Nathan’s hands trembled around the candle flame as he huddled on the dorm floor, breath shallow. The rest of the room was dark, with Lissandre asleep in her bed and Noctisolar perched silently near the balcony rail. He had snuffed out the lantern to leave only that single candle flickering across his anxious face. A hush lay over the academy halls at this late hour, broken only by the faint rustle of wind outside.

  He stared at the tiny flame, mind spinning with what he was about to attempt. All day his thoughts had circled back to the forbidden records he had glimpsed in the library’s restricted wing, references to dream?walking and a hidden liminal realm. The text warned of illusions, nightmares and shadow?creatures hungry for doubt. Yet the name Narcis Quinn burned brighter in his mind than any caution. If the file hinted at a lost twin, and if dream?walking might let him confirm that twin’s fate, then he could not let fear keep him from trying.

  He clutched the slip of paper he had scribbled:

  Dream?walking requires half?sleep, a solitary flame and an incantation bridging mind to the half?formed realm. Beware illusions that feed on doubt. Anchoring is essential for returning.

  Anchoring, he reminded himself. The candle must tether his consciousness to the physical world. Do not let the flame go out. He swallowed, heart pulsing, then placed the paper aside and forced a steady exhale.

  “Ready?” he whispered, glancing at Noctisolar. The Celestial Dragon regarded him calmly, luminous eyes brimming with sympathy. It did not protest or seem alarmed, only watchful. That acceptance lent him a surge of courage.

  Nathan dipped his head, inhaled, and recited in a low voice:

  Beneath the candle’s steady glow

  let mind and night entwined both flow.

  It was more a patchwork phrase than a formal spell, but the restricted texts insisted that intention mattered most for this ritual. Summoning the calm he had practiced in his casting lessons, he allowed his eyelids to drift closed until he saw only the candle’s flame dancing behind his lids.

  At first he felt only light?headedness and a fizzing under his skin. Then Lissandre’s soft breathing and Noctisolar’s rustle faded to distant static. The air thickened as if he were moving underwater. A staccato prickle formed at the corners of his vision.

  He slipped into that half?state between waking and sleeping. Normally that space brought fleeting dreams. Now a tugging sensation brewed behind his navel. The candle flame seemed to stretch outward, morphing into swirling patterns of color in his mind’s eye. His limbs felt pinned to the floor while his consciousness floated.

  A hush thundered in his ears as the dorm room dissolved into a swirl of deep gray. For a heartbeat he feared he had blacked out, but his mind was painfully alert. He was somewhere else.

  He set foot on a surface of half?formed shapes drifting in emptiness. Above him a sky of storm clouds and strange constellations churned. Flickers of buildings, fragments of forest paths and sheets of color drifted past like sketches on a blank canvas. A wave of vertigo nearly toppled him. He forced calm, mind repeating anchor and return.

  Each step made the surface ripple as though he walked on water. Reflections of corridors and forest edges glowed for a moment in those ripples. He whispered, “Hello?” His voice echoed strangely, as though the realm tested his doubt.

  Silence answered.

  He pressed on. Underfoot the dreamscape reconfigured itself into a broken academy hallway with torn banners and shattered windows. Memory?images from childhood drifted overhead then vanished if he looked too directly. The environment wove illusions from his thoughts. Stay focused, he reminded himself.

  In the distance he caught a figure wearing pale garments. His heart jolted. “Narcis?” The shape did not respond, only stood blurred. He hurried forward, only to watch it dissolve into splashes of color. Frustration rose. Illusion, he realized.

  He tried to impose his will, recalling a line about forging ephemeral roads in the dream. His efforts left him breathless as the chaos resisted. Panic flickered. If he could not shape the realm, how would he find Narcis?

  Suddenly the ground shuddered. Pain lanced behind his eyes as the dream quaked. A battered corridor materialized like the second?floor walkway of the academy, banners drooping from the ceiling and wind howling through empty frames. Dark lumps crept along the walls, creatures of shadow and dripping runes.

  His pulse hammered. The text had warned illusions fed on negative emotion. Those lumps thrived on fear. He forced a calming breath and rose slowly. The creatures hissed as their elongated limbs slid toward him.

  He summoned a mental barrier and sent up a sun barrier. Even that magic felt weak here. The creatures snarled and advanced until a clear, human voice cried, “Over here!”

  Nathan turned and saw, at the corridor’s end, a figure beckoning in the gloom. Relief washed through him. The creatures lunged with dripping runes. With all his strength he hurled a pulse of force that pushed them back, then surged forward.

  They burst into a quiet pocket of the realm. Both sank to their knees, breathing hard. Nathan studied his savior. Pale hair shimmered faintly and piercing silver eyes caught the strange light. Shock froze him.

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  “Who are you?” he gasped.

  The boy exhaled relief tangled with fear. “There is no time. They will tear this place apart.” He grabbed Nathan’s wrist and pulled him down a narrow passage that formed beside them. The walls twisted and groaned as the creatures pressed at the threshold. The boy summoned a beam of moonlight that deflected a lash of black fluid. Nathan reinforced his sun barrier to stall their attackers.

  At last they reached a brief refuge. Nathan looked at the boy’s face. The same jawline and cheekbones, only the eyes were different.

  “How can this be?” Nathan whispered. “You look like me.”

  Tears glistened in the boy’s silver eyes. “I thought you were gone. I thought they erased you. I am Narcis Quinn, your twin.”

  A surge of emotion left Nathan speechless. Sun and Moon, parted at birth. “They separated us to protect us from the Reaper,” Narcis said, voice trembling. “I tried to bring you here months ago but I was pulled deeper into this realm. I could see you in dreams, but never like this.”

