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Endless darkness stretched in every direction.

Elijah knew where he was...again. And just like before, that black-haired, red-eyed man was standing a hundred feet away from him. That strange sense of familiarity gripped him, urging him to try and work out why he felt like he knew the man—and it didn't feel like his previous realization was enough. He'd seen this man in the real world, but he wasn't going mad; it was a vision, but why?

"Eli..." the man called, his lips not moving, and his voice silvery and distorted. "Find them.... Find us.... Ronan."

The demon stepped forward, but instead of demanding the man's name, he hesitated. What Zoe said to him after he'd woken from his last dream struck him; she told him that her dad had similar dreams and that nothing made sense until he listened. The girl also said that demons had very powerful instincts, that his dreams might be trying to tell him something. But how was he supposed to listen when the black-haired man only ever said the same words?

He took another step, and as he did before, the black-haired man mirrored Elijah's movements. So the demon slowly prowled forward, getting closer and closer to the man until he disappeared and abruptly reappeared in front of Elijah. The man reached out his hand, and this time, Elijah didn't back off. He waited, watching as the man's clawed hand gradually edged nearer to him, but he didn't twist his wrist or try to snatch any part of him.

Elijah had to listen, right? He lifted his own hand, but he felt a little hesitant. What if he didn't like what he might learn?

The black-haired man's hand retreated—

"Wait," Elijah snapped. He couldn't be hesitant. He had to be sure.

As he scowled away his confliction, Elijah reached out, and the black-haired man extended his arm again. As the demon twisted his wrist, preparing to grab him, the man mirrored him, twisting his hand, reaching for Elijah's wrist. The demon took a deep breath, preparing for whatever he might be able to see...and then he grasped the man's wrist, and the man grabbed him.

A searing pain cut through Elijah's head as his ears rang loudly, and a confusing array of sights flashed before the demon's eyes.

Snow. So much snow.

Cylinders filled with green ooze and monsters.

A small, green-eyed girl with tiny horns on her head.

Feathers.

Rainfall.

Haru...in a memory Elijah held most dear.

A red-eyed woman with black hair and a mouth full of sharp teeth.

Someone indistinguishable but with a maniacal smile that Elijah could have sworn he saw when he first dreamed of the ooze-filled cylinders.

The black-haired man before him but in a different place—a place so white that it hurt Elijah's eyes to stare.

More cylinders...but these ones were filled with silvery ooze and severed feathered wings.

And Haru again, crying in the corner of an empty, dark room. Alone. Not a memory.

Doctors. All the doctors who made Elijah's life absolute hell.

Blood. Splattered on the walls, the floor, the snow. Dripping down the pale skin of a man.

And two men, one with dark hair, one with hair as red as blood, both standing atop a stage surrounded by an endless horde of winged, horned people, who revelled and marvelled in their gaze.

Elijah gasped for air as he stumbled back, shoved out of the black-haired man's grip. He took several desperate breaths, staring at the man, who slowly retreated, the water rippling at his feet.

"Find them," the voice called, and this time, the man's lips moved.

"Wait," Elijah insisted, his throat sore and voice hoarse. "What was all of that? What—"

"Find them," the man repeated, and like smoke in an invisible breeze, his disappeared, leaving Elijah alone in the dark.

He didn't understand. Wasn't it supposed to make sense after he listened? All listening did was leave him with more questions, and he feared that he might never get the answers.

"Elijah?" came Zoe's voice, snapping him from the darkness once again. "Elijah?"

The demon opened his eyes to the confines of the car they'd stolen a few hours ago.

"There's a roadhouse up ahead," the girl said, looking back over her shoulder at him.

He sat up straight and set his eyes on the building in the distance. It was still dark, but it would start getting light soon, so they had to act fast. The glow of a town or small city was just visible through the dust picked up by the breeze, so they'd be able to grab a new vehicle there and finally get to East Coast. "We'll dump the car here and walk to whatever that is," he said, pointing to the glow. "There's got to be a dealership or someplace we can pick up a new car that won't put any extra heat on us."

