Set months after Ziost


The Emperor's Wrath woke up in a cold sweat, the droplets falling off her face and onto her bed, mixing with the tears streaming down her cheeks. The images of her nightmare were flashing before her eyes, showing her the same thing over and over again. She felt the screams as if it just had happened even though it months had passed. The screams that crawled under her skin at night, that picked at her and reminded her. Reminded her of how she wasn't good enough, that she'll never be good enough. She wanted to pick at them as they rested under her skin, pick at them until they left her and gave her peace she longed for. But she knew that they weren't actually there, they weren't really picking at her or taunting her, they were just her nightmares. Nothing that will harm her.

'Safe' she thought, 'I'm safe'. Her sheets were damp and her hair stuck to her skin, glistening in all its smooth and pale glory. She inhaled shaky breaths. One. Two. Three. Her lungs barely accepting the air that she forced into them. Her hands were trembling with fear or sorrow; she didn't know the difference anymore or maybe she just couldn't remember. He tended to have that effect on her. He always had, since the day she met him. He always made her forget who she was or what she wanted to do. He made her forget what mattered to her or what made her content with her life. There was only him, and she did everything she could to keep him happy. But maybe she didn't deserve a happy ending even after everything she did for him as in the end, he betrayed her trust and she felt a terrifying pain in her heart and then nothing, and feeling nothing was just as scary as feeling your heart being ripped out of your chest and shattering into a million pieces. She learnt at a heavy price that loyalty got you nowhere and she wished that she would've learnt that lesson earlier. You would think she would have known that after the first two times after those who were close to her betrayed her.

She wouldn't think of them tonight, not while she was awake. Their place was in her dreams where they could only hurt her in her sleep and in her memories. What they did to her was just a dream, a nightmare, nothing real. It would never happen again, she wouldn't let it. Everything she saw in her sleep was nothing more than a figment of her memories. The pain they brought to her and the lives they took was all in the past. Nothing to cry over. But they were not what made her wake from her restless slumber. He did. What she dreamt he did would haunt her dreams forever. She felt it all, what he did. The force screamed out at her, trying to warn her before she was assaulted by the draining feeling that came from what he did below her. She felt what he did as millions of voices just stopped. She felt it when the life below her ceased to exist. She saw it too, she saw what he did and she felt it rush through her. She saw the death, no, the nothingness rip through her people, and she screamed along with them. She screamed until her voice turned raw and until the empty feeling subsided. She failed them and as a result, she would suffer with them. A small price to pay for what has happened.

What he did was just in her nightmares, nothing more than her dreams running wild. She looked down at the desolate planet below her, a planet she hasn't returned to in months and let a single tear of sorrow run down her cheek. He was just her nightmare, but sometimes… nightmares are real.