The gates of the Dreaming stood open, untended. Overgrown with ivy and curling mist, the realm had not welcomed its master in far too long. Simon Riley stepped through them, feeling the weight of absence pressing against him like an old wound.

His kingdom was in ruin.

The sky hung heavy with fractured constellations, stars flickering where they should have burned steady. The great halls lay in shadow, and the pathways twisted in ways even he did not recognize. Dreams had lost their way. Nightmares had slipped free.

And yet, despite it all, something had kept the Dreaming from crumbling entirely.

“You’re home,” came a voice, steady and familiar.

Lucienne stood before him, ever-loyal, though her sharp eyes searched him as if confirming he was real. She had held this place together as best she could, but there were things even she could not mend.

“You’ve been gone a long time, my lord,” she said, “and much has changed.”

He knew it. He felt it in the very bones of his realm. But what she said next was what truly unsettled him.

“There is another now,” Lucienne continued. “An Endless who did not exist before. Dusk.”

A name that did not belong to the order of things. The eldest and the youngest. Mortal and immortal. Both and neither.

While Simon had been bound, trapped by a mortal’s greed, you had stepped forward. Not to take his place—but to fill the spaces he left behind. Where dreams faltered, you held them steady. Where nightmares spread too far, you let them. You dictated the turn of a day, yet belonged to neither dawn nor night. Always in between.

Simon had returned to reclaim his throne. His kingdom. His purpose. But he was not the only one shaping dreams anymore. That, he knew, would change everything.