere, the passing of time was neither linear nor was it kind. It did not accumulate so much as press upon the mind, layering moments upon one another until memory itself grew unreliable. Morpheus sometimes believed he had been imprisoned for an eternity; other times, the sense of captivity felt barely longer than a single, interminable night. His thoughts echoed strangely, delayed and distorted, as though the concept of sequence itself had been bent out of shape around him. His thoughts felt thick and slow.

What remained consistent was the indignity.

He remembered the summoning with perfect clarity: the tearing sensation as he was pulled from his realm. The sudden collapse of certainty. The way his power had been wrenched from him not through mastery but through crude insistence. Mortals had dragged him across the boundaries of reality like an object, not understanding what they touched, not caring what it cost.

They had stripped him.

That memory burned brightest. It was not merely the loss of his garments or symbols. He remained Dream of the Endless even without his accouterments. But what made rage rise up and choke him like bitter bile was the humiliation. The humiliation of being on display. Contained. Observed. The humiliation of being reduced to spectacle lingered long after fear had dulled. Mortals came and went. Their awe curdled into familiarity. Familiarity into boredom.

That was when anger solidified and the shock faded. 

At first, the sphere’s wards had been flawless. Roderick Burgess had been meticulous, his terror sharpening his attention. The containment diagram etched into the stone floor had been reinforced daily, the sigils refreshed with shaking hands and fervent prayer. Dream tested it again and again in those early years, each attempt rebounding painfully, draining him further, teaching him restraint.

But mortals aged.

Obsession decayed into routine. Ritual into habit. Burgess grew old. His sons inherited the prison without inheriting his fear. They maintained the safeguards because they were told to, not because they understood what would happen if they failed.

Dream felt the change before he could exploit it.

A faint unevenness in the pressure holding him. A subtle thinning along the sphere’s inner surface. The magic no longer hummed with the same coherence; it wavered. Sigils grew faint at the edges, smudged by careless boots, by chalk left too long exposed to air and time.

Morpheus waited.

He waited like a snake coiled to strike. 

The guard came often near the end. He was not meant to speak, but rules grew porous when nothing seemed to happen. The man circled the sphere with casual contempt, his voice loud in the otherwise sacred quiet of the chamber.

“Still nothing,” he said once, tapping the glass. “All that power, and you just float there.”

Dream did not answer. He never deigned to answer them.

The guard laughed, fooled by silence. He stepped closer, his boot scuffing the containment diagram. Chalk smeared underfoot. A careless arc cutting through symbols already worn thin. He leaned forward, face inches from the crystal. “You don’t look like a god to me.”

That was the moment.

It was not a dramatic escape but everything gave way like a thread inevitability snapping under pressure. Dream felt the wards falter, just for an instant. A flaw. A weakness. A circuit no longer complete.

He struck.

Not outward, but inward—collapsing what remained of his power into a singular, focused assertion of self. Identity surged where force could not. The sphere screamed as magic short-circuited itself, the containment collapsing under the weight of contradiction.

Glass and light exploded outward. Alarms shrieked throughout the manor as the crystal shattered into fragments that burned briefly before dissolving. The guard was thrown backward, unconscious before he hit the stone floor.

Dream stepped free.

For one terrible heartbeat, he waited for the rush.

It did not come.

No flood of power surged back into him. No triumphant reclamation. Instead, weakness clung to him like a second skin—pervasive, nauseating, wrong. His knees buckled. He caught himself on the cold stone floor, one hand braced as the world tilted alarmingly.

Confusion struck first.

Then fear.

Then rage—hot and bitter, rising like bile.

He had been imprisoned, humiliated, stripped of agency, and now—now—even free, he was diminished. The sensation was alien, deeply unsettling. Helplessness lingered where it should not exist. His power did not answer him fully. The Dreaming felt distant, muted.

The thirst for revenge surged through him, sharp and immediate. He imagined the manor burning, its occupants reduced to screaming sleep, their minds unraveling under the weight of nightmares they could not escape.

But his body trembled.

The thought of retaliation faltered, aborted by the undeniable truth of his condition. He was not strong enough. Not yet.

