The Dream-Catcher’s Price
The dream shifted like oil on water, colors bleeding into shapes that made no sense. Lian Mei stood in her father’s forge, but the walls were made of ribs, and the fire in the hearth burned with eyes that watched her. She tried to move, but her feet were rooted to the floor, tendrils of smoke curling around her ankles like grasping fingers.
“You carry such pretty memories,” a voice purred from the shadows. It was soft, almost kind, the way a snake’s scales might feel warm before it struck. “Let me taste them.”
The forge melted away. She was seven years old again, sitting at her father’s feet while he explained the properties of Starlight Iron. His hands moved with practiced grace, tracing diagrams in the air with trails of golden qi. She remembered the smell of his robes—cedar and charcoal—and the way he laughed when she asked if metals could dream.
“Metals don’t dream,” he had said, tapping her nose. “But the souls that temper them? They dream forever.”
The memory curdled. Her father’s face twisted, his eyes becoming hollow pits, his mouth stretching into a scream that made no sound. The forge caught fire, and she was running, running through halls that stretched into infinity, each door she passed opening to show her another death.
Her mother, wasting away from a sickness no alchemist could cure. Her master, the old alchemist who had taught her the first principles of forging, his throat cut by celestial soldiers for harboring a heretic’s daughter. The widow from the village, the one whose grief she had stolen to forge the dagger, now standing at the edge of a cliff with her dead husband’s hands reaching up from the abyss.
“Stop,” Lian Mei whispered, but the dream did not stop.
It never stopped.
She woke with a gasp, her hand already reaching for the hammer she kept beneath her pillow. The room was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the Starlight Iron they had recovered from the sorrow-beast’s vault. Kael slept in the corner, his breathing steady, his wounded arm wrapped in bandages that smelled of medicinal herbs.
Chen’s blade lay on the table, its surface dull and unresponsive. He had been silent since the Soul Hunter’s first attack, retreating into the sword’s core to conserve his strength.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice thin and strained. “Good. You were screaming.”
“I don’t scream,” Lian Mei said, though her throat was raw.
“You do now. The Soul Hunter is getting stronger. Every time you sleep, he finds you. Every time he finds you, he takes something.” Chen’s voice wavered. “I can feel it. Your memories are fraying at the edges. You forgot the name of your mother’s favorite flower yesterday.”
Lian Mei’s chest tightened. She had forgotten. She had tried to remember, had spent an hour staring at the ceiling while the word danced just beyond her reach, and then she had given up. The loss had felt like a splinter—small, sharp, and impossible to ignore.
“Peonies,” she said now, the memory returning with a rush of relief. “She loved white peonies. She said they reminded her of clouds.”
“For now,” Chen said. “But the Soul Hunter will take them again. He will take everything. Your father’s face. The sound of Kael’s laugh. The way the forge feels when the fire is just right. And when you are empty, he will take your will, and then he will deliver you to Lord Feng like a gift wrapped in your own skin.”
Lian Mei swung her legs over the edge of the cot. Her body ached, every joint protesting as if she had been running for days. The Art of Sorrow Forging had left its mark on her—her hair was streaked with white now, and there were lines around her eyes that had not been there a month ago. She looked older than her nineteen years.
“Then I won’t sleep,” she said.
“You will. Everyone sleeps. Even the gods sleep, though they pretend otherwise.”
“Then I’ll forge something that keeps him out.”
Chen was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was careful, measured. “You’re thinking of the dream-catcher.”
“Yes.”
“It will cost you.”
“Everything costs me, Chen. That’s the point of the Art.” She stood, her legs steadying beneath her. The Starlight Iron glowed on its pedestal, pulsing with a light that seemed to breathe. She had not yet begun to forge the god-killing weapon, but she had gathered enough material for smaller projects. The dream-catcher would require only a fraction of the iron, but it would require something else as well.
Her nightmares.
The Soul Hunter fed on memories, but he entered through dreams. If she could forge a barrier that trapped him, she could turn his own weapon against him. But the barrier had to be made of something he could not resist—something that would draw him in and hold him fast.
Her own suffering.
