The Dream Breaker

— POV: Nara

“The first sign of drift is forgetting thirst. The second, pain. The last, your name.” -Field Notes of the Shard-Bearer Deyrin Voss, recovered near the Ninth Pillar

The stone beneath my boots hummed. Always, always the pillars hummed, as if their hearts beat in sympathy with the dreaming god above. I crouched low, fingers brushing the gray surface of the Shardline pillar, and felt the vibration running through my bones. “Still think this is a good idea?” Koel asked. He was the tallest of us, wiry, with dark hair tied back in a rough knot. His bow hung across his back, but his eyes—sharp, restless—never left the statues ahead. Three of them. Statues with Eidon’s face, wandering across a nearby shard of pillar stone. One stood alone, and the other two drifted further off—anchored just past the one-mile mark. Their eyes glowed faint blue in the shadowless light of the Pale Reach. They moved slowly, not like hunters, but like dreamers lost in sleep.

“They don’t see us,” Dessa whispered. She lay flat, chin on her crossed arms. Her voice was half-prayer, half-dare. “They never do unless we get close.”

“That’s what the Shard-Bearers say,” Bran muttered from behind us. His broad shoulders hunched, hammer resting against the stone. “But I don’t trust it.”

Neither did I. The hum beneath my hands felt wrong. Too fast. I pulled my driftmap from my belt, unfolding the thin brass frame and watching the crystal threads inside adjust. Tiny lights glimmered across the glass face, each marking a pillar or shard within range. The map pulsed faintly, and for a moment my stomach tightened. The statues looked closer. I tapped the edge, adjusted the focus wheel. No—of course. It wasn’t the statues moving. Pillars drifted sometimes, slow as glaciers, pulled by unseen currents. The map must have caught that, showing them shift. Probably nothing. Still… I set the driftmap aside, heart tapping faster now, and peered along the length of our pillar beside me. My eyes followed its impossible stretch down, down its sheer gray side, all the way to where it rooted into the earth far below. Not mist. Not clouds. The Reach swallowed plenty of things, but these giants were buried in the land itself, foundations sunk deep into rock and soil. I squinted, leaning further. And then I saw it. A fracture. A jagged wound at the base where stone met ground, barely visible through the haze. Not whole. Not steady. My skin prickled. The hum wasn’t the song of the pillar at all. It was the groan of something breaking.

“Koel,” I whispered. My voice felt too thin. “We need to move. Now.” He followed my gaze. His smirk vanished. That was when the statues stopped walking. Slowly, inevitability in every movement, their heads turned—toward us. And then they began to climb.

The first one moved. Not a step, not a stumble—but a *leap*. It flung itself from the shard, body rigid as a spear, arms outstretched. For a breath it hung in the Pale Reach’s weightless silence, the pull of its pillar trailing behind it like a tether, and then it lurched forward midair toward us. The others followed, not with grace, not with life—just the inevitability of something waking. Stone cracked, joints groaning. They were coming.

“Run!” I shouted, my voice tearing my throat raw. We bolted, boots slamming against the humming stone. Gravity bent to the pillar’s side, turning every step into a sideways sprint along its vast flank. Koel’s bow clattered against his back as he pulled ahead, Dessa gasping behind him. Bran’s hammer thumped with each pounding stride. The hum grew sharper, a shriek in the bones of the pillar. Then Bran hesitated. I saw it in the corner of my vision: his stride faltered, hammer half-raised as if he thought—that he could fight one. His jaw clenched, wide eyes staring into the rushing dark behind us. And then it happened too fast to process. The statue struck him, a brutal punch through chest and heart, flinging him away like a ragdoll. His body spun in a grotesque arc around the pillar like a doll tied to a pole, twisting, limbs bent wrong, chest caved in, face unrecognizable from the impact. Silence swallowed him.

Dessa shrieked beside me. Koel swore, eyes wide with disbelief. My legs pumped without thought, boots skidding against stone, my breath ragged. I had no plan. No sense of direction. The pillar stretched endlessly in both directions, sheer on every side. Shards, gaps, the faint shimmer marking the one-mile line—they were all wrong. I could run *anywhere*, and every direction felt like the wrong one. *We can’t run forever. We’ll never escape if we just run.* Then I saw it: the outpost. Chained between two pillars, just ahead. Not a solution, not yet, but *something*—a chance. I focused on the shimmer of its metal beams, the glint of its walls, and felt the tiniest shard of hope slice through the panic. “We have to make it there,” I gasped, forcing my legs to move, dragging the rest of us toward the only refuge in the drifting, broken world.