Grinding his teeth, Dream forced himself upright. He would not be seen crawling. He would not grant them the satisfaction of his weakness. Straightening his spine despite the tremor that ran through him, he gathered what dignity remained and vanished.

The Dreaming felt him before it saw him.

The realm shuddered and surged to meet him. However its rise was halting. Power surged along familiar pathways only to stall, as though encountering resistance where none should exist. Dream emerged at the palace threshold like a figure stepping out of an unfinished memory.

The air was wrong.

Colors were muted, edges soft where they should have been sharp. Entire sections of the sky were missing stars. The palace loomed before him. It still stood but it was grotesquely wrong. The once majestic spires were crumbled and in tatters as though eons had passed. His absence left a pronounced strain. 

Morpheus stood still, absorbing it.

He was home.

It should have been over. The nightmare should have ended. But it didn’t. He was not whole.

His realm, The Dreaming, pressed close against him. It was assessing him in the way a living thing might test a wounded limb. Some regions aligned themselves eagerly, reforming around his presence. Others lagged, resistant, as though uncertain whether he could sustain them.

The sensation unsettled him more than captivity had.

Lucienne had been in the library when the realm shuddered violently. Books rattled on their shelves, several collapsing into dust before her eyes. She turned sharply, breath catching, as a presence she had not dared hope for flooded the space.

“My lord,” she breathed, composure fracturing as she rushed toward the palace hall.

Matthew arrived moments later, wings flared, panic sharp in his movements. “Lucienne! Something’s—”

Then Dream was there.

Relief hit Lucienne first, sudden and overwhelming, stealing her breath. It was followed immediately by dread. The Dreaming did not surge toward him in joyous restoration. It hesitated.

“My lord,” she said again, voice trembling despite herself.

Dream inclined his head. “Lucienne.”

Matthew landed hard beside him, staring. “Boss… you look—”

“Weakened,” Dream finished calmly.

The word tasted foreign.

Lucienne stepped closer, her professional instincts battling the fear she could no longer fully suppress. She studied him carefully, noting the subtle instability in his presence, the way the air around him did not settle as it should.

“You’ve been gone,” she said quietly. “A very long time.”

“I know,” Dream replied. 

But he did not—not truly. The dissonance between his perception and the evidence around him gnawed at him. The Dreaming’s damage spoke of decades, perhaps more. Yet, in his mind, it is as if not more than a fortnight should have passed. 

Rage stirred again, simmering beneath his controlled exterior. Mortals had stolen time from him. From his realm.

He turned slowly, surveying the Dreaming. Towers stood where they always had—but thinner, less certain. Entire constellations were missing from the sky. Regions he had shaped with care now existed only as echoes.

He was free.

And still helpless.

Somewhere deeper in the Dreaming, Hob Gadling stirred.

He woke in the waking world with a gasp, heart racing, the sense of pressure lifting abruptly from his chest. The terror that had plagued his dreams for years receded, replaced by something else—an awareness, distant but undeniable.

“He’s back,” Hob whispered into the quiet morning.

The words were true.

They were not reassuring.

Chapter Text

The Dreaming did not rush to him when he returned as he imagined it would. 

After a heartbeat of suspense, it locked itself into place.

Morpheus felt it immediately: the way the realm tightened around his presence, how pathways aligned with mechanical precision, how dreams snapped into their prescribed patterns without hesitation or drift. There was no warmth in it. No welcome. Only function.

The Dreaming remembered its shape.

It remembered him.

That is, it remembered after a brief but interminable moment of hesitation. After its hesitation—after that brief, terrible moment when it had recoiled, uncertain whether he was still fit to anchor it—he had responded with absolute control. He had not waited for trust to return. He had imposed order, reinforcing the structures that bound the realm together until resistance became impossible.

Now the Dreaming obeyed him perfectly.

Too perfectly.

He stood at the palace threshold and felt the realm brace itself around him, rigid and precise. Nothing drifted. Nothing softened. Even the winds of dream moved with careful restraint.

It should have comforted him.

Instead, it unsettled him.