“I need you to guide me,” she said, walking to the forge. It was a small thing, portable, designed for travel. Kael had built it for her, welding together scraps of metal and infusing them with a fire-core he had bought from a wandering merchant. It was not the grand forge of the Celestial Jade Sect, but it was hers.
“You’re going to do this now?” Chen asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“The Soul Hunter doesn’t keep office hours. And I need to be awake to forge. If I fall asleep during the process, he’ll have me.”
She lit the forge. The fire-core caught, blazing with a heat that made the air shimmer. She placed a piece of Starlight Iron into the crucible, watching it soften and glow. The metal was beautiful, a deep blue that held the light of a thousand stars, but it was also hungry. It wanted to be shaped, to be given purpose.
Lian Mei picked up her hammer. It was the same one her father had used, the handle worn smooth by decades of use. The head was blackened, scarred, but it sang when it struck metal, a note that resonated in her bones.
“What are you going to use as the binding agent?” Chen asked.
“My nightmares.”
“That’s not a material. That’s an abstraction.”
“The Art of Sorrow Forging doesn’t care about abstractions. It cares about truth. And my nightmares are true.” She closed her eyes, reaching into herself, searching for the thread of fear that had wrapped around her heart since the Soul Hunter’s first attack. It was there, coiled and waiting, a serpent made of memory.
She pulled.
The pain was immediate, a tearing sensation that started in her chest and spread outward. She gasped, her hand tightening on the hammer, but she did not stop. She could feel the nightmares leaving her, pouring down her arm and into the metal. The Starlight Iron hissed, its blue light flickering as it absorbed the raw emotion.
“Lian Mei,” Chen said, his voice sharp with alarm. “You’re bleeding.”
She looked down. Blood was dripping from her nose, staining her robes. Her vision swam, the forge blurring into a haze of orange and gold. But she kept forging, her hammer rising and falling in a rhythm that felt older than language.
The dream-catcher began to take shape. It was a disc, no larger than her palm, its surface etched with patterns that she did not consciously design. They came from her memories, from the nightmares she was sacrificing. The execution courtyard. The widow’s tears. The sorrow-beast’s vault. The Soul Hunter’s voice, soft and cruel.
She poured everything into the metal. Every moment of fear. Every second of grief. Every time she had woken in the dark, gasping, reaching for a comfort that did not exist.
The forge flared, and the dream-catcher was complete.
Lian Mei collapsed, her hammer clattering to the floor. Her hands were shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The dream-catcher lay on the anvil, glowing with a soft, pulsing light. It was beautiful, in the way that a scar could be beautiful—a testament to pain survived.
“It’s done,” she whispered.
“You’re dying,” Chen said, his voice flat.
“Not yet. I still have time.”
“You lost more than nightmares. I can feel it. You lost something else. Something you needed.”
Lian Mei forced herself to stand. She picked up the dream-catcher, turning it over in her hands. It was warm, almost alive, and she could feel the nightmares trapped inside it, waiting.
“I lost the memory of my father’s voice,” she said, and the words came out hollow, without the weight they should have carried. “I can’t remember what he sounded like when he said my name.”
Chen said nothing. There was nothing to say.
She hung the dream-catcher above her cot, its light casting strange shadows on the walls. Then she lay down, her body heavy with exhaustion, and closed her eyes.
The dream came quickly, as if the Soul Hunter had been waiting for her.
She was in the execution courtyard again, but this time, the dream-catcher was there, hanging from the sky like a second moon. Its light was cold, silver, and it pulsed with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat.
The Soul Hunter stepped out of the shadows. He was tall, his face obscured by a hood of woven darkness, his hands long and pale. He reached for her, his fingers brushing her cheek, and she felt the familiar tug as he tried to pull her memories free.
But this time, something pulled back.
The dream-catcher flared, and the Soul Hunter screamed. His hand stuck to her face, the darkness of his form unraveling as the dream-catcher dragged him into itself. He thrashed, fought, but the nightmares she had forged were stronger than he was. They wrapped around him, pulling him down, drowning him in her suffering.
“What have you done?” he howled, his voice breaking.
“I made a cage,” Lian Mei said. “And you walked right into it.”
The Soul Hunter dissolved, his essence sucked into the dream-catcher like water into a drain. The courtyard vanished, replaced by a void of white light, and Lian Mei found herself standing alone in the emptiness.
