Chapter 41: Emory

Emory snaps awake in the sleepscape, shocked to find herself un-Collapsed despite wielding a star. The rift is gone, replaced by a sealed silver door. Romie lies beside her, conscious but shocky, her hands charred to the bone—injuries that defy usual Dreamer rules, suggesting this physicalized sleepscape follows different laws.

As distant umbrae shriek and draw nearer, Emory tries the silver door, but it will not open. Romie begins convulsing, her body failing from the burns. Desperate and nearly depleted, Emory drags up the last speck of Healing. The tiny surge halts Romie’s convulsions and knits enough tissue to stave off death, though the hands remain ruined.

Steeling herself, Emory reframes her worth beyond her Tidecaller power, recognizing Romie’s unwavering belief in her. With the way back closed and danger rising, they listen as a familiar melody—a lyre’s mournful song Emory once heard in a dream—threads through the stars, seeming to call both their names and offering direction.

Following the song along a starlit, water-slick path, they reach a dark marble door veined like roots, its knob a tangle of vines and the scent of earth and greenhouse life seeping through. Trusting the pull, Emory opens it; water spills over the threshold. With no turning back, Emory and Romie step through together, letting the star-song carry them toward whatever shore lies ahead.