Ardi was sitting in a wicker chair, leaning his back against the house's cool brick wall, and watching the sun set in the west, revealing the peaks of the Ral Mountains that loomed over the Enario Theocracy.

This was a country that had once, long ago, existed only in the pages of Ardan's textbooks, but was now firmly linked in his mind with Lady Talia, the Flame of the Sidhe, Sergeant Mendera, and everything that had happened in the Metropolis.

But he would think about all that when he returned to the capital. For now, the young man simply savored the long-awaited evening coolness and the way the night had come running with a majestic, whispering stride across the green mantle of the steppe.

In the south, if you looked closely, you could make out the dark lines of mixed forests; to the north, the snow-white peaks of the Alcade; to the west, open plains and mountain mirages; and to the east... To the east, there was an enormous city which, of course, one couldn't see from here, and yet it seemed to be whispering something from deep within the young man's heart.

Or maybe he was just imagining it.

Maybe it was all because of the key he was turning between his fingers.

An ordinary key from a heavy padlock. It was old and had lost the battle to time and rust in places. It was all he had left from Mr. Edward Aversky, the Grand Magister of military magic. Milar would probably, despite his dislike for the man, add something like "a patriot and a worthy son of Gales" to that.

Captain Pnev would probably be right.

Ardi had never used the key. And not because he hadn't had time. No, enough time had passed between the funeral and his departure for the young man to have gone to the address indicated in the message.

It was just...

Ardan sighed.

Everything was too complicated.

After just half a year, Aversky hadn't become his friend, and he certainly hadn't become his mentor in the sense Ardi ascribed to that word when he remembered his forest friends and Atta'nha. And yet, the young man still felt like, with Aversky's death, thin, barely-perceptible threads had snapped in his chest. Yes, Ardi still felt lingering resentment at Aversky's attitude and his blatant egomania coupled with the need to always be right, not to mention the exhausting practical sessions he'd put him through; but at the same time, the youth fondly remembered their quiet evenings, when they'd sat in that smoke-filled lab working on strategic magic.

In just half a year, Aversky had taught him a lot. Probably more than even the Military Faculty students managed to learn in their first few years within the walls of the Grand. And yet...

And yet, for some reason, Ardi kept twirling the key in his hand and still didn't know what to do with it. He couldn't help it—even when he tried not to, he still found similarities between this key and the one his great-grandfather had once given him.

Outwardly, they were as drastically different as a mutt and a purebred, but...

Another "but…"

So ordinary, so worn-out, and equally tiresome.

Then those familiar, heavy, somewhat "rolling" footsteps sounded, like a great weight constantly being shifted from one leg to the other. Kelly had never mentioned it, but Ardi had seen enough skeletons and cadavers at the Grand to understand that the sheriff had knee problems. And considering he smelled not only of cigars, but also of that distinct medicinal odor, this meant that Kelly himself was well aware of the problem. He just didn't want to share it with anyone. He didn't feel the need to burden others.

Ardi understood him now.

Exhaling slightly, the sound reminiscent of an owl, Kelly settled into the neighboring chair and pulled the ashtray lying on the glass table closer to himself.

"Tess is playing with Kena, and Erti is helping your mother in the kitchen," Kelly rumbled, taking a deep drag.

"Yes, I know." Ardi nodded.

The sheriff raised his eyebrows in mild surprise.

"You can hear them?" He lifted a hand and rapped on the wall. "Even through three layers of brick?"

"The windows are open," Ard said with a shrug, continuing to twirl the key in his fingers.

Kelly grunted and, taking another drag, sprawled out in the chair, causing the wicker weave to creak under his substantial weight. The former sheriff gazed at the bright scattering of stars and thought about something. Something of his own, something only people like him could think about. This had sounded strange to him. Once. Now Ardi understood that phrase as well...

"I always knew it would catch up to me."

Now it was Ardan's turn to be surprised as he looked toward his... cohabitant? His mother's second husband? He didn't know the right term. He had no intention of calling Kelly his stepfather, and he certainly wouldn't call him his "adoptive father," nor had he ever thought of him that way.

Kelly was just... Kelly.

"My knees," the former sheriff pointed with his cigar at his legs. "It's because of my time in the cavalry. Knew something was wrong with them. I can see how you look at them, big guy. Don't forget that I did a rather specific job, so..." Kelly reached out and closed the window. "I can do a thing or two as well. Not like the Cloaks, of course, but definitely better than the marshals."

Ardi nodded.

"How long?" He asked shortly.

