Chapter 144: Dreaming - Xiao Qi
The dream comes at 3:17 AM.
Not random. Xiao Ba wakes first, her round eyes wide in the darkness of our shared room. She sits upright, clutching her chest, gasping.
"It hurts," she whispers.
I rush to her side. Her skin is cold, clammy. The fragment inside her—the piece of the Forge that got stuck in her during the final battle—should be dormant. Sleeping. But now—
It pulses.
I see it beneath her skin. A dark shape, like a second heartbeat, pressing against her ribs.
"What's happening?"
"They're dreaming," Xiao Ba says. "The twins. I can feel them. They're so bright. So warm. They—"
She screams.
Not from pain. From contact.
The fragment reacts to the twins' dreaming consciousness. Like a shadow reaching for light. Like hunger reaching for food.
I hold Xiao Ba down, one hand pressed where the fragment is. My own bloodline—de Noct, diluted, from some ancient side branch—resonates with it. I can feel what it feels.
Longing.
The Forge is dead. Its consciousness scattered across the void. But its last fragment, buried in my sister's heart, remembers.
It remembers hunger.
And the twins—two lights growing in the darkness—are the most nourishing thing it has ever sensed.
"No," I say through gritted teeth. "You're not taking them."
I push my energy into Xiao Ba. Not vampire power. Human will. Stubbornness. The same stubbornness that kept me alive through thirty years of spy work, that let me survive the Forge's influence, that brought me to this castle.
The fragment retreats.
Slowly. Reluctantly. Like a predator watching prey from a distance.
Xiao Ba collapses against me, sweating, shaking.
"They're dreaming of stars," she whispers. "The twins. Stars. And a tree. A tree that grows between worlds."
I stroke her hair, saying nothing.
The Forge's fragment wants to consume the twins' dreams. To devour their future.
But I am here.
And I will not let it.
Not while I breathe.