There was no peace in sleep.

  There never had been.

  For the desert within him never slept.

  It only grew quieter.

  Waiting.

  Endless.

  Enduring.

  And so the dream found him —

  as it always did —

  the old nightmare stitched from blood, silence, and memory.

  At first, it was only sand.

  An endless ocean of it, breathing and shifting beneath cold stars.

  The world stripped bare, reduced to bone and breath and the slow, inevitable weight of walking without end.

  The desert stretched forever.

  And in it, he was alone.

  Except for the dead —

  and the gods who whispered their endless hymns beneath the dunes.

  The world was nothing but sand.

  Endless, pale dunes rolling in all directions, kissed by a night sky so vast it devoured thought.

  Above, the stars — cold, unblinking — watched without care, ancient fires burning in a silence more profound than death itself.

  Dante walked.

  Barefoot.

  Each step swallowed by the dry, hissing breath of the dunes.

  The wind whispered — faint, weightless — carrying voices long buried.

  Muffled cries. Forgotten names. The dying gasps of soldiers. The fading laughter of lost comrades.

  They rose from beneath the sand like tendrils of a memory he had never asked to remember.

  His throat was parched.

  His lips cracked and split with every shallow breath.

  Still, he moved.

  The desert inside him, the one that never slept, welcomed the weight of loneliness.

  It was familiar.

  It was truth.

  But tonight, something else stirred.

  The whispers sharpened — no longer random, but weaving into a chorus.

  A murmur, a chant too quiet to understand, too loud to ignore.

  The Cadence of Crows.

  Its presence was not seen — only felt:

  A great, unseen wing beating overhead.

  The scent of old blood in the sand.

  The endless promise of the inevitable end.

  And in the corner of his vision, the dead gathered.

  Not as nightmares.

  Not as threats.

  But as quiet sentinels.

  Figures half-formed, translucent — men, women, even children — who had passed into the Cadence’s embrace.

  They stood still on the dunes, gazes empty, waiting.

  Not accusing.

  Not forgiving.

  Just waiting.

  A reminder:

  You will join them.

  In the end, all must.

  Dante did not falter.

  He accepted their gaze with the same cold rationality that had carried him through the desert in life.

  He would die.

  But not today.

  Not yet.

  He kept walking —

  until something changed.

  A small figure detached from the gathered dead.

  It stepped forward on silent feet — no taller than a child.

  Dante slowed.

  The desert wind held its breath.

  The whispers of the Cadence grew louder — rising, urging, coaxing.

  "Embrace."

  "Submit."

  "Fall."

  The child reached for him — small, skeletal fingers barely visible in the dark.

  And somewhere deep within him —

  beneath the stillness, beneath the endless patience —

  something rebelled.

  A sound cracked the sky.

  The unsheathing of a blade.

  It wasn’t metal against metal —

  It was a sound like bone snapping, like the first breath after drowning, like defiance given form.

  And the desert shattered.

  He was elsewhere.

  The air was thick with smoke and the metallic bite of blood.

  The ground beneath him was ruined marble — cracked white veined with red, splattered with gore.

  The collapsed hallway of a palace.

  Gold leaf clung to the walls like the last memories of beauty.

  Silver veins cracked across the ceiling, sagging under the weight of battle and ruin.

  Dante stood at the heart of it, alone but not alone.

  Behind him —

  a child’s voice, high and broken, screaming.

  Terror sharp enough to carve bone.

  He didn’t turn.

  He didn’t dare.

  The scar on his face, the cross-shaped wound, burned as if newly made.

  Fresh blood trickled from the torn flesh,

  a vertical line slashing through his left eye and down his cheek,

  a horizontal cut raking across his nose, to the edge of his left cheekbone.

  The old pain.

  Made new.

  He was shirtless beneath his shredded robes —

  his black combat pants and boots bloodied and dust-streaked.

  The flexible carapace armor beneath was gashed and scorched, clinging stubbornly to his torso.

  At his left hip, his mask lay cracked open —

  forgotten, broken —

  like a dead thing.

  In his hands:

  Profane Twilight — his curved sword — dripped silver venom and dark, sluggish blood.

  In the other:

  his hunting dagger, venom pearling at its tip like frozen tears.

  And before him —

  a titan.

  A man too large, too perfect to be mortal.

  Silver hair fell in thick, shining waves down his back.

  Blue eyes — sharp and pitiless as glaciers — watched Dante with a dispassionate focus.

  He wore thin silver armor etched with gold and crowned with sigils of the old Empire.

  A two-handed longsword — massive, radiant — rested easily in his callused hands.

  Dante knew him.

  Everyone did.

  Eryndor Vaelan.

  The Titan of the First Legion.

  The Emperor’s living storm.

  The greatest Blademaster of the age.