Kelly turned to him briefly, and after a few heavy heartbeats, he turned back to the stars.

"Since the last time you visited, at least," he answered in a tone that wasn't just dry, but close to desiccated. "When I said I suspected our gardener was no gardener at all, you weren't the least bit surprised. And for me, Ard, it's not that hard to tell apart calluses left by a hoe from the ones you get training constantly with a revolver. Your brother will soon develop them as well and I can't say I'm too happy about it."

"Then forbid him from going to the shooting range."

Kelly grunted again.

"You understand that's a stupid idea, don't you?"

"I do."

"Then why suggest it?"

Ardi closed his eyes for a moment.

"Because I'm worried about Erti," he answered after some time. "And because I don't want to argue with him over this. Such a conflict would trigger not just an argument, but something bigger."

Kelly picked up the ashtray and set it on his now slightly bulging belly.

"You'd have me take the fire instead? Use me to achieve your goal while doing it all with someone else's hands?"

Ardi answered immediately, without a shadow of doubt or the slightest prick of a guilty conscience, "Yes."

"And not because you don't care about me, but simply because Erti is far dearer to you than I am?"

Ardi recalled how, as a child, he'd never doubted that if lethal danger ever threatened Kena and Erti, he would first save his brother, and only then his sister. And that realization had weighed on him ever since that day.

But as for Kelly—he was at the very bottom of the rescue priority list. Of course, Ardi would help them all, but some of them would get his help with far more urgency and self-sacrifice than others.

So he answered honestly.

"Yes."

Kelly's thick mustache twitched, hinting at a not-particularly-cheerful smile.

"You're honest, Ard. If nothing else, I've always liked that about you." The former sheriff lifted the cigar before his eyes and examined the red band slowly burning up the tobacco leaves. "Military investigator or Second Chancery investigator?"

Ardan remained silent.

"The gardener has gone missing for the second time on the same day you arrived. And you carry your staff without a cover, not at all worried that someone might ask awkward questions. And, truth be told, your gaze has changed completely and, I suspect, irrevocably."

"My gaze?"

Kelly nodded.

"Remember how, when you came in winter, I said it had grown colder, but still held its naivety?"

"I remember."

"Well," Kelly drawled, continuing to examine his cigar, "I can't say the naivety has entirely left your peepers, but I will say this... I've seen eyes like those before, Ard. The eyes of people who have discovered—and with their own hands confirmed—just how fragile another's life is. And how easy it is to snuff it out. With one shot from a revolver. One strike of a knife or fist," Kelly looked at Ardi askance. "One spell... Mm-hmm. A year ago, a boy left Evergale—a boy in a man's body, with the habits of a beast. And now a military mage stands before me."

"Not military."

"So… a Cloak?"

Ardi nodded.

Kelly swore. Viciously and crudely. Ardan had never heard the sheriff curse like that before.

"I won't tell you what will happen to your mother if one day, a man in a black suit and black hat ends up on our doorstep and hands her your epaulettes and a death notice," the former sheriff took a deep drag. Deeper than usual. "And now, Ard, you'll have to try and ensure that not only Shaia never receives that notice, but also that charming girl who's currently playing with your sister—because only a blind idiot wouldn't be able to see how much Tess loves children."

Ardi remained silent. He didn't say that he also loved children. They weren't afraid of him. They didn't fear his inhuman eye color, nor his equally-beastly fangs or oddly-shaped nails. They were never afraid…

A breeze came through, carrying with it the aromas of the steppe and the petals of wildflowers.

"Is this somehow connected to your father's family history?"

Ardan could have admitted that it was connected to his mother's family history too, but apparently, Kelly knew nothing about Shaia's grandfather, Alexander Taakov. All the better. So he just answered, "It's complicated, Kelly. Hard to say..."

"Pfft," a slightly contemptuous snort escaped the older man. "Truly a Cloak. You even talk like them."

"You've dealt with Second Chancery officers before?"

Kelly took another drag and exhaled an acrid, dark cloud.

"Once, a long time ago. On the Armondo border." Ah yes, before returning to Evergale, Kelly had served in the cavalry. "I ended up there after Shangrad was freed from the nomads. I served in a mounted assault detachment. Sometimes we'd be sent out to assist in reconnaissance and punitive raids. And one time, we had to escort a group of Black House operatives. They needed to extract something from one of the small tribes living on the border."

Ardan decided not to share the details of his work or inform Kelly that, in that specific case, he had been dealing not with Cloaks, but with Daggers. Besides, it didn't really matter.

