She was standing in front of him, her crystalline presence as sharp and beautiful as it always was. Yet there was a harshness imbuing the air with chilling anticipation.
„I'm sorry, Fenris."
The mage was towering behind her, his eyes blazing lyrium blue.
„It is something I have chosen."
Her staff shriveled in her hands and fell to shreds of tattered black rags that blew away.
„It is the only path before me."
The figure behind her started to swell and grow, its skin ripping with a sickly grey mass of unnatural flesh. He wanted to move, to drag her away, to save her – but couldn't move a finger. He wanted to shout, growl, scream, roar – but he had no voice.
The mage turned into a gigantic abomination that seemed to fill the entire world, slowly climbing up her perfect body, enveloping her, consuming her, until all that was left was her face.
There were tears running down her cheeks, as the deathly material grew into them and turned her eyes red.
She screamed.
He screamed.
He sat up, the dream shattering around him left him sobbing without tears. It took him several minutes to get his breathing under control.
He stood up.
The small room with a worn bedroll and a pitcher of water. His sword. Nothing else.
He drank deeply and then walked to the window.
First rays of morning kissed the moss-covered rocks and twisted dark trees. First chills of winter flew in wisps through the air. He felt hollow.
She was gone, and so was everybody else.
He stood alone in a huge, empty world, trying for months to hide away from it in a small inn on the road.
He never thought he'd be hiding from himself one day.
On the border between Orlais and Nevarra, between the Waking Sea and the Fields of Ghislain, winds the Imperial Highway from east to west like a forgotten Tevinter snake. Surrounding it are wild green forests, climbing up and down the slopes of rocky hills. The trees there are mostly ancient and gnarled and the creatures living underneath them are quiet – so quiet, that the land seems extremely at peace at day, and eerily dead at night.
Any sound is like a dagger brought slamming into your temple.
She ran. No thoughts. No turns. Blood raging. Breath hissing.
There was a void inside her head, and it had her searching, searching for any clue. But there was nothing except for one flaring certainty.
She was hunted.
Hours have gone by and although the speed slowed down to nearly a crawl, she was still running, her stumbling footfalls scarring the forest floor.
Through the almost impenetrable darkness a pair of predatory eyes followed several miles behind.