He reached outward, asserting his presence with clinical precision. The Dreaming responded instantly, stabilizing where it was already stable, smoothing imperfections that had not existed moments before. The effort anchored the realm completely.

It did nothing for him.

The weakness lingered, a subtle misalignment beneath his awareness. Not the raw depletion of captivity—that agony had been unmistakable, sharp enough to endure through spite and will alone. This was something else. A quiet instability. As though some internal tension had been released and never properly restored.

He had assumed freedom would correct it.

The assumption curdled in him now, sour and undeniable.

Morpheus moved through the palace, his steps soundless against the stone. Servants emerged from alcoves and corridors, bowing low, their relief palpable. Their movements were precise. Too precise.

Lucienne approached him near the gallery, her posture impeccable, her expression carefully neutral.

“My lord,” she said. “The Dreaming—”

“Is in order,” Morpheus replied at once.

Lucienne hesitated. Only a fraction of a second. Enough.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Perfectly.”

The word hung between them, faintly wrong.

Morpheus inclined his head, dismissing her before she could say more. He did not miss the way her gaze lingered on him as he passed, nor the way she straightened as though bracing herself. Others did the same. Nightmares that once pressed close now kept a respectful distance. Dreams bowed more deeply than before, their reverence edged with caution.

No one challenged him.

No one reached for him.

The Dreaming held itself together through obedience alone.

The realization struck with bitter clarity: he had mistaken hesitation for disloyalty. He had corrected it with force. Now the realm no longer questioned him—because it no longer trusted itself to. His arrogance fractured quietly at that understanding. Not into humility, but into vigilance. I was careless, he thought. Careless to believe continuity was guaranteed.

The weakness pressed further into his psyche as the palace grew still around him. There was nothing left to correct, no disorder to focus upon. Authority functioned without resistance, leaving him alone with the echo of himself.

Solitude pressed in.

Morpheus turned away from the Dreaming’s heart and folded reality without conscious deliberation, following the pull of something steadier, older, and inexplicably human.

Hob Gadling’s home grounded him the moment he arrived.

The air was warm, scented faintly with tea and paper and the accumulated weight of years lived fully. Books lined the walls in uneven rows. Objects lay where they had been set down and forgotten. Nothing here obeyed perfectly.

Hob looked up from the table as Morpheus appeared, surprise flickering briefly across his face before easing into something softer.

“Dream,” he said. Not questioning. Not accusing. Just recognition.

Morpheus inclined his head. “I required… company.”

The admission cost him more than he liked.

Hob did not comment on the phrasing. He rose, already reaching for a kettle. “You look like you could use a sit-down.”

Morpheus hesitated, then complied. He seated himself with controlled precision, hands folded, posture rigid. Hob moved around him with easy familiarity, setting water to boil, pulling out mugs without asking.

“You’re back in your realm,” Hob said, glancing at him over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

“And it’s all right?”

Morpheus paused. “It endures.”

Hob’s mouth twitched. “Funny answer.”

The kettle clicked off. Hob poured the water, the steam rising between them. He set a mug into Morpheus’s hands without ceremony.

Warmth seeped into his fingers.

He inhaled sharply before he could stop himself.

The constant tension beneath his awareness eased, just slightly. His breathing slowed. The hollow pressure inside him softened enough to be unmistakable.

Hob noticed.

“You don’t have to explain,” he said quietly, settling into the chair opposite. “You can just… be here.”

The offer was simple. Unconditional.

Morpheus let his shoulders lower a fraction. He had not realized how tightly he had been holding himself until the release startled him. The weakness receded further, manageable now, no longer threatening to unmoor him.

This works, something inside him whispered.

The realization sent a jolt of alarm through his chest.

He looked at Hob and saw, with sudden terrifying clarity, not desire but dependence. Not want, but the beginning of reliance. The understanding landed with brutal precision: if he stayed, if he allowed this to continue, he would begin to need it.

Need made one reachable.

Reachable made one capturable.

Hob leaned forward slightly, their knees nearly touching. “Dream,” he said, softer now.

Morpheus did not pull away in time.

Their foreheads touched.

