Your dreams are tumultuous. They come in fits and starts, images barely imprinting onto your consciousness before spiraling madly away. Boars looking up from a watering hole, glancing skyward with trepidation. Empty lecture halls, vines taking over the blackboards and seats. You are standing on the deck of a ship, moments after it has fired a broadside. The emptiness of the air as the shockwaves dissipates. Across the still waters another ship burns, flames licking over every surface. Shadows chased away by the heat and light. Shadows that crawl and scrabble and crawl and speak, hissing whispers carrying to you where you stand:

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

The crew around you take up another chant:

It cannot be undone. It cannot be undone. It cannot be undone.

As they speak, flames erupt from their mouths. In turn, they collapse and the voices quiet. When the last falls silent you wake.

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:

Hunger, formless and vast. A darkness surrounds you, a cold wind tugs at your clothes, hard flat rock sits underfoot. You are alone. Your hunger forces you outward, searching with tentative steps and outstretched arms. The broken spars of rock you stumble over hold no heat, your own body heat the only thing registering to your light-less senses. Some time later, the chill reaching deep, you wince at a sudden pain and a point of warmth blossoms on your right hand. Your pinky is missing. Your jaws tense and untense. Your hunger lessons.

You know not how long you walk into that formless night. When light finally trickles over the horizon, when you feel the warmth of its touch upon your face, you no longer have a right arm. Desolation surrounds you, the long shadows of dawn giving way to endless ridges of blasted bedrock. In crevasses and tucked away pockets you see fragments of bone, pieces of shell.

You walk towards the rising sun, and when it reaches near its peak you find yourself cresting a ridge. In front of you a dazzling expanse of sand, bleached white. Wisps of steam rise from its surface. Looking North you see an obelisk of onyx, like a tower overlooking this once-beach. Sigils inscribe its surface in a language you do not know, and yet you are struck with an immense feeling of loss looking over them. Some have been defaced, the onyx surface pitted. They have been taken, these sigils, stolen. You are sure.

You walk further along this line, blasted rock to your left, sand to your right. You walk until the light fades into dusk again, the shadows like fingers grasping for the ocean that no longer exists. You scratch your parched face with the stubs of your left hand. With the last light, you come across a valley, once a bay. In the sandy dry silts sits another block of onyx, stairs inscribed within, leading downward.

You block the setting sun from your eyes with the stump of your left elbow. There is light below. Your hunger rises. The steps are wide, wider than your stride. There is a man down here. He is sitting at the edge of a pit. He wears a full suit of scarlet, and has short cropped dark hair. He turns to you, smiling a mouth of only gums:

A Cartomancer, as I live and breath. After all these years. I believe you have something of mine.

He points at your gut, and you notice his fingers are covered in rings of milky-white.

I am glad, the last favored a different card. We have been so hungry…

His gaze drifts back to the pit, a shadow of sadness passing over his expression.

I give you the answer you seek, weather you know you seek it or not: your key is not like theirs. It is not intrinsic to The Way, it is a concession. No way through without our blessing. Your part is simple: ordain the rite with a reading. A crossed three card spread. I would, however, make a request: as the Cartomancer you hold some power over this. The Way has not been unshut for some time. Draw my card third. I will see to it that your appetites are satiat…

… 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.