Callum doesn't dream so vividly for a long time, and it's during a rainstorm as the party is huddled together in the highest branches of one of the tallest trees that Callum has ever had the misfortune of climbing, that he dreams again, but it's of a different time and place entirely.
He's a little boy again, and Mom is holding a small chest in her hands as they sit on the floor of her bedroom.
"This," Mom says, "is one of my most precious possessions. And one day, Callum, it will be yours."
"What's in it?" Callum asks.
Mom opens the lid, the wood creaking and tilts the chest towards him.
There is an old book inside, the leather cracked and faded with age, a necklace that looks like it has the horn of some great creature encased in silver strung along the chain, and two bracelets of wound gold and bronze wire.
"When I met your father," Mom says, lifting the book from the chest, "I had this journal and in it, there are some of his drawings. I thought you'd like to see some of them."
"Can I?" Callum asks eagerly.
"Of course," Mom says, opening the book, flipping through the pages. "Ah, here."
She turns the book towards Callum.
There's a delicate sketch of herself, drawn in loving detail. Mom is smiling in the picture, the necklace from the chest resting around her throat. She's wearing a strange robe that Callum can't remember seeing anywhere in her room.
And he'd know, he's played hide and seek in her closet enough times.
"Do you think I'd be that good?" Callum asks, reaching out and turning the page gently.
This is Mom's precious book. He needs to be careful with it.
"I do," Mom says, and her voice is warm if a little trembling as if she's on the edge of tears.
There are flowers on the next page, the colors faded, but the image is clear.
Callum wishes he could draw that good.
The opposite page has two hands intertwined.
Mom reaches past Callum, touching the edge of one of the hands with trembling fingers.
"I'd forgotten he'd drawn that," she says. "My left hand," she gestures, "and his right."
"It must have been hard to draw with one hand," Callum says. His father's hand is turned slightly away, slender fingers interlacing with Mom's.
"He didn't," Mom says with a watery laugh. "He had a very good memory."
"Like me!" Callum says excitedly.
"Yes, just like you," Mom says."You're very smart, just like he was."
"He loved me, right, Mom?" Callum asks, hesitantly.
"Yes, Callum," Mom says, and there are tears in her eyes, streaking down her cheeks. "He loved you very much. He loves you still, wherever his soul has gone to rest."
"Okay," Callum says and sits up, setting the book carefully down and hugging her.
Mom hugs him back, pressing a kiss into his hair. "Oh, my little star, you are going to be great one day."
"A great artist?" Callum asks.
"If that's what you want to be," Mom says with a soft chuckle. "If that's what you want to be."
It's much, much later when Aaravos wakes, and his mind is strangely clear.
"Sarai," he murmurs, the name invoking a hundred memories to swirl through his mind, crystalline and bright.
How could he have forgotten her?
She had fallen through the mirror and she'd stayed with him for a time. A clever woman and a good friend.
How had she left this place?
He reaches for the answer and there is a sense of fear and anguish that echoes through his soul as he searches. There is a gray wall in his memories, a barricade that refuses to break beneath his will, clouding the time after her arrival.
He scowls, closing his eyes again and reaching out to where Viren is still imprisoned.
He might as well do something useful.
Viren has heard little news; being chained up in a dungeon doesn't exactly lend one's ears to information.
He does however, quietly ask if Aaravos might free him, at a moment when the guards are distracted enough with shift-change that they don't notice their prisoner talking to himself.
"I'll see what I can find," Aaravos murmurs, his voice silky, "I do have a library to comb through at my leisure, after all. Either way, I'll let you know."
He withdraws, pulling his mind away from the star-worm, and rises from his chair to look through the bookshelves for something to assist his pawn. He's halfway through a book on a variation of lockpicking spells, when something shifts out of the corner of his eye.
"I see you've returned, little najima," Aaravos says softly, closing the book with a low thump, "How may I aid you?"
Callum shifts beneath Aaravos's golden gaze, "Could you teach me a spell to stop bad dreams?"
He hasn't dreamed of this place in weeks, but he'll take it over nightmares any day as he's been having them more and more as the party has moved further east.
"The Barren Plains," Rayla had called the area they'd been passing through, making an odd gesture with her left hand, "where dark magic was first worked. It's said that a human brutally murdered an Arch-mage, one of our most powerful sorcerers, and with his soul, cast the first dark spell the world had ever seen."
