The room was bathed in golden sunlight when Mina's consciousness returned, filtering through the gauzy curtains and casting long, warm rectangles across the wooden floor. His eyelids fluttered open, heavy as if weighted with sand. For a moment, disorientation clouded his mind—where was he? How long had he been here? The soft pressure of hands on his shoulders anchored him to reality.
"I'm not awake," he mumbled, his voice a raspy whisper. Remy was beside him, strong fingers kneading the tense muscles of his shoulders with practiced precision. But they weren't alone—the doctor was there too, clinical gaze assessing him over wire-rimmed spectacles.
The remnants of his dream—those three rivers flowing through impossibly vivid landscapes—lingered in his mind, their currents still pulling at the edges of his consciousness. The rivers had haunted him throughout the night, their waters sometimes clear as crystal, sometimes dark as ink, sometimes red as blood.
Voices drifted around him, discussing his condition as if he weren't present. Then, suddenly, they addressed him directly.
"Mina, can you hear us?" The doctor's voice cut through the haze. Mina managed a weak nod, his neck stiff and uncooperative.
"Good. You scared us for a while there," the doctor continued, relief evident in her tone. "You've been drifting in and out of consciousness for the past two days."
"Two days?" Mina echoed, the words barely audible even to his own ears.
"Yes," Remy confirmed, his hand now resting on Mina's forehead, checking for fever. "You've been burning up, talking in your sleep. Sometimes shouting."
The doctor pulled a chair closer to the bed. "Can you tell us what you've been dreaming about?"
"I..." Mina began, then hesitated. The dreams felt too real, too significant to share. Something within warned him to keep them private. "I haven't dreamt anything."
The doctor and Remy exchanged glances.
"Anything particular, that's okay," the doctor said smoothly. "Sometimes we can't recall dreams right after they happen. Do you have any pain?"
"No," Mina replied, though his body felt disconnected, as if he were floating slightly above it. "Not at all."
"That's good. The fever has finally broken, and you appear to be improving." The doctor began unfastening the soft restraints that Mina hadn't even noticed around his wrists. "We'll remove these for a while so we can assess your mobility. But please—" she fixed him with a stern look, "—I don't want any incidents, okay?"
"Okay. Count on me," Mina agreed, flexing his fingers as the restraints fell away. His wrists were chafed and tender from where he must have pulled against them during his delirium.
Remy helped him rise from the bed, one strong arm behind Mina's back, the other gently gripping his elbow. As soon as Mina was vertical, the room tilted and spun around him, colors bleeding into one another like watercolors on wet paper. He swayed, leaning heavily against Remy's solid frame.
The doctor stepped forward, concern etching lines between her brows. "Mina, are you alright?"
"I feel so dizzy," he admitted, his knees threatening to buckle.
"Let's get you back in bed," the doctor said, helping Remy lower him onto the mattress. "The dizziness is likely due to the blood loss and days without proper nourishment. You need more time to recover your strength."
No sooner had his head touched the pillow than exhaustion claimed him again. He heard only fragments of their conversation as consciousness slipped away.
"His condition has improved, but he still needs time to adjust."
"Yes, of course," came Remy's worried reply.
The doctor reattached the restraints, their soft weight somehow comforting now. Remy resumed massaging his shoulders, murmuring, "Rest now. You're going to be okay."
That night, Mina's fever returned with a vengeance. He thrashed against the restraints, his skin burning as if touched by fire. Remy stayed by his side, applying cool compresses to his forehead and speaking in soothing tones that barely penetrated the haze of delirium.
"Shh, Mina, I'm here," Remy whispered, wiping sweat from Mina's brow with a damp cloth. "You're safe. Nothing can harm you while I'm watching over you."
But Mina wasn't there—not really. His mind wandered dark corridors and twisted paths that seemed to lead nowhere and everywhere at once. Sometimes he would cry out, reaching for something unseen.
"The tree," he muttered feverishly. "I need to reach the tree."
"There's no tree here, Mina," Remy would say, gently restraining him when he tried to climb out of bed. "You're ill. You need to rest."
In rare moments of lucidity, Mina would look at Remy with frightened eyes. "Something's coming, Remy. Something terrible. I can feel it approaching like a storm."
Remy would simply shake his head and continue his ministrations. "Nothing's coming except your recovery, if you'll just lie still and let your body heal."
During one particularly violent episode, Mina nearly broke free of his restraints, his strength amplified by panic. "They're calling me! Can't you hear them?" he shouted, eyes wild and unfocused.
Remy had to call for assistance, and together with the night nurse, they managed to calm him with soothing words and a sedative that sent him spiraling back into the depths of sleep.
"I've never seen him like this," Remy confessed to the nurse, his face drawn with worry. "It's as if he's fighting some battle we can't see."