Zoe nodded. "Okay."

The air was thick with melancholy. Zoe was clearly trying to put on a brave face, but her eyes were still red from where she'd been crying, and Jake...that useless, brainless idiot was silent—as he should be.

Elijah still felt guilty, and it was weighing down heavier on him the longer he remained awake. Enid was dead, and he'd never stop blaming himself. But he couldn't let it consume him. He had to find Haru. And he'd still freed over a hundred kids from that lab in the mountains. He knew the risks, and he knew that not all of them would make it. Just seeing an innocent girl who hadn't seen the outside world in a decade die right in front of him because he hadn't been as sharp as he could have been shook him a little. He needed to get over it.

He exhaled deeply and glared out his window. Nothing he saw in his dream really made sense other than Haru and the doctors. The memory brought an ache to his heart, though; remembering the time Haru came back from the operating room, crying and wailing in pain. Elijah did his best to comfort him; he held him while he trembled and wept, his wounds still open and sore. There wasn't much Elijah could do for him—there wasn't much they could do for each other every time they came back alive from those procedures except hold and comfort one another.

But he didn't want to think about any of that.

He saw Haru someplace new, not in a memory but what he hoped was some kind of vision...a connection. Haru was crying in the corner of a cold, empty room, and he looked just how Elijah remembered, only sadder. Thinner. Like he was slowly declining. The thought made Elijah's heart race with panic, and the desperation to find him as soon as possible started suffocating him. Haru needed him, and he couldn't let him down.

"Stop here," he said as they approached a huge billboard advertising the nearby roadhouse.

Jake did as he was told without question; he slowed the car and turned behind the billboard, where he came to a halt.

They got out of the car, grabbed their bags, and began heading towards the roadhouse. Elijah saw Zoe glance at him several times, looking like she was about to ask him something, but she hesitated each time and stared ahead again. As much as he hated to admit it to himself, though, he was actually hoping that she'd ask him about his dreams again. He was too stubborn to start the conversation himself, especially after he shut her down before. But his need for answers and understanding was more important.

He looked down at her. "How did...your dad understand what he saw in his dreams?" he reluctantly asked.

She looked up at him and frowned slightly. "Well, from what I heard them both talking about, it's a sort of...process. At first, he saw like...I don't know, flashes of a bunch of things. He tried to make sense of it all from just those fragments, but it wasn't enough, so every time he started off in that dream, he kind of like...focussed on one fragment and explored it further," she explained with a pondering tone, and then she looked curious. "So...you are having repeating dreams?"

Elijah sighed deeply as they approached the roadhouse. "I keep dreaming that I'm in this dark place. There's a thin layer of water on the ground, and there's this man standing a hundred feet away from me. I feel like I know him, but I don't know how or where I've seen him before. And then he tells me to find him, find them, and find us. I didn't understand, so I did what you said and stopped backing away, and then I saw flashes of people and places, I think some of them were memories, but I still don't understand what any of it means other than that I need to find Haru as fast as possible."

A horribly confused look warped the girl's face as she stared up at him. "You've been to The Darkness?"

"The dark place," he said with a frown. "It has a name?"

She nodded. "It's...this sort of astral plane where only people with a certain Ancient's blood can go."

"I guess that confirms the hypothesis that he has Ancient blood, then," Jake mumbled.

They didn't even spare him a glance.

"It makes a whole lot more sense now," Zoe said, staring ahead. "The True Speech, The Darkness."

"Which Ancient?" Elijah asked desperately. "The sangdevoro one?"

Zoe didn't immediately answer. The pondering expression on her face was accompanied by a perplexed frown, and when she halted, she looked up at him again. "Maybe...maybe not. It's a very old bloodline."

Elijah felt a glimmer of hope that he might be able to narrow down who and what he was. They'd pretty much just confirmed that he had Ancient blood, and he suspected that he was connected to the sangdevoro one—after all, he was part sangdevoro. But it still seemed like the only way to get solid answers was to find his subject file on the Lyca Corp. servers, and to do that, he needed to get into another lab.

