Chapter 3: A Dream of Power

Chapter 3: A Dream of Power

Sleep offered no escape.

Kael lay on his back in the spartan darkness of his apprentice quarters. The room was a cell compared to the rest of Elara's sprawling, magical home. A narrow cot with a thin, rough-spun blanket, a small wooden stand holding a ceramic pitcher of water and a cup, and a single, unadorned window looking out into the star-dusted night. It was the kind of room he was used to, a room designed for piety and the suppression of earthly comforts.

But comfort—or the memory of it—was all he could think about.

His skin still burned where she had touched him. He could trace the phantom paths her fingers had blazed across his back, his ribs, his chest. The "Somatic Attunement" had not been a lesson; it had been an awakening. For the first time, the constant, anxious hum of energy beneath his skin had resolved into a clear, resonant song. A song of power she had conducted with her very skin.

And when she had stopped, the beautiful music had been replaced by a deafening, aching silence. He had returned to his room feeling hollowed out, a vessel that had been filled with sunlight and then abruptly emptied. He craved the feeling again with a desperation that terrified him. It was a thirst deeper than any he had ever known, a hunger for the connection between her touch and his own awakened power.

Tossing onto his side, he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to banish her image. The cool silver of her hair, the unsettling wisdom in her amethyst eyes, the curve of her lips as she had watched the golden light bloom in his chest. But fighting the thoughts was like trying to command the tide. The more he struggled, the more powerfully they washed over him. He was drowning in sensation, in the war between a lifetime of shame and a single afternoon of ecstasy. Exhaustion finally dragged him under, not into peaceful oblivion, but into a far more dangerous realm.

He was dreaming.

He was back in the obsidian training room, but the candlelight was softer, warmer. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine and sandalwood, a perfume of power and pleasure. And Elara was there.

She stood before him, not as a master, but as something else. Something timeless and intimate. In the dream, his tunic was already gone, his skin bare and humming in anticipation.

“You feel the ache,” dream-Elara whispered, her voice not just heard but felt, a vibration deep in his bones. “It is the echo of power. It wants to be used. It wants to be connected.”

She glided towards him, her violet gown seeming to flow like liquid night. She did not stop at a clinical distance. She moved closer, until the heat of her body was a breath away from his own. “The shame is a lie, Kael. A cage built by fearful men. Your desire is not your weakness. It is your focus. It is the lens that gathers the light of your soul into a burning point.”

Her words were a seditious balm on his tormented spirit. In the waking world, he fought this truth. In the dream, he surrendered to it.

She raised her hand, and he did not flinch. He leaned into her touch as she pressed her palm flat against his heart. But this time, the sensation was a thousand times more intense. It was not just a current of aether; it was a deluge. A torrent of golden, liquid warmth flooded him, rushing through every channel she had mapped on his body. It was a pleasure so profound, so overwhelming, it bordered on pain. A groan escaped his lips.

“Don't hold back,” she murmured, her amethyst eyes glowing in the gloom. “Show me.”

In the dream, he had no fear. He had no shame. He had only a consuming, worshipful desire for the woman who was unlocking the universe inside him. He channeled it all into the connection—every suppressed longing, every forbidden thought, every ounce of the passion he had been taught was a sin. The power surged from him, a brilliant, unrestrained offering. It met her touch not as a stream, but as a sun going nova, a pure, ecstatic release that made the obsidian floor tremble and the candlelight flare into blinding white.

A hissing sound tore Kael from the dream.

He gasped, bolting upright in his cot. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic, wild drumbeat. The rough blanket was twisted around his legs, his body slick with sweat. The dream clung to him like a fever, the ghost of its impossible pleasure leaving him breathless and flushed with a profound, debilitating shame.

Hssssssssssssssss.

The sound was real. It wasn't in his head.

His eyes darted around the dark room, finally landing on the wooden stand by his bed. And his blood ran cold.

The ceramic pitcher was rattling against the stand. But it was the water that made his breath catch in his throat. It was no longer in the pitcher.

The entire volume of water had risen into the air. It hung suspended a foot above the pitcher, a wobbling, shimmering sphere in the moonlight filtering through the window. It was a perfect, impossible orb of levitating liquid. And as he watched, frozen in horror, tiny bubbles began to race through it. The hissing grew louder, more insistent, and plumes of steam began to rise from the sphere’s surface, fogging the cool night air of his room.

It was boiling. In mid-air.

The climax of his dream, the unrestrained, erotic surge of his power, had not been contained within his sleeping mind. It had leaked out. It had found the nearest, most malleable object and imposed its will upon it.

Panic, cold and absolute, seized him. This was infinitely worse than the atrium. The crystal had shattered under his conscious, albeit failed, command. This… this was the work of his subconscious. Of his most private, undisciplined desires. He had no control over his dreams. What if he dreamt of fire? What if he had an angry dream? Would the room incinerate around him while he slept? He could kill himself. He could burn down the entire sanctuary.

He scrambled out of the cot, his bare feet hitting the cold stone floor. He stared at the boiling orb of water, a tangible manifestation of his own secret sin. The pleasure of the dream curdled into pure terror. He was a weapon without a safety. A walking catastrophe.

With a strangled cry, he flung his will at the water, a desperate, chaotic command to stop. The sphere wavered, then collapsed. The now-scalding water splashed down onto the wooden stand and the floor, steaming and sizzling on the cold stone.

He stood there, trembling in the dark, water pooling around his feet. The evidence was undeniable. The danger was real.

He couldn't hide this. To try would be to endanger not just himself, but Elara. He had to tell her. He had to stand before her and confess that his very dreams, his most intimate and lustful thoughts of her, were now a tangible, potentially lethal force.

He remembered her calm in the ruined atrium, her assertion that his desire was his power. But would that calm extend to this? To an invasion of her own person within the privacy of his mind, with such volatile real-world consequences? The thought of her reaction—disgust, anger, or worse, cold disappointment—was a new and sharper agony. But the fear of what he might do if he stayed silent was even greater.

Taking a shuddering breath, Kael pulled on his discarded tunic from the day before, the rough fabric a poor shield for his utter vulnerability. He had to face her. He had to confess. And he had to pray that the woman from his dream—the one who saw his power, not his sin—was the one he would find when he knocked on her door.