"That's awful," Callum had said, shivering despite the fire they'd camped around for the night.
"Aye," Rayla had said, and her face was unusually grave and solemn, "I don't think any of us will sleep well until we're past them. They say that on particularly windy nights, you can still hear the Arch-mage's screams as the human killed him."
Callum had quickly changed the subject after that, not wanting to dream of murders and dark magic.
Aaravos gives a soft hum, setting the book he'd been reading aside and turns towards him, hands folded together in a manner that reminds Callum of some of the courtiers he'd seen in meetings with Dad.
"You suffer from nightmares?" Aaravos asks, almost gliding across the floor, coming to a halt a foot away and kneeling, indicating that Callum should join him.
Callum sits. "Yeah, we're pretty close to a place called the Barren Plains."
There's a shadow of an expression that crosses the Startouch elf's face but it is there and gone so fast that Callum is uncertain that he's seen anything at all.
"That place had another name once," Aaravos says softly, "It was called the Starlit Plains, but that was long ago, when the earth itself sang with magic, before the corruption of dark magic came."
"One of my friends, she's a moonshadow elf," Callum says, "she says that an Arch-mage was murdered there using dark magic, and that's why none of us are sleeping well."
"Dark magic leaves traces of itself behind," Aaravos says, "And the magic worked there was dark indeed. The very first spell of the Dark, and it tore free the heart of an Arch-mage."
Callum shudders at the visual those words conjure in his mind.
"There are spells to prevent dreaming entirely," Aaravos says after a moment, "but I believe that you would still wish to speak with me, correct?"
"Yeah," Callum says. There are many questions that burn on his tongue but he waits; there will be time later to ask. The nightmares are a more pressing matter.
"Then we will just have to find a way to combat the nightmares," Aaravos says, looking thoughtful, waving a hand and Callum watches as a book topples off the shelf and into the elf's outstretched hand.
He leafs through it for a moment, "Dreams are the realms of the Stars, and fall under their governance. If you are to cast a spell to prevent ill dreams then it would be wise to cast it at night before you fall asleep. In moonlight would be best."
"Okay," Callum says. "How do I do that?"
Aaravos looks up from the book. "It works best if you have a focus to attach the spell to, such as a pendant or ring. Items with personal importance work better than those that have none."
Callum frowns. He doesn't have any rings and the only pendant he owns was his mother's. A gift from Callum's birth father, a strange jagged horn clasped in silver on a chain. Callum had packed it into his satchel before going looking for Ezran. It's the only connection he has left to his birth father and Mom.
"What is wrong, little najima?" Aaravos asks, and when Callum looks, the elf is studying him, face unreadable.
"The only pendant I have is Mom's," Callum says. "I don't want to lose it."
"The spell will not consume the pendant," Aaravos tells him, "Merely add a layer of protection upon it. If you are wearing it, you will not have nightmares."
"It won't damage it at all?" Callum asks.
"No. It will be the same after you cast the spell as before, save the enchantment."
Callum lets out a sigh of relief. "That's good. What's the spell?"
"Ne tenebris somniorum," Aaravos says.
Callum sounds out the phrase carefully. He wants to get this right.
Aaravos smiles at him. "Correct. Now, the actual casting requires that you hold the pendant in the moonlight, repeating the incantation until you feel the magic settle."
"How do I know it's settled?" Callum asks. "Also, is there like a magic guide for beginners? Because there's a lot I don't know yet."
Aaravos laughs. "The settling of magic is something that one develops an instinct for over time. It can be compared to knowing when a cup is full or when a fruit is ripe."
"So it would feel heavier, when the spell is complete?" Callum guesses.
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Aaravos says.
"That's rather unhelpful," Callum says.
"You are unlike anything we elves have seen before," Aaravos says, "Do you teach a fish to swim or a bird to fly? Magic is the nature of elves, innate, instinctive, tied to our very souls. We learn from birth how to wield it. You are operating on a tilted scale already by merely being born with human blood. But you have talent and I think you will one day cast spells like a master."
"Thanks, I think," Callum says.
"Now," Aaravos says, "When last we spoke, I believe we were discussing the Primal Sources."
"We talked about the Stars," Callum says.
Aaravos nods, "Then we will next speak of the Moon, and its aspects..."