For one suspended moment, the world narrowed to shared breath and quiet warmth. Hob’s hand came to rest lightly against Morpheus’s wrist—steady, grounding, real.

Morpheus felt himself lean in.

The panic was immediate and overwhelming.

He wrenched himself back as though burned, rising too quickly, the chair scraping faintly against the floor. The warmth vanished at once, replaced by the familiar chill of control snapping back into place.

“No,” he said sharply. Too sharply.

Hob froze, then slowly let his hand fall. He did not reach after him. He did not protest.

“I cannot,” Morpheus said, his voice rigid with restraint. “This was… an error.”

Hob searched his face for a long moment, then nodded once.

“All right,” he said quietly.

No accusation. No plea.

Morpheus inclined his head, every line of his posture distant once more. “Until another time.”

Hob’s expression was unreadable. “If that’s what you need.”

The words followed Morpheus back into the Dreaming.

The palace received him at once, immaculate and obedient.

Order wrapped around him seamlessly, the realm aligning with flawless precision. The silence returned, deep and absolute, unmarred by warmth or hesitation.

Morpheus stood alone at its center, the echo of near-connection already fading into something he would not permit himself to examine.

He was safe.

And the Dreaming endured.

So, too, would he.

If you want, next we should decide what follows this emotionally, because this chapter changes everything:

A Hob-focused chapter showing adaptation

A Dream-focused chapter showing hardening control

Or a split chapter that quietly contrasts both

You’ve deepened the wound. Now we decide how it scars.

Chapter Text

Hob knew something was wrong the moment Dream appeared.

Not because Dream looked injured—he rarely did, no matter what he’d endured—but because he looked contained. Too still. Like a man holding himself together with rules instead of bones. There was a tightness to him that set Hob’s nerves humming, the kind that came from restraint rather than control.

Hob didn’t say it out loud. He’d learned, over centuries, that naming things too quickly made Dream retreat. So he did what had always worked best: he treated the moment like it could be ordinary.

“Didn’t expect you tonight,” he said, getting to his feet.

Dream inclined his head, formal as a court portrait. “I am here.”

The phrasing lodged somewhere behind Hob’s sternum, a dull pressure he ignored on reflex. Presence without intention. Arrival without invitation.

Still, he didn’t push.

He put the kettle on. Offered a chair. Gave Dream something to hold that wasn’t a weapon or a responsibility. His hands moved automatically while his attention stayed fixed on Dream in the corner of his vision.

Dream accepted the mug and stilled, staring down at it as though the warmth surprised him. Hob watched heat seep into pale fingers, watched the faint tension in Dream’s shoulders ease by a fraction.

That was the first crack.

Dream didn’t relax all at once. It happened in increments easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention—shoulders lowering by degrees, breath easing, the rigid line of his jaw loosening as Hob spoke about nothing in particular. The weather. A book he’d half-finished. Things small enough not to demand anything in return.

Hob felt the answering ache in his chest then, sharp and familiar. He breathed through it slowly, steadying himself without drawing attention.

Dream came when the weight got too heavy.

Dream stayed until he remembered what that weight meant.

The realization should have closed Hob off. It should have made him careful.

Instead, he let himself hope.

The hope slipped in quietly, gathering strength as Dream leaned forward, close enough that Hob could feel the cool brush of his presence, close enough to be unmistakably there. This wasn’t like the old visits—aloof, measured, Dream seated at the far edge of the room like a king holding court in exile.

This was different.

Dream’s gaze flickered, unfocused for a heartbeat, as if he’d lost his place in himself. Hob noticed his own breathing had gone shallow and consciously slowed it, afraid of startling Dream with anything as crude as anticipation. He didn’t move. Didn’t reach.

Not yet.

When Dream’s forehead rested against his, the contact tentative but real, the world narrowed abruptly. Shared breath. Shared stillness. The kind of quiet that pressed close and full, not empty.

Hob’s chest tightened painfully. Careful, he told himself. Careful.

He’d waited centuries. He could wait another second.

His heart was racing now, fast and unsteady, and he worked to keep his breathing even, terrified that any sudden movement would break the spell. Dream was solid this close—cool, yes, but present in a way Hob had never quite allowed himself to imagine.

