He dreamed of the Fells, of the starving time. The very air surrounding him shimmered and warped as everything around him died. The plants shriveled up until they were mere husks, and the wild murak and other wildlife soon followed them. The spirits of the land cried in agony, their gentle hum turned into wails of torment. Their souls faded as the corruption consumed them, and the blackened shadows came out of the blanket of night to feast during the dark day. The day no longer held back the darkness, and the shadows broke out of the ground to feast on the living.

The Fells was twenty nights of death: dying earth, broken land, shattered souls, and rampant darkness. He knew of this, for it came every year when the earth weeped gaping wounds and the shadows seeped out of its grasp. The land shifted, cracked, and the shadows crawled out from within. They would hunt and kill with wild abandon, seeking nothing more than to reap lives before the Fells ended. Thirteen of these hellish times he had survived—this one would not claim him. The hungering shadows and ice-cold darkness could not take him from this earth.

Such was what he dreamed of.

The shadows were not native to these lands, he knew. They were bound to the Outlands; it served as their prison for they would not go past the mountains. The Fells were the shadows fighting to be freed of their shackles. When the earth lost its hold upon the darkness, then it crawled out of the cracks to feast on the living, accompanied by a roiling tide of numbing mist. The darkness had no light, no warmth, and it swallowed all that it touched. They were silent, shapeless, and utterly empty within.

This much, he knew from before, but now the earth told him of more terrors.

This you see, my child. This, you have lived. Before, you saw. But now, you shall know.

His dreamscape shimmered and shifted, and before him he saw a roiling mass of black. It lay buried under the earth, unseen shackles keeping it bound within its cage. It had no depth, had no shape, had no features at all. It was an absence of everything, an utter void, and when it moved his every instinct screamed to run.

The Skal, whispered the earth, it's voice a hushed murmur. It was quiet perhaps out of respect, perhaps out of fear, for it held this terror within the bowels of its own flesh. It is the mother, servant to long-forgotten Sin.

The image changed once more, and now he saw the darkness surging forth, crashing against the earth like an endless tide of black. It fought its chains, fought the magic that bound it. The earth trembled and fought, but finally it caved. A thin crack formed in the rock, and the darkness slipped through. Its mass was restrained still, but that thin crack was all it needed.

From its shapeless body poured forth the shadows, like a torrent forcing itself through a gap. They were ants to the giant from which they were spawned, consuming everything they saw. For twenty days and twenty nights they feasted, gorging themselves on the living. And at the end of it all, they sank back into the darkness. And the darkness, now sated, sank back into its prison to wait. Behind it, the earth closed without a scar. And so the cycle went.

The Skal’ai are hunters, children of the Skal. They feed the Skal, and so it has gone since Sin’s fall. Know that you will face them, and greater evils still.

Finished, the earth fell silent and he slipped into dreamless sleep. Terror gripped his heart from the visions, from what he had seen, and what he knew would be coming. His body was battered and broken, and he longed for rest. Yet it could not last long, for soon he began to stir.

Ever slowly, he felt the rising brown-red sun wake him from his slumber. The heat was gentle and soft as it warmed his blood. With effort, he tried to open his eyes, blinking away the tears as the bright light sent bolts of pain into his head. His head was racked with agony, any movement making his vision swoon and his forehead pound. All of his body hurt; his limbs were barely able to move. He gave a feeble attempt to sit up, but his body betrayed him as the weary muscles spasmed and tremors ran down his spine. A low grunt escaped his gritted teeth as he fell back onto his back, the world spinning madly around him. A sudden wave of nausea struck him by surprise and he retched out bile and blood. His body was hopelessly, fatally feeble, and he fought to remain awake.

He failed. Gasping for air, his very chest grew too tight for him to breathe and the world swirled black once more. No, he cried out in his thoughts, knowing that there was much to be done, but sleep claimed him still.

Again he slept, and again he dreamed. His dreams were formless, timeless. He was floating, drifting, his consciousness like a stone flowing down a stream. There was a fleeting sense of danger, but it vanished as quickly as it had come. Afterwards, he felt nothing. He was being tugged, pulled by the unseen. It drew him closer, and then he saw.

A figure was sitting, sleeping perhaps, surrounding by formless black. Its skin was a pallid grey, its hair long and ragged. As he drew closer, he saw its skin pulled tight over knuckle and bone, dried and wrinkled and leather or hide. Its nails were cracked and yellowed, its clothing torn with age. Its lips were drawn tight and cracked, the skin as lifeless as stone.

It wore a simple robe, brown as dirt and embroidered with black. Around its neck was a golden collar, inscribed with words from countless tongues and mesmerizing beyond compare. Its surface was like gazing into a rippling lake, always shimmering and gleaming before him. Around it lay three empty sockets, clearly missing its gemstones, the shape of small shards.

His right arm burned feverishly.