She was free.
She woke to the sound of Kael shouting.
“Lian Mei! Lian Mei, wake up!”
She opened her eyes. Kael was leaning over her, his face pale, his hands gripping her shoulders. The dream-catcher hung above her, its light now a steady, peaceful blue. The Soul Hunter was trapped inside it, she could feel him, a writhing presence that beat against the metal like a caged bird.
“I’m awake,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’ve been asleep for two days. I thought you were dead.”
Two days. She had lost two days. She sat up, her head spinning, and looked at the dream-catcher. It was beautiful, but it was also a reminder of what she had sacrificed.
“I trapped him,” she said. “He can’t hurt me anymore.”
Kael’s eyes widened. “You forged a cage for a Soul Hunter? With what? We don’t have the materials for that kind of binding.”
“I used my nightmares.”
He stared at her, his expression shifting from confusion to horror. “Your nightmares? Lian Mei, that’s—that’s your soul. You can’t just carve pieces of your soul out and throw them into metal.”
“I can. I did. And it worked.” She swung her legs over the edge of the cot, standing on unsteady feet. The room spun, but she forced herself to stay upright. “The Soul Hunter is gone. Lord Feng doesn’t know where we are. We have time.”
“Time for what?” Kael asked, his voice bitter. “Time for you to kill yourself a little more each day? I see what this Art is doing to you. You’re fading, Lian Mei. You’re becoming a ghost.”
“I’m becoming a weapon,” she corrected. “And weapons don’t get to complain about the cost.”
She walked to the forge, her steps slow but deliberate. The Starlight Iron was still there, waiting. The god-killing weapon was still a dream, a shape she could barely imagine. But she had taken the first step.
She had survived.
And as long as she survived, she could forge.
“You carry such pretty memories,” a voice purred from the shadows. It was soft, almost kind, the way a snake’s scales might feel warm before it struck. “Let me taste them.”
The forge melted away. She was seven years old again, sitting at her father’s feet while he explained the properties of Starlight Iron. His hands moved with practiced grace, tracing diagrams in the air with trails of golden qi. She remembered the smell of his robes—cedar and charcoal—and the way he laughed when she asked if metals could dream.
“Metals don’t dream,” he had said, tapping her nose. “But the souls that temper them? They dream forever.”
The memory curdled. Her father’s face twisted, his eyes becoming hollow pits, his mouth stretching into a scream that made no sound. The forge caught fire, and she was running, running through halls that stretched into infinity, each door she passed opening to show her another death.
Her mother, wasting away from a sickness no alchemist could cure. Her master, the old alchemist who had taught her the first principles of forging, his throat cut by celestial soldiers for harboring a heretic’s daughter. The widow from the village, the one whose grief she had stolen to forge the dagger, now standing at the edge of a cliff with her dead husband’s hands reaching up from the abyss.
“Stop,” Lian Mei whispered, but the dream did not stop.
It never stopped.
She woke with a gasp, her hand already reaching for the hammer she kept beneath her pillow. The room was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the Starlight Iron they had recovered from the sorrow-beast’s vault. Kael slept in the corner, his breathing steady, his wounded arm wrapped in bandages that smelled of medicinal herbs.
Chen’s blade lay on the table, its surface dull and unresponsive. He had been silent since the Soul Hunter’s first attack, retreating into the sword’s core to conserve his strength.
“You’re awake,” he said, his voice thin and strained. “Good. You were screaming.”
“I don’t scream,” Lian Mei said, though her throat was raw.
“You do now. The Soul Hunter is getting stronger. Every time you sleep, he finds you. Every time he finds you, he takes something.” Chen’s voice wavered. “I can feel it. Your memories are fraying at the edges. You forgot the name of your mother’s favorite flower yesterday.”
Lian Mei’s chest tightened. She had forgotten. She had tried to remember, had spent an hour staring at the ceiling while the word danced just beyond her reach, and then she had given up. The loss had felt like a splinter—small, sharp, and impossible to ignore.
“Peonies,” she said now, the memory returning with a rush of relief. “She loved white peonies. She said they reminded her of clouds.”