"Fever dreams can be incredibly vivid," the nurse replied, patting his shoulder sympathetically. "When the fever breaks for good, he'll be himself again."
But Remy wasn't entirely convinced. Something in Mina's eyes during those brief moments of clarity suggested he was experiencing something beyond ordinary delirium—something profound and perhaps dangerous.
This time, when sleep claimed him, it wasn't the chaotic, feverish dream of before. Instead, Mina found himself walking with purpose, his steps sure despite the unfamiliar terrain. The sacred tree beckoned in the distance, its massive trunk and sprawling branches silhouetted against a sky that couldn't decide whether it was dawn or dusk—a peculiar in-between time that existed nowhere in the waking world.
As he approached, the landscape transformed. What had appeared from afar as a lush meadow revealed itself as a desolate expanse, the grass beneath his feet withered and gray, the air heavy with the scent of decay. The sky overhead was slate-colored, occasionally illuminated by distant lightning that made no sound.
Snow seemed to fall—but no, Mina realized as he held out his hand, it wasn't snow at all but ash, soft and powdery as it accumulated on the ground around him. The ash coated everything, including the people he now noticed gathered around the base of the tree.
They stood in silent vigil, dozens of them, their faces blank and their eyes vacant. They did not acknowledge one another or Mina as he passed among them. Each seemed trapped in a private misery, gazing either straight ahead or behind, never meeting the eyes of those beside them.
"Hello?" Mina called, but his voice seemed to be swallowed by the heavy air. None of the figures reacted. They were lost, he realized—lost in dreams of their own, or perhaps lost between worlds, as he suspected he might be.
But as he drew closer to the tree itself, the world shifted again. The ash stopped falling. The gray landscape receded like a tide, replaced by vibrant colors that seemed to bleed up from the earth itself. Grass sprung forth, an impossible emerald green that hurt the eyes. Flowers bloomed in an instant—crimson, sapphire, and violet blooms unfurling their petals like tiny dancers.
The transformation rippled outward from the tree in concentric circles of life and color. Even the people changed, their gray pallor giving way to healthy complexions, their vacant stares replaced by awareness and wonder. They began to move, to speak to one another in languages Mina couldn't understand but somehow felt the meaning of—joy, relief, homecoming.
The tree itself was magnificent beyond description. Its trunk was wider than a house, the bark not brown but a deep, rich purple that gleamed with an inner light. The branches stretched upward and outward, some as thick as ordinary trees themselves, reaching into the sky which was now a perfect, cloudless azure. The leaves shimmered, catching light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, creating a dappled pattern on the ground beneath.
Mina approached slowly, drawn by an inexorable pull. As he came closer, he noticed small creatures watching him from the lower branches—not birds, as he first thought, but tiny, mouse-like beings with intelligent eyes that followed his movement. They chittered among themselves, a sound like whispering.
Standing before the colossal tree, Mina felt both insignificant and intensely important, as if he had been summoned here for a purpose beyond his understanding. The roots of the tree disappeared into the earth, but somehow Mina knew they extended far deeper than physically possible, perhaps to the very core of this world—or beyond, to other worlds entirely.
Drawing a deep breath that filled his lungs with air sweeter than any he had ever tasted, Mina called out, his voice stronger here than in the waking world:
"So, you want me here? Now I'm here! Tell me, why do you want me? Do you want me to live or die?"
The silence that followed seemed to stretch into eternity. Then, a voice—or perhaps many voices speaking as one—responded from all around him:
"We don't want you to die. Apparently, you belong to us. But you're a slave of the humans, like we all are."
"A slave? Of humans?" Mina questioned, turning slowly to locate the source of the voice.
Movement caught his eye—a shadow detaching itself from the greater shadow of the tree. It approached with fluid grace, a figure draped in what appeared to be a black fox pelt. But as it drew nearer, Mina saw it was more than a simple animal skin. The fur rippled with each step as if alive, the darkness of it so complete it seemed to absorb the light around it. The face was hidden beneath the head of the fox, its empty eye sockets somehow fixing him with an intense stare.
"Who are you?" Mina demanded, standing his ground despite the otherworldly presence before him. "And why do you come into my dreams? Actually... who am I?"
The figure tilted its head, an unnervingly animal-like gesture from a being that clearly was not an animal at all.
"I am L," it replied, the voice now localized, emanating from beneath the fox head. "Like the letter from the alphabet." There was a hint of amusement in the tone. "I was named thirty days before I was born. And then, I received these marvelous powers of controlling each one's life."
"So, you're dead?" Mina asked, a chill running down his spine despite the warmth of the sunlight.
"You can consider me as dead," L replied with what might have been a shrug beneath the heavy fur. "It's a great position to be in."