As he looked closer, it became clear that this thing was sitting on a throne, although of what nature, he could not tell. It was ever moving, ever shifting, surrounded in that wreath of darkness. Perhaps, in the unclear mess of his dreamscape, the two were one and the figure sat upon darkness itself. It was clear, in any case, that the black was no ordinary shadow cast by unseen light. It was a mist, a shroud, yet the figure was still clearly seen upon that seat of abyssal stone. As he was pulled ever closer, he saw even more finely the details of its flesh.

And it became clear, then, that it was a corpse.

Its gaunt frame held no muscle, its body all too thin. Its eyes were closed in death, its fingers wrapped tightly upon the darkness. It wore decay like a robe, its flesh greying and in places breaking off. There was more life in sand than was held in this figure. Every instinct in his body confirmed this.

And yet, it moved.

Ever slowly, a finger twitched. It was one, then two, and then its left hand lifted from its place upon its throne. It rose with a pace that matched the trees, that matched the dance of the tide and lands. It rose with the pace of the timeless, of millennia past and eons forgotten. Yet it rose nevertheless.

And ever slowly, its eyes opened.

They were bottomless pits, black smoke pouring out of their corners to meld into the darkness around him. He did not know how, but he knew that they saw him. They did not blink, did not flicker. No part of them moved, not even the billowing smoke when it was focused upon. And yet they moved, and yet they saw.

Its hand was raised to grasp, reaching outward in a desperate motion. And ever slowly, it opened its mouth.

Thief.

It spoke with one voice; it spoke with a thousand voices. They were colder than ice, it was hotter than fire. There was incomparable rage, inexhaustible power, hidden within that voice like churning gravel, like restless serpents.

The voices of the dead were silent. The voice of the earth had left him. He was alone.

He could feel the foreign presence of the darkness that surrounded it creeping closer to where he was watching. It was watching him, he knew. It was hunting him. This fear, this terror, it did not feel like a dream.

He was not there in the flesh, but he could offer no protest as the darkness whispered in through his ears, hideous nothingness wrapping around his claws and legs. Shadows bit and tore at his flesh, but the needles of sharp pain felt dampened by the haze in his mind. Skal’ai, the earth had called them, and the name chilled him. They ate at his limbs, the coldness of their black mist seeping in through his hide and settling bone-deep, numbing his body. Their quiet touch muddled his thoughts and softened his fear. He remembered then, the danger that he had felt—the sensation of being lured forward.

He forgot the danger just as quickly, and soon he felt nothing once more.

He did not want to think; he was too tired to do so. It would be such a simple thing to stop. To stop fighting. To rest. To sleep. His body was surrounded now—eaten whole by the night that stole away his flesh. He felt no sensation, no response from the hollow husk of his living corpse. There was only his consciousness left, the vague amalgamation of spirit and mind that too was slowly fading. He felt nothing but cold, and he was so, so tired. Tired of fighting, tired of living. It would be simple to leave it all behind. It would be easy to die here.

Then he felt the black mist around him draw tighter, the bitter cold sapping all the heat from him as it wreathed around his body. He could feel the corpse almost an arm’s length away, the utter nothing of its presence that pulsed next to him—hideously intimate. He did not know when, but he had begun to walk with unfeeling legs. There was no sensation in those limbs, that seemed like limbs of a puppet as the moved without his will to guide them. Dimly, he noted that he was walking towards that corpse that lived, towards that outstretched hand.

It had spoken only once, but he heard its voices over and over. He heard its soundless voice in an unceasing echo. It was an enthralling song, a mesmerizing echo that sunk through his thoughts and reason. Ever closer he drew now; perhaps he was being pulled, or perhaps he was stumbling forward of his own accord. The shadows were like lovers, taking part in this writhing dance as they ripped at his flesh. Closer now they became with every passing heartbeat, whisper-like and tenuous.

It was watching him, he could tell. Its black mist circled him, the shadows around him feasting. He could not see anything now. There was only the darkness of the mist and the shadows and the utter emptiness it had brought. The billowing Skal’ai devoured all they touched. They had no claws, no teeth, no body to speak of, but they would devour him too. They were the greatest of predators, he knew—unflagging, deadly, and patient.

Closer he drew, and he could only watch dully as the mist wrapped tighter and tighter around him. It strangled sensation in that gentle caress, murdered his will and thought as easily as breathing.

He wondered how it would feel, his death. He wondered if it would hurt.

The eyeless figure was breathlessly close, mesmerizingly close. That finger on its outstretched hand was a stone in a surging river, was shade in a raging storm. It drew him. He came closer.

Closer. A hair’s length away. The Skal’ai ate away at more and more of him, and he shuddered motionlessly as his death drew close.

Closer. And then, ever so softly, the tip of that skeletal finger pressed into his forehead with the cold touch of a blade.