  A being so terrifyingly skilled that even Blademasters spoke his name with a mixture of awe and dread.

  The wind shifted.

  Not desert now, but the sickly breeze of a dying palace.

  The Cadence whispered louder —

  shadows of the dead gathering along the broken walls, their mouths yawning open in silent cries.

  "Fall."

  "Bleed."

  "End."

  But from somewhere deeper —

  older —

  another voice surged:

  Lysithea.

  The First Blade.

  The goddess of Strength, War, and Wisdom.

  Her voice was not words —

  but memory:

  the memory of why a blade was drawn.

  Not for conquest.

  Not for slaughter.

  But for defense.

  For honor.

  For the fragile, desperate thing called life.

  The child’s cry behind him rose again, raw and shattering.

  Dante shifted his weight.

  The pain along his scar intensified, but he ignored it.

  The desert within him trembled.

  Not from fear.

  From resolve.

  The Titan lifted his blade —

  a slow, almost sorrowful movement.

  Dante raised his own.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  Silver venom glinting in broken light.

  Blood cooling on his skin.

  The ghostly dead waiting all around him.

  A battle not for pride.

  Not for titles.

  But because a child needed someone to stand between her and annihilation.

  Because sometimes —

  even in a desert where death ruled —

  a blade must be drawn to shield, not to slay.

  Because sometimes —

  against the Cadence itself —

  you had to fight.

  Even if you would lose.

  Especially because you would lose.

  The air shuddered.

  And with a breath sharper than any blade’s edge —

  Dante charged.

  The clash began without warning.

  A breath.

  A heartbeat.

  Steel on steel.

  The air cracked as Eryndor Vaelan moved —

  like a mountain breaking into motion.

  His sword sang with weight, a cleaving arc of silver and death.

  Dante moved with it, not against it —

  not dodging, not fleeing, but folding through its path.

  The sword had already marked him twice earlier.

  Not the shoulder. Not the ribs. The face. There was nothing in his left eye but a veil of blood.

  The cross-shaped wound burned freshly across his features —

  carved cruelly across his brow, through his eyelid, and into his cheek.

  It slashed horizontally over the bridge of his nose —

  meeting the vertical cut in a jagged, savage cross.

  Each breath made it burn.

  Each movement tore it wider.

  Blood traced the angles like ink in a ritual.

  He was half-blinded.

  Off-balance.

  Already wounded.

  But the desert in him stood.

  He didn’t care.

  He had stood against storms worse than this.

  His left eye blinked uselessly,

  vision clouded, dark and red.

  But his right?

  His right eye saw everything.

  The first strike missed.

  The second didn’t.

  A blow caught Dante’s shoulder —

  glancing off his armor, rattling deep through bone and lung.

  He shifted, recoiled, countered.

  Profane Twilight slashed upward, a black mirror catching the firelight —

  but the Titan twisted, redirecting it with one palm

  and answering with a hilt strike to Dante’s ribs.

  The breath left his lungs.

  But the desert did not break.

  The Cadence of Crows whispered from the blood-soaked floor:

  “He will kill you. And you will fall. You are not eternal.”

  And from somewhere deeper —

  cooler, older —

  Lysithea’s voice, wrapped in steel:

  “He stands. So must you.”

  Dante exhaled slowly, the pain blooming like poppies behind his eyes.

  He stepped forward again.

  This was not a duel of grace.

  There was no poetry.

  Only blood.

  Only agony.

  The Titan was relentless —

  each blow a god’s decree,

  each movement impossible for lesser men.

  Dante bled.

  He bled from the mouth.

  From the forearm.

  From the fresh split beneath his ribs.

  His mask lay broken behind him.

  The scar on his face burned —

  a furnace carved into his flesh,

  old pain awakening with new heat.

  Blood traced the old lines of the cross,

  as if the wound had never closed.

  He didn’t care.

  His dagger slashed, fast and low.

  The Titan’s boot caught his wrist and nearly shattered it.

  They split apart —

  then met again with the sickening crunch of armor kissing armor.

  They traded blows like gods arguing through steel.

  Time lost meaning.

  Pain became rhythm.

  The desert became stillness.

  Dante Saint —

  cloaked in blood and silence —

  waited for the moment.

  Not the perfect moment.

  The necessary one.

  And then—

  It came.

  One strike.

  One misalignment.

  One angle of overreach.

  Dante stepped in.

  Profane Twilight curled like a serpent,

  its curved blade sliding along the length of the Titan’s straight sword.

  Not clashing.

  Coiling.

  Snaking past.

  Not deflected —

  invading.

  Dante followed the blade.

  His eyes burned.

  His teeth were clenched.

  Every muscle screamed.

  But he was calm.

  He was cold.

  He was ruthless.

