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Ever since he became like this, he has dreamt about this place every night.
In his dream, Nova opened his eyes in a pool of golden hour light, orange sun snaking lazily toward the horizon, bright patches of clouds torn and ragged in the warm colored sky were carefully glued to their places as if forever stuck in time.
Sometimes the dream of this place was cut abruptly as soon as he opened his eyes, but most of the other times, he was left to explore this strange dreamscape.
The air gently washed over his skin when, disoriented, Nova sat up from the soft bedding of the mud. He absently took the sight in before registering the uncomfortable feeling in his forearm. He stretched out his cramped hand and stopped in his tracks just to stare at it.
There he sat, in the body that was not his. Cut off by the hem of the long sleeve, there was no black paint on his skin. These hands belonged to Clancy. To the life he had forsaken to become a bishop that he was now.
He flexed his unmarked fingers, examining the way the veins underneath the pale shade at his wrist snaked and disappeared at the palm of his hand in a strange type of awe. He didn't even remember when was the last time his skin looked like that.
Undisturbed.
In this dream, he found himself unhurriedly making his way down the endless garden of wildflowers, colorless, blue, red, and green peaking through the tall grass. He took his time just passing by the overgrowth, touching the leaves at his disposal. The wind blew the petals away, and he watched the red flowers plummet to the ground.
He looked around.
Swayed by the light mist of the early morning (or was that the late evening? No matter how closely Nova looked at the sky, he couldn't tell for sure), the grass around him shone as if dipped in liquid gold.
So, with weightless steps, he trudged on.
Assessing his surroundings, with time dilated around him, he moved on for what felt like hours.
Until the unchanging horizon shifted with something new in the field of his vision, and he finally stumbled on a place that looked oddly familiar. He couldn't put his finger on why he recognized the route.
It was a campsite, lonely in the expanse of the trees, surrounded by the security of the forest.
What a smart location, he thought in passing as his feet took him closer to an odd sighting.
The campsite was abandoned, a rummaged-looking thing. Pried open crates were still full of resources, and clothes were still hanging from the low branches.
And oh, he thought, he remembered now.
It had been so long since he last saw a bandito camp.
He stepped over a rotted log, gazing over the flap open tents.
He approached a crate, reaching out to touch the rough wood. A jacket was draped over the side, its fabric weathered but untorn.
He wondered if it had yellow tape plastered all over it. He couldn't tell no more.
There was a time, so long ago, when he could call this type of place home. Now, though, he felt like a stranger intruding on something he wasn't supposed to be a part of in the first place. Sticking out like a sore thumb.
Not that there were any residents to stick out from.
Last he heard, banditos relocated further back to the west from the Paladin Strait. There wasn't much intel in recent years, and Nova didn't care enough to know more. Most of the information the bishops got about the rebellion was from rare sightings of the unidentified flowers of the invisible color brought in by guards of the city, and a letter abandoned for a bandito inside the walls to read.
We must do better, Clancy.
We must do better.
TB
For all that he knew, they were alive and surviving. There was no point in keeping in contact.
Nova crouched to take a closer look at the contents of the crate left behind.
There wasn't much. In fact, it was mostly empty. There were a few scraps of cloth and a rusted can. A spool of thread tangled beyond salvation lay abandoned on the very bottom.
Finding nothing of use, his fingers lingered on the rough wood before he let the lid fall shut.
And then, he moved on.
He drifted through the row of tents, sizing up the empty bedrolls. It looked like it had been a while since someone had lain in those sheets. Every blanket looked like it had gathered years of dust.
Why did you leave? The thought couldn't leave his mind, even though he knew the answer like no one else.
For a couple of nights, dreaming about waking in the same place, Nova searched.
For what, he wasn't entirely sure. A trace of life, perhaps. Something.
There was a tent bigger than the others. It spiked his curiosity, stopping him in his tracks, and with the laser focus he thought he had lost over time, he carelessly pried the flap open and barged in.
Nova found nothing.
His gaze stopped at the lonely cot in the corner of the stilted room.
He wondered if this tent ever belonged to Torchbearer. He wondered if this cot was his. But then again, looking back at their living situation, he doubted he would live alone - it was way too cramped.
He wondered if he had found another Clancy to save and keep by his side. To care for and keep warm.
Nova left the tent.