"Were you successful?"

"Quite," Kelly shrugged. "Two lightly wounded and one horse killed. You could say we came back without losses. Even got a bonus for it. The guys were hoping for a medal. Or even an Order. It turned out to be a serious sortie, but secrecy and all that. So they gave us a year's salary instead. Which, all in all, isn't bad either."

Ardi thought that it was good thing Milar hadn't heard that.

Kelly slightly turned his chin again and, from under his brow, cast a sideways glance at Ardi, then shifted his gaze to the key in his hand.

"We've never really spoken heart-to-heart, Ard," the sheriff scratched his temple with the hand holding the cigar. He always did that when he felt awkward. "And I understand you perfectly. If I'd come back from the front and found my mother had married someone else and even borne him a child, I probably wouldn't have been particularly happy, either."

"It's not about that, it's-"

"I already said that you're an honest guy, Ard," Kelly interrupted him. "So I understand that it's precisely about that. And I've made my peace with it. Ever since the first time I saw you six and a half years ago, I understood that's how it would always be. That in your eyes, our family would always be divided in half: you, Shaia and Erti, and me with Kena."

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Ardi didn't argue with that simply because he'd felt a hot stab of—if not bestial rage, then certainly indignation—when Kelly had said "our family."

"And I also knew I wouldn't have to endure it forever, and that you would leave here someday, and things would get calmer for us," Kelly wasn't injecting any negativity into his words, just laying out what had accumulated in his soul. Maybe he and Percy had conspired? "If you won't ask why I was so sure, I'll answer you myself. Because I saw in you the same thing my father saw in me when he chose not to hold me back from sending that letter to the army recruiters. I always felt stifled in Evergale. I always wanted to leave. And, to be honest, I didn't plan on coming back."

"Then why did you come back?"

"To bury my mother and father," Kelly answered matter-of-factly, his voice not trembling even a bit. "Brought my wife with me. Wanted to introduce her to my sister. And I ended up burying them both as well. My wife. And my sister. Then her husband. My nephews. And also my memories. Because the Shanti'Ra burned our farm to ashes. Nothing was left, Ard. Only black, scorched earth and charred bones. Including the children's."

Ardi remembered his mother's words: that she'd lost her husband and Kelly had lost his wife that night when the Shanti'Ra had attacked Evergale. But even before that, they'd destroyed Kelly's sister.

"I had no one left, Ard. Except a revolver and a bottle. And every evening, I weighed the pros and cons and wondered what to shove down my throat—whiskey or lead. And you know what? One time, lead won. Only the revolver misfired. Didn't shoot, the damn thing. And the second time, I didn't manage to pull the trigger," Kelly paused and stealthily ran his hand over his face. The sheriff wasn't sentimental, but he wasn't heartless, either. Just a person. Like all of them. "It all happened at the office. I'd stayed late to finish some paperwork. Your mom was working late, too. She brought something over to get my signature and managed to grab my iron before I could redecorate the walls with my brains."

Interesting… How would their lives have turned out if Shaia hadn't stayed la-

"Right now, you're wondering what would've happened if Shaia hadn't been there, aren't you?"

"Yes," Ardi once again answered without delay.

"Honest... honest and cruel," Kelly snorted as well, without a hint of resentment or anger. "Like a beast."

"Kelly, I was raised by a snow leopard, a she-wolf, a lynx, a bear, and a squirrel."

"Ha, you know, the squirrel sounds a bit absurd in that list."

"Why?"

"Because it's the most harmless among them."

Harmless… Skusty... It was unlikely that Ardi would hear anything else that was quite so far from the truth today.

"Your mother never told you about this?"

Ardan shook his head. Apparently, she hadn't wanted to spoil her son's impression of her new husband.

Kelly suddenly bent down and pulled a short knife from his boot, grunting and muttering curses all the while. But it wasn't a utility knife, it was a combat blade.

"I confess, my back tires me out even more than my knees," the former sheriff gritted out and laid the blade on the table.

"What is that?"

"A knife, Ard."

Ardan exhaled noisily.

"Sorry, big guy, I thought that joke would be funny," Kelly raised his free hand in a gesture of surrender, nearly dropping his cigar in the process. "This is Olaf Blenski's knife."

"I have no clue who that is."

