Wilhelm wasn't sure what was going on. One second, he remembered seeing Mirrah's face, concerned and frightened and among a number of other expressions that he was sure he'd never see on her face. He was laying in a cot in a study room that looked familiar. The thing he remembered before that was that he was angry and sitting by a stream behind Phsara's cottage. Wilhelm probably would have been able to connect the dots, that he had blacked out and was carried into Phsara's cottage, but the first thing that he registered upon waking was this intensely growing light that swamped his entire vision and this noise that filled his ears that seemed to trigger some sort of migraine or something. And then, the next thing he knew, he was dreaming.

At least, that was as much as he had decided upon. He couldn't feel his body, couldn't really feel anything or smell anything, or taste, but there really isn't much a person would dream that would stimulate the taste sensation. It was kind of like suddenly finding oneself standing in a completely different place that had no relation to one's most recent memory, like walking somewhere and suddenly forgetting where one was going and where one has gone. Except, in this dream, there was no floor to stand on. He was bodiless and weightless and yet conscious at the same time, aware that something was strange and something was amiss. A waking dream.

He wasn't floating in nothingness. He was floating in a beautiful river that flowed around him in little globules of glowing green stuff that made him think of fireflies. It wasn't unlike what he had dreamt earlier, another fact supporting his theory that he was dreaming. Here, though he couldn't feel anything, what with not having a body and all, he felt a great warmth surging through his entire being. It was a warmth that he had unconditionally attributed to the river he was submerged in, and it was a blissful, sweet feeling, like being coddled by his mother as she whispered stories into his ear.

The stories he heard were uttered in a deep-throated, sorrowful voice though. It was all encompassing, echoing into the space around him, into his thoughts, from his very soul it seemed. It was not a voice that was heard, but a voice that was known, a voice that was spoken without words but with meanings, completely free from the trappings of understanding. It was like he was listening to a god speak to him, mournful and apologetic.

And then, he felt the river all around him begin to churn, as if rushing towards a waterfall. The warmth completely receded from him, filling his insides with an emptiness and with fear. The river he was floating in began to rage like some powerful, omnipotent beast, and he was tossed amongst it, completely helpless. The voices in his head were silenced, replaced by screams, by shouts and cries, like he was caught in some torture chamber. He felt his bodiless form whipped around before slamming directly into a solid wall. The sensation of being swept into a river had vanished completely, but there was still the rush of sound, the churn of the waters around him.

It took him a full second to realize that the wall he had slammed into wasn't a wall, but the ground itself, and the pressure that held him against it was just the force of gravity. For a second, Wilhelm thought he had woken up again, having fallen out of his cot or something, and that Mirrah and the pirate Dusk were arguing viciously beside him. He pushed himself up, unable to sense the ground underneath his fingertips or the strain of his muscles as he moved, and heard the clang of weapons.

All around him there were people. Hundreds, thousands, all clad in armor, yet all featureless. They had no faces, the front of their heads ending in a flat plane of skin covered partly with a helmet. There was blood and screams flying in the air, figures rushing to him and rushing past him, and bodies everywhere. A soldier rushed towards him, a lion's crest gleaming on its chest as it raised his sword, the featureless flaps of skin stretching in a battlecry and Wilhelm let out a scream, his body shrinking in defense.

There was the clash of swords, another faceless figure intercepting the soldier with a bloodthirsty scream. A sword found itself into one of the soldier's bodies, blood raining down upon Wilhelm in disgustingly warm, thick blobs. He scrambled forward as the bodies collapsed on each other, desperate to get away.

Mirrah! Wilhelm was screaming, but no sound came from his mouth. Terror had seized his entire form and his body no longer felt weightless, pulled by gravity and yet unable to feel the solid ground underneath him. There was a terrible ache within him, a pain that he couldn't feel but sensed deep inside of his very being.

This is a dream! This has to be a dream!

The darkness linger at the ends of the plane seemed to fester and surge forward. The earth began to tremble, as if shaking underneath the weight of the darkness beyond. Wilhelm was knocked to his knees, the pain inside of him shifting into nausea. The earth all around him began to split, pieces floating upward and devoured by the dark shadows.

Wake up! Wake up!

The soldiers had all stopped fighting, attempting to hold their ground while their heads turned upward to the sky. Wilhelm had no choice but to look upward. He caught a glimpse of something high above him before it was masked by the shadows, a massive piece of land with its mountainous underside glowing with an eerie green light. The light gathered at the peak and shined, illuminating the darkness and yet revealing nothing beyond it. It shot forward toward Wilhelm, thundering and powerful with the promise of sheer destruction. The darkness seemed to swallow up the light from the mountain tip, even as the light raced forward to claim Wilhelm's life. He felt the earth underneath him crumbling, felt his body falling as the beam filled his entire vision. Wilhelm squeezed his eyes shut, afraid to look, afraid of death.

But nothing happened. He wasn't sure if he would have felt anything, given that he couldn't feel anything to begin with. He didn't have anything that still confirmed his existence except for his thoughts. There was nothing that was saying he was awake, and he still felt a deep-seated nausea in the pit of his stomach. And it was then that he realized the feel of a rough, unrefined cotton underneath his hands and a sharp, unpleasant smell in his nose. And a strange taste on his tongue and throat, thick and gritty, like curdled blood. He heard an ambient sound, like a gentle breeze in the distance, the creak of floorboards, a person's breath.