Eventually, leafing through the map left to rot on the log, he decided that he needed to move on. No use in waiting, in stalling, however familiar this place wasn't, when he knew he was left alone.
So he let his feet take him up toward the forest, towards the east.
Not looking back to where he left the camp behind, he pushed through the steep hill littered with tall trees.
The landscape unfolded endlessly before him.
The farther he walked, the less familiar everything became.
He leaned his weight on the bark of the nearby plant and looked around.
From the sparse foliage on his left, something shimmered close to the ground. He stumbled through the mud, closer to inspect this glint, until he finally ended up at the edge of the body of water.
Nova stopped.
A pond rested in a shallow basin of earth, surrounded by lavish grass on the other side. It was somewhat peaceful. Still on the surface, unhurried by the soft waft of wind.
The surface reflected the orange sky, making it look like water itself had been replaced by a piece of the heavens that had fallen to the ground. Like an imprint left to remind.
For a long moment, he just looked at it from a relative distance. And then curiosity got the better of him, so he approached the pond, grass brushing against his legs.
The shoreline crumbled softly beneath his feet.
And there, staring back from the mirror-smooth surface, was a face. Clancy's face.
He stared for a long moment before blinking. He almost feared what this reflection had entailed.
Nova had purposefully removed all and any mirrors from his district since he gained his name. There was something eerie in the way his reflection looked at him back in the towers with a dull gaze, so he avoided it altogether.
It's been so long since he saw this face. Unmarked by the burden he was now to carry.
In too sharp of a look in his eyes, Nova could almost recognize the person who used to wear this face - the person he used to be before.
He lifted his hand to touch the scar going across his nose.
And then he heard a faint crack of dry branch breaking on the ground. The sound was coming from behind his back, and it was oh so clear in the silence of the surrounding forest.
Nova turned, slowly.
He expected to see a small animal (not that he had seen any before in his dreams), or maybe a fallen bough.
Instead, standing at the edge of the trees was a figure, wearing a thick layer of clothes.
His face was hidden behind a yellow bandana, but Nova didn't think he could ever forget how this face looked, even in the darkness, even submerged under the water.
Torchbearer.
Even after all this time, he doesn't look like he has aged a day.
The man stood perfectly still, posture visibly stiff and alert. His eyes were wide and disbelieving.
Almost hopeful.
"Clancy?"
Something wriggled inside Nova's chest.
Something old. Ugly and forgotten.
It clawed its way through layers of carefully cultivated indifference, steadily crushing the walls he had built.
The silence stretched between them.
Torchbearer's expression visibly faltered, as he finally frowned.
"No..."
As if it's something he should have known better, Torchbearer's shoulders drooped.
"Of course it's you..."
We must do better, Torchbearer once wrote.
Nova straightened atop where he just crouched at the water.
"Hi."
Torchbearer turned to leave.
The sight left him almost seeing in flashes how Torch did the same all those years ago, how it hurt to see him turn his back on the offered red cloak, how it broke them apart, how that was the last stepping stone in the divide between them.
"Wait," Nova said, the word slipping out before he could think to act otherwise.
Torchbearer stopped at the tree line.
Nova stood there, and all he could start to realize was how much he couldn't stand seeing his straight back covered in a heavy coat.
There was a stilted silence that settled between them.
"What?" Torchbearer finally sighed, heavy with resignation. And then he repeated it, softer this time, his voice a low scrape in the quiet forest. "What?"
As if to ask What else do you want to take from me? Was burying Clancy beneath the cold facade of a bishop not enough? Nova knew exactly what the man was thinking, and the absolute certainty of that knowledge left him bitter.
Nova stepped a little closer, his boots hiking over the slight, muddy rise in the ground to close the gap between them.
"What do you want?" Torchbearer asked again.
"How… how are the banditos?"
It was the first thing that came to his mind once the silence cleared enough for him to speak. A ghost of a question from a ghost of a man.
Torchbearer huffed, a sharp, humorless sound. He turned to face Nova fully, his hand reaching up to slide the yellow bandana down past his chin. It revealed a bitter smile of his own, worn into the lines of his face.
"Shouldn't your vultures tell you all about how the banditos are?"
Nova looked offended at the insinuation.
"I don't seize vultures," he said, voice clipped.
"Right." Torchbearer’s face soured. "You seize people. How could I forget?"
