Day 4:

Drautos' sword slid from her father's back. Blood dripped from the blade, disappearing on black tiles. Yet Father still stood for a moment, though his eyes went blank while fixed on the screen of his phone. Drautos gave him a shove. He fell forward without throwing out his hands or taking a step to balance himself.

Reina bolted upright, heart pounding hard against the inside of her ribcage. Her chest refused to expand. Her skin was cold and clammy, covered in sweat.

It was dark. It always was. But she was somewhere unfamiliar and outside the window she could see city lights. Impossible. No city had lights like that. It was a flagrant waste of power when everything coming out of Lestallum was carefully rationed.

The bed shifted. A hand brushed against hers and Reina jerked away automatically before looking down. Father. Her father, asleep in his own bed. She touched his cheek to be sure he was real. His skin was warm. His pulse beat in his neck. His chest rose and fell steadily.

It was seven fifty-six. Insomnia had never fallen. Father was still alive. Drautos couldn't stab him in the back because she had sucked out Drautos' life force and left his corpse to burn.

A tapping sounded from the window. Reina spun. There was no balcony outside her father's bedroom, but a person hung, silhouetted against the city lights, nevertheless. A familiar person. The only person who still felt familiar, besides Father.

She glanced back to make sure her father was asleep before slipping out of bed, careful not to disturb him.

The lounge did have a balcony outside. And, stepping out onto it, she found Ardyn waiting for her there.

"You owe me a story, little Dreamer." His voice washed over her, warm and soft like crushed velvet on her skin. But she wasn't that person anymore. She didn't need to seek refuge in his arms, however much she wished to.

"I couldn't tell it," she said. "Not while looking at them. For the last five years you've been the only living person who would speak to me."

"I'm not alive, little Dreamer."

"Nearer than Father was," she said.

"Touché." Ardyn swept his hat off his head and bowed. "Well, Father-dear is abed, and everyone else is gone for the night. Won't you tell your dear friend Ardyn the tale?"

Of everyone, he was the only one she wanted to know what had happened in those years. But she had betrayed him, in the end. She couldn't tell him the rest and leave that part out. He would know she was lying. But she needed him on her side. Eos was not safe. Her family was not safe. Bahamut still expected Noctis to destroy Ardyn and die on the throne. She couldn't let that happen. But she also couldn't take his place anymore, not when she had so much still to live for—though she forgot it was real more often than not.

"I'm waiting, little Dreamer."

Even though she had stood with Noctis, even though they had killed him, when it was all over, he hadn't blamed her. He had gotten what he wanted. And he had loved her, whatever that meant to him. For her part, she had loved him as well.

"You can share a person's memories, can't you?" She asked.

"Yes… though usually I corrupt and consume them first," he said lightly. He considered her. "You, however, may be different, little Dreamer."

He held out his hand to her. In her core she felt the tug of his magic and the stirring of the scourge. He wouldn't kill her. Not today. Whatever else he wanted in this lifetime, he wanted what she had offered him more.

She took his hand.

The Starscourge spread inside her, pouring ice through her veins and filling her head with cold thoughts. It was over in an instant, leaving only a brain-freeze ache in her skull as he released her hand. She staggered.

"Well, well, well. I admit you had my curiosity piqued with your hints, and the truth does not fail to impress." He laughed. She shook her head to clear it. He took her chin in hand and tilted her head up towards him, exactly as he used to do. "You. Loved. Me."

"After a fashion," she agreed. "I suspect you felt the same… after a fashion."

"And now?"

"I don't know what I feel now." She pulled her chin free of his grasp and turned away, leaning on the rail and staring out across the city. "I don't even know who I am anymore. I'll have to reinvent myself."

He followed. His gaze was hot on her face as he scrutinized her.

"You still feel it." He smirked, leaned back against the railing, and tilted his head toward the sky. "Oh, I know you, little Dreamer. You can't hide from me. To you, that happened a week ago. It's as sharp as the heroic Daemonfire Night."

"No," she said. "There you are wrong. It's much more sharp. Much more real to me."

He snapped his head back down to look at her and narrowly missed losing his hat to the breeze. "The future that never came to pass is more clear than last week?"

"Everything from waking up in the tent with Noct and the others until today feels like a dream. A real dream. The kind that, when you look back and try to recall details, they're hazy and uncertain. And you only remember it when something happens to recall it to mind."

"How very strange."

He didn't expect a response and she didn't give him one.

"Lovely as this little heart-to-heart is, now that I know your deepest darkest secrets, I wonder if we might discuss what you've promised me?"

Through the haze of memories she remembered clasping hands with Ardyn in the crystal chamber as he gifted his control of the Starscourge to her. It felt unreal, but the scourge was coiled up inside her. In truth it would have felt stranger not to have the scourge. Only now did she realize she had been holding the daemons out of Insomnia ever since that night. Now that she did think of it, she realized her reach stretched further, spreading out across much of Lucis.

"I'll give you a hint," he said. "It concerns my beloved brother."

"Did you really destroy his statue? Father said they could only find pieces."

"It was a fight to remember. Though I am disappointed he couldn't be hung out to dry and left to rot in a prison for two thousand years. But you've offered an alternative."

"Yes…" A memory flickered across her mind, fleeting, but she recalled the idea. "His soul is bound to the ring. When the Caelum covenant is satisfied and you are dead, all the souls will be released. But it would not be so difficult to ensure that his was released into an endless purgatory rather than the Beyond."

"You have my attention, little Dreamer." Ardyn's eyes gleamed. "What would need to be done?"

"There are two tethers keeping him here. The first is the ring, which is a purgatory of its own. The other is his tomb. I would have called his statue the third, but you have already destroyed that one. If he was cut from the web of the Lucii, he would be but a ghost—an echo of himself haunting his tomb. If that, too, was destroyed, he would be a formless consciousness, powerless in this world without ring or magic, but unable to pass on once the ring has been destroyed. The ring itself will be undone once the prophecy is fulfilled and the Starscourge destroyed."

He stared at her a moment. Then he laughed.

"Oh, little Dreamer, you are devious. I can see those years alone with me have heightened your natural good sense," he said. "Though I would have thought you unwilling to sacrifice your brother after all you've struggled for."

"I'm not going to sacrifice him."

"Yourself, then."

"No. I tried that already. It only hurts the people I love most."

"How, then, will you satisfy the prophecy and destroy yours truly?"

"I don't know yet."

"How unlike you." He leaned closer. "Why don't you Dream it?"

"You know why."

He smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile, but within it she found certainty and familiarity nevertheless.

"Because you might be stuck again," he said. 'Because you might live another ten years and wake to find they never occurred. And you fear that nearly as much as you fear losing Father-dearest."

"Yes…"

Living without Dreams—waking or otherwise—made her feel blind. But being lost was much worse than being blind.

He always had understood her better than she understood herself.