Chapter 29 The Masked Conjurer

The mist thickened like curdled milk, turning the world around Kai into a dull smear of gray and silence. His bare feet pressed into the dew-damp grass, each step slow, steady. The shield behind him pulsed with soft light, keeping the girls safe. For now. But something had come for them—something hiding in the fog. And Kai needed to know what.

He moved deeper, the hush broken only by scattered whispers. At first, they sounded like wind. Then, they became voices. Familiar ones.

“Daddy, come back…”

“You left us…”

“You were supposed to fix me.”

Kai’s jaw clenched. His eyes locked forward. He didn’t stop.

The fog parted—briefly.

There they were.

His boys.

All four of them. Standing together in the gray, hand in hand. The oldest with his toy sword. The littlest sucking on two fingers. Pajamas wrinkled. Feet bare. Still and small.

“Boys?” he whispered. “Hey… boys.”

They turned.

Their faces were blank. Hollow. As if no light had ever touched them.

“You abandoned us,” they said together, in perfect unison.

His chest tightened, sharp and cruel. But still—he didn’t stop.

“I didn’t,” he said softly, stepping forward. “I never would.”

The vision melted, slipping back into fog.

Then came her.

His wife. Beautiful as the day they first fell in love. Barefoot in a white dress. Her hair perfect. Her smile gentle. Her eyes the same.

“You weren’t enough,” she said. “You’re still not.”

He stopped. Just for a breath. Just long enough for it to sting.

Then he turned away.

“You weren’t honest,” he muttered. “And I paid for both of us.”

She faded without a sound.

More mist. More silence.

Then he saw it—himself.

Laid out in a bed. Pale. Still. Dead. The same bed he used to sleep in back in the world he left behind. His chest unmoving. Hands folded.

“This is the truth,” said a voice—his own, but warped and distant. “You died in your sleep. Everything else is noise.”

He stared at the body. His body.

“If I’m dead,” he said, voice calm and low, “then I’ll make heaven out of this noise.”

The corpse crumbled to ash.

And the mist thickened again.

From it, something began to take shape. Not a ghost. Not a memory. Something real.

A figure emerged—tall, draped in layers of embroidered robes. Red and gold thread shimmered like embers in the low light. Each movement precise. Intentional.

The figure stopped a few steps ahead. Still. Watching.

A demon conjurer.

Their face was hidden behind a white porcelain mask, marked with a black, upside-down crescent smile. The mouth curled up like it was laughing. But it never moved. The eye sockets glowed faint red. The whole thing was carved to mock.

Kai stopped.

“You’re not part of the dream,” he said.

The conjurer tilted their head. The grin didn’t change. Couldn’t.

“I am the keeper of the in-between,” the figure said. The voice was strange—neither deep nor high. Not male or female. Like it echoed across water. “And you, dream-walker, do not belong.”

Kai narrowed his eyes. “You’re behind this.”

“I am within this,” it replied. “You are something… outside. Something the dream does not understand.”

It lifted a hand. The fingers were black, curved like talons, tipped in obsidian.

“This world bends for you,” it said. “Shifts around you. You think it’s a dream, so it obeys. You are not immune to the mist. You are rejecting it.”

Kai stepped forward. “Then why show yourself?”

The conjurer turned slowly in place, mist rising around it like spun silk.

“To study you,” it said. “To see what a man does with self-made power. To watch you choose—to wake or to remain.”

Kai’s fists curled.

“What do you want with my family?”

The conjurer laughed softly, the sound wrapped in smoke.

“Your little fox. Your clever blade. Your wild demon sprite. They’re each dreaming… what they fear, or what they desire. I do not give them the dreams. I only open the door.”

Kai’s voice dropped to a growl. “Then shut it.”

The conjurer’s grin seemed to widen—impossibly.

“Why would I?” it whispered. “Aren’t you curious what they see when they look at you?”

Kai didn’t speak.

He stepped forward.

The mist tensed. The conjurer raised its clawed hand, fog coiling around its arms like armor.

But Kai didn’t reach for his batons. He didn’t need to.

He focused.

“This is my dream,” he said, each word low and solid. “You’re just fog. And I don’t fear fog.”

The air trembled.

The mist recoiled from him, pushed back by sheer will.

The conjurer hissed.

“You’ll regret this,” it warned. “Even dreams have consequences.”

Kai stepped closer.

And the conjurer vanished.

Gone. Like it had never been.

The mist split clean down the middle.

Ahead lay the edge of the dream.

Behind him, the shield still shimmered—wrapped around the girls, holding the line.

He took one last breath and turned back.

The night wasn’t over.

But this dream no longer belonged to them.

He would shape it himself.