"Glorious gones."
"My point still stands."
Nova’s gaze dropped, drifting away from the harsh accusation in the man's eyes down to Torchbearer's hands. They were just as rough and calloused as the last time Nova had ever laid eyes upon them.
Noticing the scrutiny, Torchbearer pulled his hands back, bunching them into tight fists against his sides.
"I shouldn't talk to you," he said, the anger fading into something exhausted.
"Why?"
"You know exactly why," Torchbearer replied, his gaze boring into Nova’s unmarked face.
"I don't."
"You're not Tyler—you're not Clancy anymore. That's why."
"Didn't you find another Clancy?"
Torchbearer looked hurt, however logical the question hadn't been.
There were big shoes to fill in. A role to be replaced.
Brown eyes stopped at his face, hurt crossing his features before his expression closed off entirely. There were no words left for what they had become to one another. With a lingering look of disappointment, Torchbearer turned and disappeared into the shadows of the forest.
Nova woke up in his bed, surrounded by gray walls.
The next day, the dream pulled him back to the very same camp. The heavy, gold-dipped grass still swayed under the eternal sky that had remained frozen.
But something felt different this time.
He knew it would happen the moment he closed his eyes to go to sleep.
Nova felt it the moment he regained his awareness in the confines of the tall greenery and soft mud. He wasn't alone anymore.
He moved like a ghost through the quiet expanse, carefully tiptoeing his way around a smothered fire pit, the cold gray ashes undisturbed by the wind.
He approached the larger tent - the one that had spiked his curiosity before.
With a hesitant step, he reached out and pried the heavy canvas flap open.
There he sat.
Torchbearer was perched on the edge of the cot, the shadows of the tent swallowing most of his frame. In his lap lay a piece of paper - a letter, crumpled slightly at the edges. At the rustle of the fabric, Torchbearer snapped his gaze upward, his brown eyes locking instantly onto Nova’s.
"Get out," Torch said. His voice was flat, devoid of any visible emotion.
Nova didn't move. He stared at the man, feeling as if his boots were rooted to the ground.
"I said get out," Torch repeated.
The words lacked any real bite; they felt more like a plea. In the dim, filtered darkness of the tent, stripped of his defiant posture, he just looked incredibly lonely.
Slowly, Nova let his hand drop. The heavy flap fell back into place, closing the tent shut and cutting off the view of the man inside.
Nova stood in the quiet camp, a sudden realization washing over him. Ever since he had started dreaming about this place - this purgatory of a frozen-in-time orange sky and the soft earth beneath his feet - he had believed it was merely a cruel trick of his own mind. A manifestation of lingering guilt. A solitary dream.
But this wasn't just his own head.
The canvas rustled again. Torchbearer emerged from the tent a moment later, stepping out into the bleeding golden hour light. He stopped abruptly, ending up just an inch from Nova's face.
Up close, the defiance was gone. Torchbearer's eyes looked raw and heavy, as if he had spent a long time crying before the canvas had been pulled back.
"Would you stop haunting me?" Torch said, the words scraping softly against the quiet forest.
Nova just watched him. He was entirely oblivious to the expression he was making at that moment.
He could only stare, transfixed by a Torchbearer who stood before him more vulnerable than he had ever been within the safety of the real world.
Eventually, the last of the fight drained from Torchbearer's shoulders. He let out a long, ragged sigh and closed his eyes, unable to look at the ghost of the man he had lost.
"Get out of my head."
Nova woke up at dawn.
The gray walls of his room in the tower offered no warmth as he lay perfectly still in the quiet, the phantom chill of the dreamscape still clinging to his bare skin.
For the longest time, he had believed he was the one trapped in a cycle of his own remorse, a ghost weaving through the ruins of his past. But as the pale morning light slowly crept across the concrete floor, a jarring thought took root.
What if it was all the other way around? What if it wasn't Nova doing the haunting, but Torchbearer himself who was pulling Nova into his head, infecting his every dream?
The next night, when Nova opened his eyes back in his sleep, he was lying flat on his back. The rough texture of wood pressed against his spine, and he realized he was resting on a fallen log right at the fire pit in the center of the abandoned campsite.
He shifted, sat up, and froze.
Directly across from him, sitting on the opposite log on the other side of the smothered, ash-choked fire pit, was Torchbearer. The man was already looking at him.
