Your dreams are tumultuous. They come in fits and starts, images barely imprinting onto your consciousness before spiraling madly away. A darkened room, water dripping from all around, a wall of luminescent crimson coral. A bright room, hearth blazing in the corner and a familiar feeling woman and two daughters that you have never seen before. They stare, not acknowledging you, their mouths moving to some whispered chant. The fire spills out around the mantle, timbers catching quickly. Their chant rises, reaching your ears now:

It is begun. It is begun. It is begun.

Wood snaps and spits and crashes down around you. The cold night air reaches in, blankets you, and with it come more words whispering into your ear:

… the way is lost and I am lost in the way is it shut is it shut it …

And you are speaking too, words tearing themselves from your mouth, burning your throat and chapping your lips:

It cannot be undone. It cannot be undone.

The building fully collapses around you, flames licking up at the night sky. The only surviving structure is a massive arch of hewn stone, as if the hearth has expanded and grown. You wake up drenched in sweat.

Dream before the end

You are walking along the empty rail tracks, endless ties and stone passing under your feet. Unbroken walls of trees pass in a blur, hours marked by nothing other than the slow crawl of the traveling moon. You do not hunger, nor thirst, nor tire. It becomes meditative, the inexorable march to the East. Without a noticeable transition your mind slips off into a waking dream:

You walk apart from the rest of them. They are something you are not. You are something they are not. They have sought titles, even here: Horocustus, Catoptromancer, Haruspex, Catromancer, Cyathomancer. You had titles once, a birthright, a home. Gone now, given up, an ocean away. Perhaps you were never like them. Perhaps there is such a thing as Destiny.

The walk gives you a chance to meditate; forces you to. There is simply nothing else to do. Your perception of The Shroud around you slowly expands in the endless hours. The cracks in it become more and more apparent. The trees you walk past, their craftsmanship is incredible: they have fooled you all. As if someone with endless patience put a tree back together from the spirits of ash; coaxed them back towards life; tricked those small souls into believing they were once again waving in the wind.

… the dream collapses around you as a call rings out up ahead. The world comes rearing back at you, clacking pebbles under foot, dull echoes clanging through the track. Someone’s seen something up ahead, poking out above the forest. A moon-drenched stone arch, still very distant, hangs just in sight along the horizon.