The outpost loomed ahead, chained between our pillar and a smaller one just outside the one-mile mark. My legs pumped harder. The windless air seemed to stretch, twisting our leaps sideways along the pillar’s curvature. “Go!” Koel shouted. He launched first, arching through the air with the pillar’s strange gravity pulling him along its side. His boots landed on the outpost’s metal floor with a clang, and he crouched low, gripping the rail. I followed immediately, heart hammering, chest burning. The gap yawned beneath me. I landed hard, shoulder twisting, head snapping against the carvings. Stars bloomed behind my eyes, pain flaring, but I forced myself up. Then Dessa leapt. She flew after me—arms raised, legs tucked—and one of the statues struck. Its stone fingers clamped around her ankle and yanked her backward. She screamed, spinning helplessly as the momentum dragged her toward the pillar. Two more statues lunged: one smashed into her chest, another crushed her side with a brutal kick. Her screams ended abruptly, replaced by a sickening silence as her body was twisted, broken, and finally dropped. Blood spattered the pillar, dark and glinting in the Reach’s pale light.

I could only stare, frozen. Koel had already dropped to his knees, gagging. I scrambled toward the open round door of the outpost, metal cold beneath my palms, heart racing. Koel pulled himself inside first, then I slid through, dropping heavily onto the deck. The door swung shut behind us. Twenty statues now stood along the pillar we had just left, eyes glowing faint blue, waiting. Watching. Patient.

“Base,” I rasped, gripping the railing. “The pillar… it’s broken at the base. We need immediate extraction—” A sharp *crack* cut through my words. The outpost jolted violently. The chains were taut, straining like bowstrings. The smaller pillar beneath the far end had snapped. Koel cursed. “We have to move. Now.” I nodded. Without hesitation, we leapt from the outpost to the smaller pillar. The width barely a large oak, its monolithic carvings dizzying as we landed. Boots scraped, hands clutching the stone. We ran. The statues waited, then slowly began following. The smaller pillar drifted past the one-mile mark, and panic clawed at me.

“Another pillar!” Koel shouted, pointing to a massive spire beyond, outside the mile radius. We raced toward it. I leapt first, flying through empty space, my angle wrong. Boots hit stone, chest slamming, my head snapping against carvings. Dazed, pain shooting through me. Koel followed—then a statue collided with him midair. The carved image of Eidon wrapped itself around him. It smashed his head with both hands, legs crushing his chest like a vice. His body slammed against the pillar with a sickening thud. The statue froze for a heartbeat, standing upright, coated in blood and gore, pieces of Koel still clinging. Then, as if dreaming, it began walking along the pillar, leaving him behind. The motion was slow, inevitable, unthinking. My stomach churned, my hands pressed against the stone for balance as my mind struggled to accept what I was seeing.

I staggered, dazed by my own landing. Pain lanced through my ribs, my vision blurred, and my heart pounded erratically. The world tilted around me, memories fractured and scattered, every thought snapping in jagged fragments. I forced my legs to move, shuffling down the side of the pillar. Each step felt uncertain, the curvature of the stone warping my sense of gravity. My mind was a haze—time skipped, events jumbling together. I remembered running. I remembered screams. I remembered the shimmer of pillars past the mile line. And then blankness. Somewhere along the pillar, the sound of voices reached me. Shadows moved, figures approaching. I blinked, unsure of how long I had been wandering. They were a group sent by Base, their ropes and harnesses glinting faintly in the pale light. Relief slammed into me like a wave as they caught sight of my staggered figure and guided me carefully back to the ground.

I was carried to a nearby camp, the temporary Base set up to monitor the Drift. They guided me to a hospital tent, the canvas warm and quiet compared to the chaos of the Reach. A cot waited, blankets neatly folded. I sank onto it, trembling. A warm mug of liquid pressed into my hands, steam rising and carrying the scent of herbs. I wrapped the blanket tighter around myself, letting the heat seep into my frozen limbs. I swore silently, a vow meant for no one but me. *Never again. Never return to the Pale Reach. Never walk another pillar. Never.* My throat tightened, the words repeating over and over like a mantra against the nightmare still crawling behind my eyes. I wouldn’t forget this, and I would never risk stepping into the drifting stone again.