  Behind them came the shriek of those creatures. The dreamscape trembled. Narcis rose, silver eyes fierce. “They have found us. If we stay they will devour us.”

  “I won’t leave you,” Nathan said.

  Narcis shook his head. “Focus on your anchor. Your body will wake you. I cannot leave yet. My anchor is severed.” Tears slid down his cheeks.

  “I promise I will return,” Nathan vowed.

  Narcis forced a sad smile as shadows crept closer. “Hurry. Before this place consumes us both.”

  Nathan shut his eyes and remembered the candle’s glow. He willed his consciousness to retreat and then jolted awake on the cold floor. The candle flickered, wax pooled in a sticky puddle. He gasped and drew in a ragged breath. Lissandre still slept. Noctisolar stood at his side, glowing eyes full of concern.

  He looked at his right palm and saw fresh blood. His heart pounded. A dream wound could not bleed. Proof that he had truly crossed into another reality.

  Trembling, he pressed a cloth to the cut. The world felt ordinary yet irreversibly changed. He had a brother named Narcis and he was trapped in that liminal realm. Creatures still hunted him there. Nathan would come back.

  He sat upright and his gaze fell on the tall mirror leaning against the wall. His reflection, pale, exhausted, stared back, but then the face blurred. The eyes glinted silver for the briefest heartbeat. Nathan’s chest seized. That gaze was Narcis’s, not his. He staggered toward the glass, fingers trembling as he reached out. The mirror rippled, the surface shimmering with half?formed runes as if responding to his shock. In that distorted reflection he saw Narcis’s features, pale hair and silver eyes filled with hope and sorrow.

  A disembodied voice echoed in his mind: “I’ve been reaching for you months, Nathan. Every dream I could, every flicker of illusion, I tried to call your name.” The voice faded, leaving him reeling. Every strange vision, every shadow?glitch he had dismissed as fatigue or stray magic each had been Narcis’s attempt to connect.

  Nathan pressed his hand against the glass, tasting guilt and wonder. The cut in his palm stung, anchoring him back to reality. Narcis had been here all along, following him in dreams and illusions, desperate for rescue.

  In the morning light he wrapped his hand and slipped from the dorm before Lissandre woke. He paced the empty courtyard, mind racing with questions and determination.

  By morning light he wrapped his hand and slipped from the dorm before Lissandre woke. He paced the empty courtyard, mind racing. Who had separated them? Why? Could anyone at the academy help, or would they bury the truth again?

  He sank onto a bench beneath an oak, exhaustion pinning him but determination burning brighter. He retrieved the blank journal he had bought weeks ago. Now he needed a place to record every detail. He wrote:

  Day One

  Dream?walk was real. I met a boy named Narcis Quinn who claims to be my twin with opposite affinities. He is trapped in the dream realm. I woke with a cut from the creatures there. I promise to return for him.

  He sketched Narcis’s silver eyes and pale hair beneath the date, then closed the journal.

  He closed the journal, exhaustion sinking into his bones. Maybe now he could sleep for real, albeit warily. The swirl of adrenaline receded, replaced by numbing fatigue. I found him, he thought, drifting. A brother. Or so he claims. Despite the avalanche of doubts, a fierce protectiveness flared in his chest. If Narcis was telling the truth, then Nathan owed it to him to break him free.

  His next dream that night was normal, fleeting images of the cafeteria, a fuzzy recollection of old classes, no swirling illusions. When he woke, disappointment gnawed at him. He longed for another glimpse of Narcis, to confirm it all over again. But at least he had the journal, the scrawled lines of memory.

  He pressed on through the day, half?listening to lectures. Professor Varis in Casting gave him a worried glance more than once, perhaps noticing his spaced?out expression. Roremand approached after class, brow furrowed, but Nathan muttered an excuse about insomnia and slipped away.

  In quiet corners he reread the journal, each time reeling at how impossible it all sounded. But the scab on his palm was real, and the memory of Narcis’s terrified eyes would not vanish. Sometime that afternoon an unshakable resolve hardened in Nathan’s core, he would attempt the dream walk again soon, once he was better prepared, once he had learned more from the old texts. No illusions or shadow beasts could scare him away from saving his twin.

  That evening he borrowed more books, public volumes carefully selected for any mention of liminal spaces, illusions or advanced dream?crafting. Lissandre teased him about going full "obsessed scholar", but he brushed off her concerns. Everyone saw he was avoiding social gatherings, but no one demanded answers yet.

  And so he sank deeper into secret research, candlelit nights in dusty nooks. Each reference was incomplete, scratched out or contradictory. Still, faint clues emerged, bridging a “shared anchor” might let two individuals cross realms together. If I can anchor Narcis somehow…

  Days blurred, each quiet moment spent compiling notes. The less he found, the more determined he became. Then, at last, a marginal scrawl in an obscure treatise gave a half?step of hope:

  “Twins parted can re?link their energies if the living anchor stands firm in dream. Opposite elements yield convergence.”

  He underlined it, heart lifting. Opposite elements, Sun and Moon. If that synergy applied to him and Narcis, perhaps they could escape illusions. He tucked the treatise away for further study, mind churning with plans.

  At night, the memory of Narcis haunted him, the identical cheekbones, the frightened rasp of “They told me you were gone.” The swirl of guilt and longing returned each time he rechecked the cut on his palm. If the realm was truly lethal, how long could Narcis survive?

  He refused to wait any longer. He would gather more notes, refine his dream incantation and go back. One more night, then he would try. Fear twisted his gut, but it could not match the burning need to rescue his twin. If dream illusions threatened him, so be it. He was not just a lone mage trembling before the unknown, he was half of something bigger, reuniting what had been stolen.

  And he would not fail.