"Could we follow the bloodline to work out who my parents are?" the demon asked her as they continued towards the roadhouse.

"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "I'm sure that Lyca Corp. would have it all on file, though; I don't exactly have the Ancients' family tree on me."

Elijah's desperation didn't wither—in fact, it grew harder to contain. He was finally getting somewhere, and he wanted to keep making progress, but Zoe only knew so much, didn't she? He needed to get his Lyca Corp. file, and maybe he didn't need to get into a lab. What if Ronan could get him his file? What if that was why that black-haired man was telling him to find Ronan? To find us? What if that man was his ancestor?

He frowned and looked down at Zoe again. "Could the man I've been seeing be the Ancient I'm connected to? Or an ancestor?"

"I don't know, Elijah," Zoe said. "My dad never said if he worked out who he was seeing in his repetitive dreams, so I can't really help there. Sorry."

Elijah stepped over the small wall separating the roadhouse parking lot from the sandy plane surrounding it. "How do I understand the fragments that I saw?"

Zoe shrugged as she followed beside him, heading through the parking lot. "When you next end up in The Darkness, you just...focus on one of the things that you saw. At least that's what my dad said he was doing."

He wanted to go back to The Darkness now. He wanted answers, he wanted to understand what all those flashes meant, and he wanted to know who all the people he saw were. But he couldn't. Not yet. He needed to find a new car and get back on the road to East Coast.

"Can we at least grab a steak or something?" Jake asked. "I'm starving."

"You can keep starving," Elijah snarled at him as they passed the roadhouse doors. "We're not stopping."

"How far of a walk do you think that town is?" Zoe asked, nodding in the direction of the distant glow of civilization as she took her dog out of her bag.

"I don't know," Elijah muttered, watching the rat-like creature sniff around for somewhere to piss, and when it chose a stationary tumbleweed, the demon grunted and looked away.

Once Zoe put her dog back in her back, they left the parking lot and traversed the sandy plane, heading towards what was now visibly a mining town. Elijah eyed each blocked-off mine entrance as they got closer; a family of wild dogs was sleeping in an overturned cart, and when Zoe's rat creature started barking, they picked up the pace before the wild animals gave chase.

"I don't get why we couldn't just dump the car closer to the town," Jake complained. "Save us all this walking. There's sand in my shoes."

"Because if the detainers are still on our trail, they'll think we stole a car from the roadhouse," Elijah muttered irritably. "While they're busy following all the licence plates from the cars back there, we'll be well on our way to East Coast."

"Oh...right," the pardus mumbled.

The three of them walked the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the mining town, they followed the dusty streets in search of somewhere to get a new car. Elijah wanted to avoid the risk of stealing one if he could, especially since he now had the money to spare thanks to what he took from those people back in Little Herring.

"Can't we stop somewhere...just for a few hours?" Jake complained. "I've been driving and running and driving for I don't even know how long. I need to rest."

"Stop complaining," Zoe snapped at him.

Jake pouted and went quiet.

Elijah wasn't going to deny that it was probably a good idea to find somewhere to rest. It was the early hours of the morning, and it was very unlikely that a car dealership would be open, even the illegal ones. Resting someplace would also give him a chance to explore the fragments he'd seen in his dream.

He glanced up and down the empty street in search of an inn or hotel. "We should find somewhere to rest. We aren't going to be able to get a car until morning anyway."

"Do you think there's even going to be anywhere to stay here?" Zoe asked as they turned onto another empty street lined with closed stores and dark houses. "It doesn't exactly scream tourist town."

"What about uh...bed and breakfast," Jake said.

They stopped walking and looked in the direction the pardus was pointing in. On the corner of the street on the other side of the road was a rather beaten-looking bed and breakfast with a vacancy sign hanging above its red door.

"That'll do," Elijah muttered and started leading the way.

When they reached the building, Jake pulled the door open; it creaked and squeaked loudly, and dust fell from the frame. The inside smelled of musk and dampness, and the only light came from two small lanterns sitting on tables on either side of the cramped reception area.