"And you shouldn't," Kelly removed the ashtray from his belly and, making everything that could possibly crack do so, he stretched out. "Olaf Blenski was a fellow soldier of mine. And a comrade. He died when we were sent to support a corps whose flank had suffered a tribal attack. The Armondians had broken through the first line of fortifications and had almost reached the trenches when we hit them in the side. It was a hell of a mess, Ard. And then some panicked staff officer, afraid we wouldn't have time to grind them down and that the nomad vanguard would break into the trenches, ordered the artillery to fire. And it shelled us. All of us. Without distinction. Shrapnel shells don't give a damn who they rip to shreds. Horses, trees, people, Armondians, Imperials, Olaf Blenski... Yeah, shrapnel doesn't care. And some officers don't care, either."

"What was he-"

"What was he scared of? He sure as hell wasn't worried that a slaughter would start in the trenches," a note of obvious contempt and something akin to vindictiveness cut into Kelly's tone. "He was worried about his own hide, Ard. That he'd have to write in the report that the position was lost. And then the higher-ups would have questions for the lower-downs—namely, that officer. And so he gave the order to fire."

Ardan still couldn't grasp how such a thing was possible.

"He hadn't received the information that you'd already struck the nomads from behind?"

Kelly slowly turned to Ardi and looked at him silently for a while.

"So, the Metropolis hasn't completely hardened you just yet, big guy..." Kelly whispered softly. Then, much louder, he answered, "Oh, that officer knew everything, alright. He just didn't give a damn. His own neck and his tiny, lousy report mattered more. There were a hundred and forty of us riders that rushed in, and as many horses. About two hundred nomads. And in the trenches, there were two strongpoints with five riflemen each. And a signal post. And for the sake of that signal post and those two strongpoints, the officer minced fifty-seven Imperial riders into pulp, including Olaf Blenski. A piece of shrapnel pierced his lung. And I stood there and watched my friend choke and drown in his own blood. All I could do was watch. Because I got lucky. And he didn't."

Ardan silently stared at the knife.

"He and I once made a pact that whoever died first would leave his inheritance to the other. Olaf liked my revolvers, so if I had beaten him to the road to meet the Eternal Angels, he'd have taken them for himself. And I liked his knife. This knife," Kelly gently nudged the blade on the table. "I took it back then. I don't even remember doing it, honestly, but I took it. Do you know when I used it for the first time?"

Ardan shrugged.

"When I returned here," Kelly answered his own question. "When I came back to Evergale and slit the throats of those orc bastards who'd burned my family alive. My only regret is that I left the chieftain's son alive. Thought I'd hand him over to the courts. It was all in vain... Maybe if I hadn't done that, your father would still be alive and... my wife would be, too."

Ardan turned away from the knife.

"Such is the dream of the Sleeping Spirits," Ardi uttered distantly.

"What?"

"It's the same as saying 'it's all in the Light's hands.'"

"Ah, got it," Kelly nodded curtly.

Ardi turned toward the west again, where the Ral Mountains had vanished into the night. They were too far to make out at any other time of day except sunset, when the tall peaks would slice through the streams of the sun's last rays.

"I'm not your father, Ard," Kelly exhaled another cloud of smoke and stubbed out the butt of his cigar. "I never intended to become him. Never even wanted to. I didn't want to be him. I didn't want to replace him. Honestly—I didn't really want to remember him. But I still did. Every time I saw Erti. At first, it was hard. Then it got easier. And then, at some point, I stopped seeing anyone other than my son when I looked at Erti."

This was hard for Ardi to hear, but he still listened out of respect. Because if there was any way to describe the feelings he had toward Kelly, the simplest thing to do was to call them all respect. Kelly deserved at least that much.

"I didn't come at you with advice. Didn't ask you for anything. Demanded nothing. And I wouldn't make an exception now, if not," Kelly sighed. "If not for the key in your hands, big guy. The key you're staring at exactly the way I once stared at that knife."

Ardan jerked in surprise and, without knowing why, quickly slipped the piece of metal back into his jacket pocket.

"This is something a father should teach his son, Ard. And maybe the day will come when sons no longer need to know this, but until that day comes, it must be said. My father told me this a long time ago, when I nearly smashed a boy's head with a rock over some nonsense we'd squabbled about. And my father's father told him, and his father told him, and so on. But yours didn't get the chance to tell you, and animals... Animals, I suppose, have it a bit different," Kelly, leaning heavily on the table with his right hand and bracing his left against his lower back, rose to his feet and stretched again. "There are different kinds of enemies in this world, Ard. There are enemies whom you crave to kill, tear apart, and subject to such terrible torments that the Angels themselves would weep at the sight. There aren't many of those, but such enemies do exist, big guy. There are also other enemies, Ard. Ones you respect, understand, and whose death evokes in you regret, and maybe a slight nostalgia. There are only a few of those too, big guy. Even fewer than those you outright hate. But both of those types are just a handful."

