Chapter 7: The Nightmare
Emris Malachai stood on the edge of a battlefield, the world around him suffused with the acrid scent of blood and death. His heart thundered in his chest, a beat too fast, too alive for the dead landscape surrounding him. The air was thick, heavy, charged with an energy that clung to his skin. His eyes, those sharp whiskey-blue eyes, scanned the battlefield, recognizing faces among the dead—faces of comrades, friends, and enemies alike.
He'd been here before. He could feel it, deep in his bones. The weight of dread settled on him like a suffocating fog.
This was the place where he died.
The same scene that haunted his every waking thought, his every breath, now played out again, more vividly than ever before. His silver hair, usually flowing with grace, stuck to his skin, matted with blood. His breath came in ragged gasps as his eyes locked onto the dark figure in the distance.
Roya.
She stood at the edge of the battlefield, her silhouette hazy and insubstantial, watching, detached, as though this were just another day in her twisted world of fiction. Her expression was blank, devoid of emotion, yet there was something in the coldness of her eyes that twisted a knot of fear deep in his gut.
In her hand was a sword—his sword—the very weapon she had used to kill him in her story. It gleamed under the blood-red sky, an instrument of fate, waiting to be thrust into his chest once more.
He tried to move, but his legs were leaden, stuck to the ground as if the earth itself had risen to hold him down. His comrades, the ones who had fought alongside him, their bodies strewn across the field, began to twitch, their lifeless eyes opening, accusing him. Their mouths, once closed in death, now twisted into grotesque smiles as they whispered his greatest fear.
"You failed us."
The words were soft at first, barely audible, but they grew louder, a cacophony of voices building into a roar. "You failed us, Emris. You failed."
He felt the ground crack beneath him, the earth splitting open, and from it surged a blackness that devoured everything in its path. The darkness reached up, its tendrils wrapping around his legs, pulling him down. He fought against it, but his body refused to move.
Then came the pain. The familiar, burning pain in his chest.
He gasped as his eyes fell to the sword embedded in him. The blade glistened with his blood, the same sword that had killed him in Roya's story. He tried to pull it out, his hands trembling as they gripped the hilt, but it was useless. The blade was as much a part of him now as his own skin.
The voices around him rose, blending into a single, deafening scream.
"You are not the hero!"
With one final, agonizing breath, Emris collapsed onto the ground, the weight of his failure crashing down on him. His vision dimmed, and the world around him blurred, the edges of reality melting away into the void.
And then it began again.
The same battlefield. The same bodies. The same death.
His own death, played out in an endless loop, a nightmare that refused to end.
***
Emris awoke with a start, his chest heaving, his breath ragged and shallow. He sat up, his body drenched in cold sweat, his hands instinctively reaching for his chest. No blood. No sword. Just the dull ache of a memory that shouldn't have existed. He ran a trembling hand through his silver hair, trying to steady his breath as his eyes darted around the unfamiliar room.
Roya's mansion.
His heart pounded in his chest, and the nightmare still clung to him, its cold fingers wrapped around his mind. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, his bare feet hitting the cold floor with a soft thud. He was alive. Alive.
He'd escaped her world, but the dream—the vivid, tormenting dream—reminded him of the fate he couldn't avoid. She had killed him. She had written him out of existence. He had been nothing but a character in her story, brought into life by her pen and snuffed out just as easily.
But why?
With a growl, he rose to his feet and stalked toward the desk across the room. His eyes landed on the stack of manuscripts, the very pages that held his life—his story. He flipped through the pages with furious determination, the words blurring in front of his eyes as he searched for answers.
And then he found it. The scene of his death.
His breath hitched as he read through the lines—Roya's cold, detached description of his demise. There it was in black and white. The moment she decided to kill him off. The moment she, in her cruel omnipotence, had taken everything from him.
His fists clenched the pages so tightly they crinkled under his grip. The scene was written with clinical precision, not a hint of emotion behind it. The great Emris Malachai, the invincible warrior, had been reduced to nothing more than a casualty of the plot.
He continued to read, his eyes narrowing as he found the answer he hadn't been expecting. It wasn't because he was the villain. It wasn't because he had failed.
It was because he wasn't supposed to be the hero.
He wasn't the main character in her story. He was never meant to be. He was too powerful, too captivating, too… everything. He had stolen the spotlight from the actual protagonist, his presence overshadowing the very plot Roya had crafted. The other characters, the so-called "heroes," paled in comparison to him.
That's why she killed me, he realized. Because I was too much.
He let out a sharp, bitter laugh, the sound echoing through the quiet room. Of course. Of course, it had to be this. He wasn't the villain of the story, but he was too strong, too magnetic, too important for Roya's carefully constructed narrative. She couldn't control him, so she had written him out.
His eyes scanned the next few lines, reading the final words she had given him:
"He was a force of nature, too powerful for this world. His light burned too bright, and in the end, it consumed him."
She had tried to justify his death as poetic, as though it were some grand, tragic end. But to him, it was nothing more than betrayal.
"Poetic," he muttered, his voice dripping with venom. "Is that what you think this is, Roya?"
He tossed the manuscript onto the desk, the pages fluttering as they settled. His fists clenched at his sides, his jaw tightening as anger surged through him. He wasn't a pawn in her game anymore. She had killed him off because he had outshone her precious protagonist, but now he was here, alive, real, and he would never let her control his fate again.
"Roya Amani," he growled, his voice low and dangerous. "You may have written my death, but I write my own story now."
As he stood there, breathing heavily, the weight of his newfound freedom crashed over him. He wasn't bound by her words anymore. He had escaped the confines of the story, and now, in her world, he would show her just how powerful he truly was.
And this time, there would be no rewriting his fate.