  And in the space of that final beat —

  he unleashed everything.

  Profane Twilight bit through armor.

  First the shoulder.

  Then the inner thigh.

  Then the side of the neck.

  His dagger followed —

  a flick to the wrist,

  a gouge to the elbow,

  a stab beneath the collarbone that sunk to the hilt.

  Eryndor Vaelan gasped —

  a sound like a collapsing mountain.

  Dante didn’t hesitate.

  He struck again —

  then again —

  then again.

  Legs severed.

  Tendons slashed.

  Arms wrecked.

  Joints separated.

  A butcher’s precision.

  Not clean.

  But final.

  And when the Titan of the First Legion fell —

  he did not cry out.

  He simply dropped,

  knees hitting marble,

  then chest,

  then silence.

  Steel clanged free from dying fingers.

  Blood spilled across the floor, seeping into broken sigils.

  The whispers quieted.

  The gods fell silent.

  The desert in Dante Saint stilled.

  He stood there —

  chest heaving.

  Veins pulsing.

  Armor soaked.

  Blade dripping.

  And the sun set.

  Golden light spilled through the crumbling ceiling,

  touching the ruined floor with the grace of something divine.

  It kissed the edge of his blade,

  lit the sweat on his brow,

  and caught the blood that trailed down his face —

  from the burning scar that refused to fade.

  Then—

  A scream.

  Small.

  Human.

  “Uncle Dante!”

  His eyes snapped toward the sound —

  and she was there.

  The little girl.

  The reason for all of it.

  Barefoot.

  Sobbing.

  Running.

  She slammed into his leg,

  wrapping her thin arms around his blood-slicked thigh,

  burying her face against him.

  “Uncle Dante— you— you came for me—”

  He didn’t move.

  He didn’t breathe.

  He simply stood —

  a ruined god,

  blade still warm,

  with a child clinging to the remnants of who he used to be.

  The desert in him bowed its head.

  For tonight, it would rest.

  For tonight, Dante had won.

  Eliza Deme did not sleep.

  She fell.

  Down, into the black where even memory dared not follow.

  Down, past the silver haze of Stardust that still lingered in her bloodstream like perfume and poison.

  She lay sprawled across her wide, obsidian couch, bathed in dim violet light filtering through the polarized windows of her high-rise suite.

  Her naked skin glowed like ivory flame in the shadows — a raw contrast to the artificial leather beneath her.

  Her long legs crossed in lazy elegance, one knee drawn slightly up, her hips and waist draped in a single loose sheet of pearlescent silk — barely there, slipping dangerously close to vanishing altogether.

  Raven-black hair spilled around her, tangled and soft, a fallen crown for a broken queen.

  Her face, even in sleep, looked sculpted — lips parted slightly, breathing shallow, lashes twitching. Her crimson eyes remained closed, their violence hidden for now.

  Silver jewelry glinted faintly in the dark — earrings chained from lobe to helix, a slim pendant lying against her collarbones, metal bands loose around her delicate wrists.

  But the most damning mark was not silver.

  It was black.

  The number "14", inked near her left thigh, lay stark and unblinking — a wound disguised as a tattoo.

  A memory no dream ever let her forget.

  The room smelled of Stardust smoke, sweat, and wilted lilies — the aftermath of beauty pressed too far, too often.

  And then she twitched.

  The dream had begun.

  It started softly.

  A single note — her voice — singing in a hush so thin it barely existed.

  A whisper of melody through fog.

  Like a memory trying to remember itself.

  Disjointed shapes moved around her.

  Faceless. Elegant. Terrifying.

  Noble silhouettes with blank skin, hands too long, fingers that tapped out hollow applause on glass chandeliers that swayed despite no wind.

  Their mouths opened, but no sound came — just the sizzle of broken microphones, like static chewing through silence.

  She tried to walk — barefoot, naked — across a floor made of fractured mirror.

  Her own face stared back at her in each step: smiling, crying, bleeding, screaming.

  None of it made sense.

  All of it felt true.

  A bottle spun in her hand.

  It vanished.

  Replaced by another.

  And another.

  Each heavier.

  Each emptier.

  Her voice echoed again — rising this time — muffled under sand, under ash.

  Singing lyrics she hadn’t written yet, couldn’t remember writing.

  About love.

  About falling.

  About the abyss.

  The scene twisted.

  The Stardust came next.

  A haze of indigo vapor curling through golden chandeliers.

  Glass pipes. Glittering inhalers.

  Her hands fumbled to reach them, shake them, fill them.

  She was sweating now — glistening under concert lights that didn't exist.

  She ran.

  From the void.

  It wasn’t chasing her.

  It just... waited.

  A black sun in the center of her mind.

  Then—

  The Faceless Men.