This is it.

The thought landed with dangerous force. This was what it would be like, then.

Dream leaned closer. Not far. Not decisively. Just enough that Hob could feel the promise of it, the unspoken question hanging between them. Hob swallowed, holding himself utterly still, every instinct screaming not to rush, not to scare him away.

For one suspended, impossible moment, Hob believed—truly believed—that Dream was choosing him.

That whatever line Dream had been holding himself behind was finally dissolving.

Hob’s hand found Dream’s wrist without conscious thought. Light. Careful. His fingers trembled as they settled. He felt the tremor immediately and tightened his grip by the smallest degree, pressing his thumb into the inside of his palm until it passed.

Steady.

Dream didn’t pull away.

Relief surged so sharply it made Hob dizzy. He leaned in by a fraction, forehead still resting against Dream’s, breath quiet and contained. His heart felt too large for his ribcage, each beat echoing with a hope so intense it bordered on pain.

Then Dream inhaled sharply.

And everything shattered.

Dream wrenched himself back with sudden violence, like someone waking from a dream already halfway to panic. The movement scraped chair legs against the floor as he stood too quickly, composure snapping back into place with almost painful force.

“No,” Dream said.

The word fell into the space between them.

Nothing happened.

Hob’s hand dropped, fingers curling uselessly as the warmth vanished. The loss hit all at once—a hollow, collapsing sensation beneath his breastbone that drove the breath from his lungs. Cold spread where Dream’s presence had been, sharp and disorienting.

For a heartbeat, Hob thought he might actually break.

He swallowed hard, forcing air back into his chest in controlled, shallow breaths. He straightened instinctively, spine aligning as though posture alone could hold him together.

He kept his face calm.

He didn’t argue. Didn’t ask why. Arguments implied a misunderstanding. This wasn’t that.

Dream spoke of error. Of necessity. Of distance dressed up as duty. Hob listened, nodded when it seemed expected, and said nothing that would give Dream something to push against.

Inside, something gave way with a quiet, irrevocable sound.

When Dream left, the room felt colder—not because Dream was gone, but because Hob understood something he hadn’t before.

This hadn’t been hesitation.

It had been fear.

Not of Hob.

Of needing him.

Hob remained where he was, staring at the empty space Dream had occupied. The pain deepened now that he wasn’t actively holding it at bay, spreading with every breath. It tightened his chest, clawed faintly at his throat.

He let it.

Just for a moment.

He closed his eyes and allowed the grief to rise fully, unchecked. It hurt the way heartbreak always did—sharp and consuming, an urge to fold inward, to shatter quietly where no one could see. His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms.

It hurt.

He acknowledged that truth plainly.

Then he exhaled slowly, deliberately, until the edge dulled enough to endure.

When he opened his eyes, the world was still there.

He replayed the evening—not the words, but the pauses. The way Dream had softened without permission. The speed with which he’d shut it down.

That was when the shape of things clarified.

Dream wasn’t retreating to think.

Dream wasn’t retreating to recover.

Dream was retreating to make sure it never happened again.

The understanding settled heavily but cleanly into place.

Hob stood and carried both mugs to the sink. His hands felt stiff as he set them down, fingers slightly numb. He washed them carefully, methodically. Dried them. Set them back where they belonged.

He wasn’t cleaning up after Dream.

He was putting himself back in order.

The room felt quieter now, emptied of possibility. Hob straightened a chair, smoothed a crease in the tablecloth, restored the small domestic signs of normalcy with deliberate care.

He did not wait for the echo of Dream’s presence to return.

Later that night, Hob opened a letter he’d been meaning to answer for weeks. An invitation—from friends he’d been putting off, always telling himself there would be time later, always orienting himself around the possibility of someone else’s return.

His hand hesitated once over the page.

Then he steadied himself and picked up the pen.

He wrote back yes.

It was a small thing. Reasonable. Sensible.

And when he sealed the envelope, Hob felt the last of the evening settle into place—not as defeat, not as bitterness, but as understanding.

Dream would endure.

So would he.

Just… not in the same way anymore.