The First Dreamer
Cuco's vision blurred. The forest flickered like a faulty reel of film—trees stretching, twisting, becoming towers of bone and memory. The ground beneath him pulsed in time with the mark on his hand, which now throbbed like a second heart.
The creature—The First Dreamer—hovered just beyond the veil, watching him.
It had no face, but Cuco felt its gaze.
Then, from deep inside his mind, a voice emerged.
Not spoken. Remembered.
> "I was the first to dream too deeply.
I opened the door between thought and truth.
And when I woke… I was no longer alone."
Cuco's body seized as another vision hit him like a flood:
A child—not much older than he was now—sitting cross-legged beneath a tree older than time. Eyes closed. Glowing faintly.
He watched as the child dreamed.
And as they did… the world around them changed.
Mountains rose, oceans split, skies bled light. It was beautiful.
Until the dreaming cracked.
A creature crawled out of the dream.
Then another.
Then thousands.
> "The Hollow Ones were born from my sleep," the voice said.
"They fed on what I could not control.
They still do."
Cuco dropped to the ground, gasping for air. Nox and Tariq tried to pull him back, but Isabela stepped between them.
"He has to see," she whispered. "Or he'll never understand what he's becoming."
Cuco writhed, the mark now glowing bright gold—and bleeding shadow.
"You were meant to be the Key," the voice echoed. "But keys do not choose doors. They fit them."
Then the light faded.
Cuco sat upright, trembling. Eyes wide, sweat clinging to his skin like rain.
Nox knelt beside him. "What did you see?"
Cuco didn't answer.
He looked at his hand.
Where once there had been a single glowing mark—there were now two.
One golden.
One black.
Tariq noticed it too. "That's not supposed to happen…"
Cuco finally spoke, his voice flat. Distant.
"It's not just that I can become the gate…"
He looked up at them, eyes haunted.
"It's already opening inside me."