The creature circled Mina slowly, moving in a way that defied normal physics—sometimes seeming to glide above the grass, sometimes sinking partially into the ground. The black fur absorbed all light that touched it, creating a void in the shape of a fox that hurt Mina's eyes if he looked directly at it for too long.
"Why am I here?" Mina pressed, turning to keep L in his sight.
"Because you belong to us. You've never been fully human." The words sent a shock through Mina, a revelation that felt simultaneously false and profoundly true. "Lately, humans have conducted experiments. They've questioned God and Godly ways. They've tried to transform themselves into gods, which we cannot accept."
A memory flashed in Mina's mind—sterile rooms, faces masked and gloved, pain and confusion. Had that been real? Or another dream?
"So you want me to kill humans?" Mina asked, horrified at the thought.
"No, Mina," L replied, the fox head moving in a negative gesture. "We want to repay them with the same coin. They will be judged. And after the judgment is over, they will receive their punishment."
"Like the end of the world?" Mina suggested, thinking of apocalyptic texts he'd read.
"No, Mina. There is no actual end of the world," L said, gesturing upward. "Look above you."
Mina tilted his head back, and gasped. What he had taken for sky was not sky at all. Above them stretched an impossible view—other lands floating like islands in a vast, blue void. Rivers flowed between them, not downward as water should, but across the emptiness, connecting the floating realms in a complex network.
"There are other universes," L continued. "The rivers flow to different islands. And the gales—the gales transport those from other islands to our island."
"Anyone can travel between them?" Mina asked, mesmerized by the sight.
"Yes and no. Only a few chosen ones can take the gales to another island. There are few of you who can do this."
"And you? Can you travel between them?"
"Yes," L replied simply. "But I don't need the gales. I am one. I am many. One from each island. One for each island."
Mina shook his head, overwhelmed. "That's marvelous. Another nonsense I have to listen to."
"No, Mina," L insisted, stepping closer. The scent of wild animal and something older, something that had never been alive in the conventional sense, wafted from the fur. "It's about your future. You can choose to stay on your island and face the tragedy of the day. Or you can choose to change your future."
L leaned in, the empty eye sockets of the fox skull somehow conveying intensity. "You know, there are little tricks you did. Those marvelous ways you sealed everybody. You can use that."
"I only know that I want to leave this island," Mina said firmly.
"Are you sure?" L asked, circling again. "Maybe somewhere in the future?"
"Fine, fine. Let it be," Mina conceded, unwilling to argue with this enigmatic being. His attention shifted to the massive tree beside them. "So what's behind the tree?"
"I can't show you," L replied, a new tension in the voice. "There is no chance you can go behind the tree."
"Oh, watch me," Mina challenged, suddenly darting forward. He launched himself toward the trunk, intending to circle around it.
But the moment he moved, the world shifted. He was standing before the tree again, facing L, as if he had never moved at all.
"What the hell is this?" Mina demanded.
"I told you," L said, and Mina could hear the smirk in its voice, "you can't go behind the tree. Nobody can."
"Actually—" L began, then stopped. "Actually what?"
"No, no, nothing important," L said dismissively. "Just... there are two bloodied families who managed to betray me once. And the other two gathered some strength that is beyond my understanding. So if I find them, they can get me to the back of the tree."
"So it is possible?"
"Yes and no. It depends."
Mina stared at the creature, frustration building. "You're clueless, aren't you?"
"Of course, of course I'm clueless," L admitted, pacing in small circles. "I'm sorry, I haven't been discussing things with anyone for millennia. I'm just here, in front and in back of the tree. Knowing many things, but saying little. I have no friend to collect my memories with. Everything I know is written in a book."
"The same book you've read," L added cryptically.
At the mention of a book, Mina suddenly remembered something—or someone. Marvolo Silvertri. The name appeared in his mind fully formed, bringing with it a sense of dread and importance.
"Why are you saying this?" Mina demanded, suddenly suspicious. "What do you want from me?"
"More or less, I want you to live," L replied simply.
"But I don't want to," Mina said, surprising himself with the admission.
"That's not an option, Mina," L said, the voice suddenly harder, commanding. "That's not an option. You have to live because you are the one who will save a part of this human world."
"Nonsense!" Mina spat. "Nonsense! I'm going back!"
"Of course, of course," L agreed, stepping aside with a graceful movement. "Your brother waits for you. Take your time. I'm glad we could discuss these matters."
Mina turned away, muttering profanities under his breath that would have made a sailor blush. He began walking back the way he had come, away from the tree, away from L, back toward the mansion that he somehow knew waited beyond the meadow.
As he walked, the vibrant colors around him began to fade, the landscape gradually returning to the gray desolation he had first encountered. The air grew heavy again, the ash falling more thickly. The silent figures reappeared, vacant-eyed and lost. Mina hurried his pace, not wanting to become like them.