Kelly stepped up to the table, took the knife, and flicked it back into its sheath with a deft cowboy motion, without even bending over.

"But mostly, you end up killing and crippling those you, by and large, don't give a damn about. You don't want to harm them, but you were left no choice. Those are the majority, Ard. Both at the front and in life. You just fired a shot. Just stabbed out with a knife. Just worked a bit of magic. Because you're on this side. And they're on the other. Is it rotten? Yes. Would you prefer something else? Without a doubt. Is it sometimes painful? If you're not a psycho, then of course. But a day goes by, a week, maybe a month, and you forget. You forget everything. Because killing enemies, even fleeting ones, is far easier than those storytellers like to claim," Kelly adjusted his hat and turned back toward the house. "It's hard to bury friends, Ard. And harder still to bury your loved ones. Because you're alive and they're not. And you devour yourself, tortured by questions—what if you'd done something differently? What if you had made it in time? What if everything had turned out otherwise... Your eyes, big guy, didn't change after you spilled blood. Because, may the Eternal Angels bear witness to my honesty, I'm sure your path to the capital wasn't as simple as you described in your letters to your mother. But what I do know for certain is that only recently, you buried your friend. Killing an enemy is easy. One can even be taught how to do that. But no one can teach you how to bury your friends."

Ardan involuntarily clenched the pocket where the key lay.

"It won't get easier, big guy," Kelly added in an almost whisper. "It's just that, at some point, you'll start thinking of it less often. And then even less. And less. Until the memories come back only at certain moments. It's like a heavy sack on your back. You just get used to its weight and... that's it. That's the truth of life, boy."

Ardan closed his eyes.

His great-grandfather had once said that there was unlikely to be anyone for hundreds of kilometers who could understand him. And his great-grandfather had been right... and wrong at the same time.

"You ever think about the chieftain's son?" Ardan asked. "He did survive."

Kelly froze by the door leading into the kitchen.

"I think about him, Ard. Just like you think about the Shanti'Ra chieftain."

"Then why not go looking for him?"

"Because I have a family, Ard. My family. Whom I need to take care of. But..." Kelly looked at Ardan from under the brim of his hat. "You already know the answer to that. Because you find your own peace in exactly the same answer."

"Yes, I do," Ardan suddenly realized he couldn't keep the words inside him any longer. "Tomorrow, I'll go out to meet them, Kelly. The Shanti'Ra... Sleeping Spirits, Kelly, I've killed far more than one person. And not only people. And I've never lost any sleep over it. Because I didn't want to kill them. Not a single one. Not those bandits on the train, or Lea, or Ildar, or Indgar, or the vampire... It just... it just happened that way. You're right. They just happened to be on the other side. And I even understood Lea... Only twice have I ever wanted to cause pain..."

"Mister, mister, are you a mage??"

"I just wanted to become stronger... than the students... than the professors... And they promised to make me stronger."

Ardan grabbed his own shoulders and bent over so far that he nearly touched his chest to his knees. He couldn't see them, but he could feel the shadows scurrying around his legs. Like sticky marsh weeds smelling of death and despair, they wrapped around his legs. Rising gradually up them, burying their stingers in him like ravenous mosquitoes. Leaving burning trails in their wake, greedily draining his blood, along with his warmth.

Ardi had not experienced real cold since his childhood. Not the kind where a light chill barely grazes you with its icy lips, but the kind where it's so cold that wearing clothing causes you pain as it rustles against your flesh like sandpaper against raw wood.

"Do you want to hurt them?" Came a voice from somewhere above him, where the sun still shone, where, aside from the bog's muddy bottom, beside the stench of rot and decay, something else still existed. "Hurt the Shanti'Ra?"

Ardi felt his gums part as fangs slid out from his jaws. His breathing quickened, tearing out from a throat gone numb and dry. His own claws scratched at his jacket.

"So much," Ardan either whispered or growled. Before his eyes, scenes from the past flashed. His father. Tevona Elliny. Andrew Kal'dron. The Northerners. Screams and pain.

Then the crates of children in the Metropolis. Dead and disfigured. Irigov's estate. The blown-up bank, the blown-up temple, those experiments on the Firstborn, the dead people. Operation Mountain Predator…

So much pain... so much fury... All of it blending together, taking different shapes, different events, and merging them into a single surge swirling into a dark whirlpool.