They stared at each other in silence. Then, breaking the tension as abruptly as a snap of a twig, Torchbearer stood up. Without a word, he made a straight beeline for the crates scattered further back in the camp.
He moved with unwavering purpose, looking like he knew exactly where he was going. Compelled by a sudden spark of urgency, Nova swung his legs over the log and followed in his steps.
Torchbearer stopped at one particular crate, tucked away in the deepening shade where the setting sun couldn't quite reach. Nova watched in silence as Torchbearer reached down and carelessly ripped the heavy lid open.
Inside the crate lay Clancy's old jacket, weathered and discarded.
But it wasn't the fabric that caught Nova's attention.
Resting at the very bottom of the box was something pale and ivory, catching the stray glint of the twilight. Torchbearer reached into the crate and picked up the antlers in his hands.
Nova stared at the object, his breath catching in his throat.
There was no way there were any spare antlers left. Last Nova knew, he had taken the final pair from that strange Ned creature on the shores of Voldsøy island.
Torchbearer turned slightly, looking at Nova to assess his expression on his unmarked face. Whatever he saw in Nova's wide eyes led him to extend his arms, holding the antlers out toward him.
"I don't need those," Nova said quickly, his voice clipped as he took a half-step back. "I can seize perfectly fine without them."
Torchbearer didn't lower his hands. "Have you tried seizing in the dream yet?"
Nova blinked. He hadn't. There had been no reason to, nothing to command or possess in this frozen expanse.
Except, of course, for the one person standing right in front of him.
"No," Nova said, unyielding tone settling into his voice.
"Don't make it difficult."
A suffocating silence stretched between them as Nova stared at the offered antlers.
They were the very object that had catalyzed his downfall, the tool that had led his first steps downhill toward becoming what he was now. He stared at the smooth ivory, wondering with a bitter pang if he had never accepted them all those years ago, would it all still have turned out exactly the same?
"Fine," finally said Torchbearer.
Instead of putting them away, Torchbearer gripped the base of the antlers himself, his knuckles turning white. His posture shifted, looking like he was about to seize something right then and there.
The sight alone rang alarm bells in Nova's head. Panic flared deep in his chest.
"What are you doing?" Nova asked, his voice rising.
"It's not going anywhere, Ty." Torchbearer's expression cracked and crumpled as if a sand sculpture. He looked devastated, gazing at him with heavy eyes.
Hearing the lost name he once carried made something warm and painful wriggle deep inside Nova's chest.
A violent reminder of the humanity he had tried so hard to forget.
"The rebellion is going nowhere," Torchbearer eventually continued, his voice breaking under the weight of the confession. "There are too many glorious gones—this religion takes everything. Banditos are not doing well."
"And you're giving up?" Nova asked, defensive about something he no longer has any say in. "We pushed on through worse."
"And where did it lead every single time?" Torchbearer asked, raising the antlers up in demonstrative motion to emphasize his point. "I really thought it would be different with you. But then you turned your back on me."
"You were the one to do that," Nova protested, his voice echoing through the quiet trees. "You left me."
"I'm tired," Torchbearer whispered, the fight completely draining out of him. "I don't think I can do it all over again."
Slowly, Torchbearer looked down at the antlers in his hands. He shifted his grip, turning them to hold both pieces in one hand, and with a dull, heavy thud, he dropped them back into the bottom of the crate. He stared down at them for just a moment longer before sinking down onto another wooden crate beside it.
The lazy, orange rays of the sunset bled through the trees, snaking across their feet like liquid gold. Torchbearer sat there, defeated, a broken shadow of the leader he used to be.
And with those words left to linger in the air, the dream fractured, and Nova woke up.
Nova went through the motions, walking across the halls of the cold concrete halls. He listened to the reports of the city guards, signed off on the daily distributions, and stared out the high windows at the citizens shuffling below - a sea of mute, silent, obedient sheep.
Later, back in his quarters at the very top of the tower, he set about straightening his living space. He swept away the day's clutter, organizing the tall stacks of paper documents, folding them one by one in neat folders, until the room looked exactly as it should - unassuming and gray.
But as he slid a heavy ledger into place, his gaze stopped. Tucked beneath a pile of older documents on his desk was a frayed, weathered edge of paper.
Nova reached out and pulled it free.