  They slithered from behind curtains, out from holes in the walls.

  Their masks were beautiful.

  Elegant.

  Horrifying.

  No eyes.

  No mouths.

  Only the sound of footsteps growing louder.

  Tattoo needles buzzed in their hands — long, cruel, silver things.

  Her thigh burned.

  The "14" scorched her skin, glowing like embers.

  She screamed, but no sound came.

  Only music.

  Her music — warped and slow, like a record melting in heat.

  She tripped.

  Fell.

  The ground was gone.

  She was bleeding now.

  Wrists sliced open, glass sticking out of her arm.

  Her voice sang on.

  Beautiful.

  Broken.

  A crow cawed.

  Just once.

  Sharp.

  Too loud.

  Its wings spread across the sky like black fire, blotting out the stars.

  Liz whimpered.

  Tried to wake.

  Tried to climb toward some light, any light — but the sheets of her dream tangled around her.

  Voices swirled.

  Praises, criticisms, laughter, screaming.

  Lovers she couldn’t name.

  Critics she couldn’t silence.

  Hands on her.

  Pulling.

  Always pulling.

  And through it all — apathy.

  The worst part.

  That hollow resignation.

  The one that whispered,

  "This is normal now."

  This was what dreams had become:

  Not escape.

  But torture in slow motion.

  Hell wearing perfume.

  She reached for something — someone — but no one was there.

  Just the edge of the abyss again.

  Closer now.

  Open-armed.

  Inviting.

  The dream began to fall apart.

  Like melting celluloid.

  Each scene collapsing into the next with a stutter.

  Glass.

  Blood.

  Needles.

  Singing.

  Running.

  A mirror.

  Her reflection.

  It looked dead.

  And it was smiling.

  She flinched.

  A final sound — her own voice, whispering:

  "Stop singing."

  Darkness.

  Stillness.

  Sweat clung to her bare skin.

  A faint twitch passed through her thigh.

  And beneath the silk sheet, her fingers clenched the air like a drowning woman.

  The crow did not return.

  But it had been there.

  Waiting.

  Watching.

  And it would come again.

  The nightmare did not stop.

  It never did.

  The mirrors returned first. Not whole. Fractured. Glinting like shattered teeth as she ran through another hallway that wasn’t hers, barefoot, bleeding.

  Her voice followed her. Muffled. Warbled. Drenched in echo and loss. Singing lyrics she didn’t remember writing.

  "...hollow hands and paper bones... ...no one comes when you fall alone..."

  Glass beneath her feet. She didn’t feel the cuts anymore. She never did.

  The Stardust fog rose up again. Lilac and silver. Beautiful. Choking.

  She gasped. Tried to breathe. Found nothing but perfume and silence. The void blinked open beneath her. Always beneath her. A wide, open mouth made of velvet night and false promises.

  And through it— the faceless men returned.

  Thin silhouettes. Tall. Elegant. Hands like knives. Masks too smooth. Too pretty. Too blank.

  Her thighs burned. The tattoo screamed. "14." It pulsed under her skin. A curse. A brand. A scream without air.

  She wanted to wake.

  She didn’t.

  They walked toward her. The hum of surgical tools. The sound of chain clasps.

  She backed up. Fell. Again.

  And then—

  A voice.

  Not a scream. Not a roar. A command.

  Calm. Cold. Absolute.

  "Hurry."

  Her breath caught.

  She knew that voice.

  The figures around her froze.

  Not from fear. From something older. Deeper.

  Obedience.

  Her eyes snapped toward the sound. And there they were:

  Steel-grey eyes.

  Not cruel. Not kind.

  Endless. Still. Void.

  Like standing at the edge of a desert that had no end and no beginning, and knowing it could bury you forever without needing to lift a single grain of sand.

  Those eyes had seen her. That night.

  Not as property. Not as ruin. As a person. As a woman who had survived too many deaths.

  And in the dream, in the chaos, in the ash, they saw her again.

  The whispering stopped. The Stardust cleared. The faceless men turned away.

  And slowly— like velvet laid over razors— a comfortable, numbing darkness fell.

  No more hallways. No more glass. No more breathless songs looping like broken recordings.

  Just stillness.

  And sleep.

  Real sleep.

  Back in the waking world, Eliza Deme’s body shifted softly beneath the silk sheet.

  The curve of her back gleamed with sweat, her thighs parted lazily against the dark couch. Her long black hair clung to her shoulders, her collarbones, her lips slightly parted, breathing in slow, measured rhythm.

  The number "14" was still there. But it no longer burned.

  Not tonight.

  Tonight, her body remained still. Sensual in exhaustion.

  A sculpture carved by suffering, finally given pause.

  A breath held.

  A storm survived.

  She slept. Not dreaming.

  Just sleeping.