Ardan was suffocating inside it. He was suffocating, but he could not let go. Because tomorrow, he would get to see the Shanti'Ra.

"So much, Kelly... I want them to scream. Louder than my father screamed. And to sob. To see their reflections in blood just as those children saw theirs in the steppe... so that their parents never see them return..." Ardan raised his hands and looked at them. How much blood had he already spilled. Just... because. Without any solid, personal reason. Exactly like a beast drunk on the hunt and the heat of another's life on its fangs. If he were still in the Alcade, they would have cast him out of the pack. "And I know I can... I know I can do it, Kelly. I know I can go there. I can take my rings, accumulators, my grimoire. And if those aren't enough, I'll Speak the Words. And then they will be gone. Not a single one of them left. I can do it. I might have enough power. And all that will remain will be blood and screams..."

Something gripped his shoulder. Very hard. And very firmly. Enough to yank him out of that dark swamp reeking of pain and blazing with rage. Yank him back into the light. Where breathing came easily to him. Where the dying sunset still glimmered somewhere on the horizon of the Reverse Ocean.

"Being a good person, Ard, doesn't mean being someone who never harms anyone," Kelly was looking off in that same direction beyond the horizon. "To be honest, I don't even know what it means. I was never one myself. But I heard somewhere that a good person is one who has the power to destroy everything around them, and also the restraint not to."

Ardi remembered Atta'nha's words about what makes Aean'Hane who they are.

And then he remembered Katerina's words about "good" and "decent" people.

And which of those two was correct?

"And how do I hold back, Kelly? How, by the Sleeping Spirits, do I hold back?"

The sheriff silently nodded toward the closed window. There, on the floor, puffing her cheeks out and making funny faces, Tess was playing with Kena, who was bouncing on her tiptoes, waving her new plush bear around.

And Ardi felt the cold retreat. He felt warmth return.

"Sometimes, that's not enough, Kelly. Sometimes, just one little push could..."

"I know."

"And what then?"

"That I don't know, boy," the sheriff released his grip on Ardi's shoulder and stepped away. "Nobody does. Each person finds something for themselves. It's one of those questions, Ard, whose answer you won't read in a book or hear from a father, or a friend, or a commander."

They fell silent. But not the way they had fallen silent before. Something had changed in this calm quiet between them. Between Sheriff Kelly Brian and Investigator Ardan Egobar. Something new, very small, that was just barely beginning to form.

"I'll go to your mother. I'll help set the table, since Erti will be late today, and Tess," at the mention of his son and the redheaded singer, a deep, gentle peace could be seen in Kelly's eyes, "Tess has more important matters to attend to."

The sheriff had already touched the door handle by the time Ardi managed to speak a few words as loudly as he could force them out, conceding to their truth—yet they still came out almost as a whisper: "Thank you... Thank you, Kelly, for caring for Shaia and Erti. And for taking care, as much as you could, of my great-grandfather. Without you, they wouldn't have survived."

Kelly's hand trembled, and he pulled his hat a bit lower over his eyes. "Maybe they would have... but I sure as hell would have died in some saloon or a piss-soaked ditch."

And he left.

Ardan sat there a few minutes longer, fingering the key in his jacket pocket, then rose and went into the house, where his loved ones were waiting for him. It was a strange, slightly broken family. A place where he felt warmth and peace.

***

"Did you talk to him, dear?"

"I did, love."

They were standing in the bathroom and, accompanied by the gurgle of the water, speaking as quietly as possible. As it turned out, Shaia's eldest son couldn't overhear others' conversations if several floors were separating them and the sound of water was masking their voices.

"I don't know what to do, Kelly." Shaia wrapped her arms around her shoulders just as her son had a short while ago. "They don't stop. These dreams. I see her chasing him. I can see how the darkness runs after my son, Kelly. And it's not a beast. And not a person. She's something else. Right now, she's far away. Very far, but... I can feel that she's getting closer."

Kelly embraced his wife and pulled her to him.

"It's just dreams, love," he murmured, stroking her hair. "Just dreams... nothing more. You're simply worried about him. It's normal."

"Yes... maybe you're right... It's just dreams..."

Yes, it was all just a dream. Shaia absolutely did not need to know what he had seen today. How shadows had reached out around a doubled-over, pale Ardan, just itching to engulf his legs. And that smell. That foul, all-permeating stench of a swamp…