There was always a dream:

Corvin walks through his home. The walls are uneven, pitted, and tower over him, transitioning from ochre to stone to sandstone to ochre. It is where he belongs: his hole in the ground. Though he knows, in a vague sense, that it is hot outside – for that is what his parents always complain about – he is deathly cold.

The hall opens into a wide, circular room, its walls studded with blazing lamps entirely bereft of smoke – as the boy knows all lights are. At the centre of the room is a pit, into which the effulgence fails to penetrate. He walks to it, each step a hundredth of what they should be.

He reaches the edge and looks down. Bodies roil, clashing against one another, blanketing darkness making each look indistinct. Every time he stares at one, it puffs into plumes and vanishes; only memory hinting at a former existence.

“Look, Corvin.” His father is beside him. “They are us.”

“Yes.” His mother now, slighter and softer than her husband. “We will return them to us, as all things should.”

Mumma's gentle hands steer him around. Maja stands behind him, her towering figure brushing the cavern’s roof. She has countless shadows; despite the room’s lambency he can see nothing besides her fathomless eyes and the spear in her hand.

“Take it.” The monster commands, extending the weapon to him. “Save yourself.”

Corvin takes the spear. It is too large for him, its weight threatening to drag his body to the ground. He feels sluggish. A small figure is on the ground, eyes closed. He does not know them, yet there is something familiar about their features: the white hair and pale skin tickles a remembrance at the back of his mind.

“Now,” his three parents are speaking – he must listen. “Stab them. Kill them. Bring them back.”

He does not want to. It is too terrifying; like thrusting hands into an inferno. He does not want to hurt anyone. But he must be a good son. Corvin strains, slowly lifting the spear above his head, and then brings it down, impaling his siblings through the chest. The boy can feel them dying, everything that they are slipping away.

He dips his fingers in their blood-

And woke up.