Zoe walked up to the front desk and tapped the bell.

"Kinda...creepy," Jake mumbled as he looked around at all the pictures of people and animals on the cracked walls.

Elijah glanced around, too. There were hundreds of framed photos of couples, children, families, single people, and animals. Taxidermized creatures hung from the walls and ceiling, and some were tossed carelessly on the floor. It looked as though nobody had really bothered to take care of the place in a long time.

The floorboards squeaked as an old woman emerged from the door behind the counter. "Can I help you?" she asked tiredly, her weary gaze shifting between the three of them.

"Um, hi," Zoe said. "Could we get a room, please?"

"One room?" the woman asked, eyeing Jake and Elijah. "The rooms are very small, dear."

Zoe frowned and looked at Elijah.

"One room," the demon said firmly. He didn't like the idea of being crammed into a tiny space with the two of them, but he wanted to keep an eye on Jake, and he didn't want to risk Zoe getting kidnapped again.

The girl looked at the old woman and said, "Yeah, just one room, please."

With a raised eyebrow and a nod, the old woman took a pair of keys from the wall behind her. "Half a coronam."

Elijah put his bags on the floor and crouched. He unzipped the one he'd taken from the mechanics in Little Herring, pulled a single note from one of the many coronam stacks, and handed it to Zoe. He then zipped the bag back up, threw both over his shoulders, and stood up.

"Here," Zoe said, handing the note to the woman.

"No change," she said, refusing the note.

"Oh...um...it's...fine," the girl said to her. "Keep it."

The old woman didn't refuse. She stuffed the note into her pocket and gave Zoe the keys. "Room three, just up the stairs there."

"Thanks," Zoe said, glancing at the stairs that the old woman was pointing to.

"Let's go," Elijah said as he shoved Jake, who was gawping tiredly at the pictures on the wall.

As the woman eyed them closely, they headed up the stairs and followed the narrow hallway until they found room three. Zoe unlocked the door, revealing a very small room with a single bed, an armchair, and a table. The bathroom had only a toilet and an old, water-damaged shower, and the place smelled like mildew.

"We probably should've got three rooms," Jake said.

Elijah rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him.

"Who gets the bed?" the pardus asked.

They all looked at each other.

"You decide," the demon muttered as he shoved past Jake, dropped his bags on the floor, and slumped down into the armchair.

Jake sighed and sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. "Zoe can take it."

Elijah watched the girl slowly sit on the edge of the bed and let her dog out of her bag again. "Get some rest," he said as he took his jacket off and placed it on top of his bags. "We'll head out at eight and find a car."

"How much further until we reach East Coast?" Zoe asked as she tried to make herself comfortable.

With a long exhale, Jake scratched his head. "We'll be in Qosa tomorrow by like...three or four if we leave at eight. It's an eight-hour drive to Yruulens Blockade; all we gotta do is cross there and we'll reach East Coast."

As Zoe pulled the scratchy-looking blanket over her legs, she frowned warily. "You know, I've heard scary things about Yruulens Blockade. A lot of the other influencers I follow went there to check out this really famous bar, but there's like...outlaws there and stuff. It's the only part of Nefastus that the Nosferatu don't govern; it's protected by some old treaty or law or something."

"So it's basically like...no man's land, then?" Jake suggested.

"I guess so," the girl mumbled.

"There's gotta be a safe crossing though, right?" the pardus asked. "I mean it's the only way anyone can get to the Citadel and Redwoods and shit."

"I'd imagine so. My dad would've flipped when I told him we were going to the Citadel if there was no safe way through the Blockade. We just...need to find it."

Elijah sighed deeply as he slouched back in his chair until he was comfortable. "We'll figure it out later. Get some rest." He was sure that Zoe was right; there had to be a safe path through Yruulens Blockade, especially since everyone had to cross it to get to any place beyond. But he wasn't going to worry about it yet. Now that he could sleep, he could try to figure out what some of the fragments he'd seen meant.

And maybe he'd get some more answers to his never-ending pile of burning questions. 

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