Wilhelm opened his eyes, almost afraid of what he would see. Mirrah's face, turned away in weariness, watching her hands that were resting at the edge of the cot. A worn wooden roof, an outdated and ancient oil lamp hanging from the rafters. Somewhere to his right, he heard the quiet scribbling of a pen on parchment.

"H-Hey!" The voice that echoed in the room seemed louder than anything Wilhelm had heard before. His eyes flicked over to his left where the figure of the pirate leapt out of a chair. The man's face looked like it was tinged with boredom, just cracking under the look of surprise.

Mirrah's bowed head looked up at Dusk, then over to Wilhelm almost in one fell swoop. Wilhelm looked toward her, frozen in the bed, almost afraid that moving would have triggered some sort of bizzare event to unfold and dispell the aura of normalcy. But Mirrah merely leapt up, her voice as loud as the pirate's.

"Oh my god!"

In a flurry of motion, both Mirrah and Dusk were crowding around him, looking over him with concerned looks on their faces. Their voices were booming in his ears but not unpleasant at all. It was like hearing the chatter of voices after trapped alone in silence.

"He's awake!"

"Wilhelm! Are you okay?"

Wilhelm didn't say anything, though his lips began to part. The feeling of the dream still lingered in his chest, the memory of the darkness and the looming piece of land and the thundering beam fresh in his mind's eye. He watched their faces carefully, attempting to erase the disturbing images of faceless soldiers rushing at him from his thoughts.

Dusk returned his stare, quiet for a full second. "Is he okay? Why ain't he sayin' anythin'?"

Another presence, one that Wilhelm somehow just knew was Phsara, appeared just out of his field of vision. "Let me see."

Mirrah reached over, touching Wilhelm's shoulder. "Hey, Wilhelm! Can you hear me?" The movement was enough for Wilhelm to feel uneasy. Her words of concern were almost to much for him to stomach.

Wilhelm took in a breath, as if he hadn't been breathing for a long time and spoke. Even his voice sounded loud in his ears. "I'm not... dreaming.... am I?"

There was a noise of relief that came from Mirrah, then a faint laugh from the hermit. Phsara moved to sit beside him, a trace of a smile on her face, an expression that Wilhelm had never seen before. "No, you seem to be fully awake."

Phsara's face appeared, her cold hands wrapping around his wrist as her fingers felt his pulse. It felt like his muscles creaked with the movement of his arm, a sensation that seemed to jumpstart his entire system with a feeling of restlessness. He lifted his hand to his face, remembering the sharp light and noise that overcame him just before he fell into a dream. "What happened?"

"You fell into a trance. A severe one at that. You were out for an hour since we gave you the potion."

Mirrah cut in, the concern on her face completely wiped out. She would have sounded angry if her voice wasn't shaking with relief. "It's because you tried putting on those stupid horns! And now you've gone and made me do something like this!"

"Keep your voice down. Though he has regained consciousness, he is still unwell." Phsara released his wrist, reaching past Dusk to the bedstand beside him. "Listen to me Haleth. The circumstances regarding your recovery are uncertain at best, so I need to evaluate your health before you do anything, understand? How are you feeling right now?"

Wilhelm hadn't heard a single word that anyone had said. He had turned his head to look at Phsara, and in doing so, felt something stop him against the pillow. His fingers had moved from his face and to the side of his head, at first with simple curiosity driven by a mind that wasn't completely all there. The second he felt a hard, bony texture underneath his fingers, however, a tinge of surprise surged through his entire system. "What the..."

"Haleth?"

Wilhelm sat straight up, his hand wrapped around the object protruding from the side of his head. His other hand shot up, fingers brushing against the other side of his head with shock. "What the hell is this?!"

Mirrah's response seemed neither surprised nor amused. "They're the horns you got from Lorena."

"What?! The Watcher Horns?"

Dusk was leaning over Phsara's shoulder, scrutinizing Wilhelm with a frown. "They really stuck on there, ain't they?"

Wilhelm felt the edges of the horn against his head, feeling nothing but skin underneath his strands of dark hair. His eyes were wide with what he thought was fear. After all, any regular person would have immediately started freaking out, screaming to have it removed. It was a foreign object that seemed to have attached to his head, as if it were growing there all his life, like he hadn't realized until now. It felt wholly natural and yet he knew it didn't belong there. The fear quickly began to morph inside of him into something else. His heart was racing, his eyes wide as his hands inspected the horns.

It was true. They were the horns that he had received from Lorena, he had only spent the entire night before studying them. And they were on him! Those dreams! They weren't natural after all! They must have been coming from the horns! In which case, the possibility that they were visions was entirely available. No, it was likely! So, he could read the future like a Watcher? He was like that horned boy in his dream before! It was like he was a Watcher himself! He was even more legendary than the horns he bore on his head!

"Oh my god!" Wilhelm hadn't even realized that Phsara was speaking to him. At the moment, he was completely swept up in excitement, the overwhelming triumph of a scientist at the point of a ground-breaking discovery. "Oh my god."

"Wilhelm, will you listen to what Phsara's saying?!"

Wilhelm turned to Mirrah, his hands still wrapped around his horns. His eyes were wide. "Mirrah! Mirrah. I am... unique!"