Held in his hand, the fragile scrap looked entirely out of place. He turned it over, his eyes scanning the faded ink of the handwriting he used to know so well.
Never forget the cries of your people.
Never forget the raw fear that fueled you, or the rebels that made you who you are today.
We are all one.
We destroyed them so that we didn't become them.
We must do better, Clancy.
We must do better.
TB
Nova stared at the words, his blackened thumb resting over the name Clancy.
For all that he knew, there was nothing left to salvage.
Without a sound, Nova laid the letter face down on the cold surface of his desk, burying the words back into the shadows where they had no business in disturbing his mind.
He turned away from the desk, stripped off the heavy layers of the red robe, and lay down in his gray bed, staring at the ceiling. He closed his eyes, letting the darkness take him, waiting for the familiar warmth of the liquid gold sun and the campsite in the trees.
But the orange sky never came.
He didn't dream anymore.
It was eerie how used he had become to waking on the other side in the dreamscape dipped in orange, and now, when it was all taken away, how much he had longed to see it once again.
And he didn't.
Night after night, his sleep remained dreamless.
For all those years of his ruling as a bishop, he couldn't see the orange sky above the Trench frozen in time again.
There was talk among the lower ranks about the banditos relocating, pulling back from their distant western sanctuaries and moving closer to the towering walls of the city. This time, Nova listened carefully, taking in the tiniest speck of information.
There was also talk of a new Clancy.
The whispers carried weight through the tower - tales of a young man who rejected the tenets of Vialism, a citizen whose defiance bled through his actions as he openly doubted the bishops' authority.
Nova questioned some of the future Glorious Gones before the Assembly of the Glorious ceremony, and all of them, like one, just solidified the news. Clancy was back.
Nova felt a ghost of a thrill.
This rebel was just as curious as the old Clancy had once been - as he had once been - staring hopelessly at the boundaries of Dema, mesmerized by the wild promises of the vast forest of Trench.
Nova found himself tracking the boy's itinerary, keeping a silent, watchful eye on his file from the shadows of his high office.
To avoid the blank emptiness of his sleep, Nova began to postpone going to bed altogether. Instead, he spent the quiet, midnight hours sitting at his desk, leafing through the letters he had kept from Torchbearer. They had been written a lifetime ago, before the red cloak on his shoulder had split them apart for good.
There were dozens of those letters, hidden away in the furthest, false-bottomed part of his desk drawer. He knew he should have burned them, thrown them away, and kept his hands from sliding back to the old habits, but he could never bring himself to get rid of them.
One particularly stifling night, unable to bear the confinement of his desk, Nova took the stack of letters across the room to the high, arched window. Outside, the cool summer wind was picking up, causing the heavy red curtains to billow and snap around him like open wounds.
As he uncrumpled one of the fragile pages, a sudden gust of wind caught the parchment. It was wrenched from his blackened fingers before he could tighten his grip. Nova reached out, but the paper was already gone, picked up by the thermal currents and swept out past the high ledge, floating like a pale leaf over the city walls and toward the suffocating darkness of the forest beyond.
Traced in faded, hurried ink across the escaping page were the words:
We must do better, Clancy.
Nova sank onto the stone seat at the windowsill, his chest tight as he trailed the white speck with his eyes, watching it sink lower and lower until it finally disappeared into the black canopy of the treeline.
But as his gaze lingered on the horizon, it stopped on something strange in the distance.
The space beyond the walls was a sea of pitch black, but far away, right at the edge of a small clearing, there was a dull, flickering spark. Nova squinted. His eyesight was worsening from age, but the distinct, warm hue of the light was unmistakable.
A figure was standing still in the brush, holding a blazing torch.
Torchbearer.
A desperate, instinctive thought flared in Nova's mind.
He wondered if there was still time - if he could find a freshly deceased vessel within the lower districts, seize a Glorious Gone, and use the empty shell to sprint out past the gates to reach that man while he still stood there waiting in the dark.
But then, as he looked closer, the realization slowly crept in.
Torchbearer wasn’t looking up at the high windows of the bishop's tower. His body was angled toward the lower residential sectors of his district, where the citizens were supposed to be sleeping.
He hadn't come back for Nova. He had come for the new Clancy.
It soured his mood. It should have been him whom Torchbearer came to kidnap in the dead of the night.
But at least now, Nova knew exactly what he had to do.