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Dreams...
Cold.
The dead of winter had robbed the sky of nearly all its color. Overhead stretched an unbroken ceiling of iron-gray cloud, low and heavy enough to seem as though it were slowly descending upon the earth. The distant horizon had already disappeared beneath darker bands of slate, where the coming blizzard gathered like a wall. Even daylight seemed sickly and thin, the sun nothing more than a pale glow buried somewhere beyond the clouds. The winds had not yet begun to howl, but the cold carried that peculiar stillness that came before a great storm. No birds crossed the tranquil sky. No distant animal disturbed the endless white. No trees creaked beneath the burden of ice. The entire frozen world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for some unseen command to finally break the heavens open.
Vulcan Zambrano stood alone.
He had been here before. Night after night, the same frozen landscape waited for him whenever sleep finally claimed him. At first, he had treated the dream as he treated everything else that dared place itself beyond his understanding: as a problem to be conquered. The Son of the Reaper had searched the horizon, walked until his footprints stretched behind him in an endless procession across the snow, climbed frozen ridges, crossed dead forests whose trees rose from the earth like blackened skeletal fingers, and followed valleys where ice had swallowed ancient rivers whole. Every direction ended the same. Turn east and black clouds gathered. West, and snow already fell. North offered lightning crawling through the belly of the heavens, while south brought winds so violent that the horizon itself vanished. Every choice became the same choice. Every path curved inexplicably back toward the place where he had begun.
It irritated him at first. Then it angered him. Eventually, it fascinated him.
Vulcan had been raised beneath the shadow of beings who bent reality around themselves through will alone. Darth Prazutis had not raised his son to recoil from mysteries, and Braith Achlys had not given him blood meant to fear what lurked beyond mortal understanding. The essence of Vesta Zambrano had not been consumed into his being merely for him to become some trembling acolyte begging the Force to explain itself. So he pushed harder. He meditated upon the visions, tore apart their symbolism, searched archives, and traced old Sith philosophies concerning dreams, winter, storms, death, rebirth, stagnation, and transformation. He considered enemies. He considered that the landscape represented himself, that the storm represented his father, his mother, Vesta, his inheritance, or some future yet waiting to be claimed.
Every conclusion eventually collapsed beneath the weight of another possibility, and every night he came back here.
Cold. Alone. Waiting for the storm.
Until tonight.
Tonight, Vulcan did something contrary to almost every instinct carved into him since awakening. He did nothing. No searching. No demands. No attempt to tear revelation from the Force through sheer determination. The Prince simply closed his eyes and waited. For several long moments, nothing happened. Then the wind began. It moved first as a whisper across the frozen plain, teasing loose crystals of snow into serpentine trails around his boots. Another gust followed, then another, until the temperature suddenly plummeted. Vulcan felt it, truly felt it, and that alone caused his eyes to open. Dreams had sensation, certainly. Pain could seem real. Heat could burn. Fear could race through the mind with enough intensity to bring a sleeping body upright in terror. But this was different. The cold sank through his clothing, moved past flesh and muscle, and found the marrow of his bones.
The wind screamed across the barren landscape as the blizzard descended upon him. Snow struck sideways. Ice tore across exposed skin like tiny shards of glass. Within seconds the world disappeared behind a roaring curtain of white, and yet Vulcan remained still. His black hair whipped, robes snapping beneath the punishment of the gale, amber eyes narrowing against the storm. There was nowhere to go. There never had been. That was what he had failed to understand.
The storm wasn't blocking his path.
The storm was the path. So the Son of the Reaper stepped forward.
The wind struck harder. Snow climbed around his boots. Another step brought an answering shriek from the gale, as though the storm itself had taken offense at his defiance. Vulcan continued regardless, pushing through the white until distance ceased to have meaning. There was only cold, only the violence of the storm, and the strange certainty that something waited beyond it. Then, without warning, everything became silent. One moment the storm threatened to strip flesh from bone. The next there was nothing. Snow remained suspended through the air around him, falling in slow, graceful spirals rather than driving sheets. Vulcan stopped, feeling pressure settle against his shoulders.
Hands.
Small. Delicate. Almost impossibly light against a body that towered over ordinary men. Yet the instant they touched him, the cold changed. It did not disappear. It obeyed. The howling gale bent away from him as though an invisible boundary had been drawn through creation itself, and the terrible pressure that had spent countless nights pursuing him across this frozen wasteland simply ceased. For the first time since the dreams began, Vulcan knew peace within the storm. His eyes lifted. Someone stood before him. A woman. She was incredibly slight, almost fragile in comparison to the mountainous shape of the Zambrano heir. A flowing dress as white as freshly fallen snow moved around her legs despite the sudden absence of wind. Her skin was pale, unnaturally so, while her features remained hidden beneath curling tendrils of frost and mist. Vulcan tried to see through them.
The Force resisted.
His eyes narrowed. "Who are you?"
No answer came.
The woman remained motionless, and when Vulcan reached for her through the Force, he found something he had not expected. Nothing. That should have been impossible. Everything left an impression. Every living being carried some resonance through the current that bound existence together. Even those capable of concealing themselves left distortions, absences, displaced currents. Yet reaching toward her felt like stretching his hand into the eye of a cyclone: stillness surrounded by unimaginable movement. Something vast existed beneath that silence. Something controlled. The sort of presence that did not need to announce itself because lesser things instinctively made room for it. Vulcan's expression changed. Not fear. Never that. Recognition of power. The pale figure tilted her head before one hand moved from his shoulder. Two slender fingers touched the center of his chest.
The storm exploded.
Vulcan woke.
His eyes snapped open to darkness and the familiar architecture of Malsheem surrounding him. For several seconds the Prince did not move. His breathing remained slow and controlled, but each exhalation emerged visibly into the air. Frost covered the walls, not merely along their edges but across every surface. Ice crystals crawled over black stone and metal in elaborate branching patterns, catching the faint crimson illumination of his chambers. Even the transparisteel overlooking the distant structures of the worldcraft had completely frozen over. His sheets crackled when he moved. Vulcan sat upright as cold vapor rolled from his skin. His gaze drifted downward, fixing upon two patches of frost marked against his chest exactly where her fingers had touched him.
Silence filled the room.
"Enough."