“For now,” Chen said. “But the Soul Hunter will take them again. He will take everything. Your father’s face. The sound of Kael’s laugh. The way the forge feels when the fire is just right. And when you are empty, he will take your will, and then he will deliver you to Lord Feng like a gift wrapped in your own skin.”
Lian Mei swung her legs over the edge of the cot. Her body ached, every joint protesting as if she had been running for days. The Art of Sorrow Forging had left its mark on her—her hair was streaked with white now, and there were lines around her eyes that had not been there a month ago. She looked older than her nineteen years.
“Then I won’t sleep,” she said.
“You will. Everyone sleeps. Even the gods sleep, though they pretend otherwise.”
“Then I’ll forge something that keeps him out.”
Chen was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was careful, measured. “You’re thinking of the dream-catcher.”
“Yes.”
“It will cost you.”
“Everything costs me, Chen. That’s the point of the Art.” She stood, her legs steadying beneath her. The Starlight Iron glowed on its pedestal, pulsing with a light that seemed to breathe. She had not yet begun to forge the god-killing weapon, but she had gathered enough material for smaller projects. The dream-catcher would require only a fraction of the iron, but it would require something else as well.
Her nightmares.
The Soul Hunter fed on memories, but he entered through dreams. If she could forge a barrier that trapped him, she could turn his own weapon against him. But the barrier had to be made of something he could not resist—something that would draw him in and hold him fast.
Her own suffering.
“I need you to guide me,” she said, walking to the forge. It was a small thing, portable, designed for travel. Kael had built it for her, welding together scraps of metal and infusing them with a fire-core he had bought from a wandering merchant. It was not the grand forge of the Celestial Jade Sect, but it was hers.
“You’re going to do this now?” Chen asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“The Soul Hunter doesn’t keep office hours. And I need to be awake to forge. If I fall asleep during the process, he’ll have me.”
She lit the forge. The fire-core caught, blazing with a heat that made the air shimmer. She placed a piece of Starlight Iron into the crucible, watching it soften and glow. The metal was beautiful, a deep blue that held the light of a thousand stars, but it was also hungry. It wanted to be shaped, to be given purpose.
Lian Mei picked up her hammer. It was the same one her father had used, the handle worn smooth by decades of use. The head was blackened, scarred, but it sang when it struck metal, a note that resonated in her bones.
“What are you going to use as the binding agent?” Chen asked.
“My nightmares.”
“That’s not a material. That’s an abstraction.”
“The Art of Sorrow Forging doesn’t care about abstractions. It cares about truth. And my nightmares are true.” She closed her eyes, reaching into herself, searching for the thread of fear that had wrapped around her heart since the Soul Hunter’s first attack. It was there, coiled and waiting, a serpent made of memory.
She pulled.
The pain was immediate, a tearing sensation that started in her chest and spread outward. She gasped, her hand tightening on the hammer, but she did not stop. She could feel the nightmares leaving her, pouring down her arm and into the metal. The Starlight Iron hissed, its blue light flickering as it absorbed the raw emotion.
“Lian Mei,” Chen said, his voice sharp with alarm. “You’re bleeding.”
She looked down. Blood was dripping from her nose, staining her robes. Her vision swam, the forge blurring into a haze of orange and gold. But she kept forging, her hammer rising and falling in a rhythm that felt older than language.
The dream-catcher began to take shape. It was a disc, no larger than her palm, its surface etched with patterns that she did not consciously design. They came from her memories, from the nightmares she was sacrificing. The execution courtyard. The widow’s tears. The sorrow-beast’s vault. The Soul Hunter’s voice, soft and cruel.
She poured everything into the metal. Every moment of fear. Every second of grief. Every time she had woken in the dark, gasping, reaching for a comfort that did not exist.
The forge flared, and the dream-catcher was complete.
Lian Mei collapsed, her hammer clattering to the floor. Her hands were shaking, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The dream-catcher lay on the anvil, glowing with a soft, pulsing light. It was beautiful, in the way that a scar could be beautiful—a testament to pain survived.
“It’s done,” she whispered.
“You’re dying,” Chen said, his voice flat.
“Not yet. I still have time.”
“You lost more than nightmares. I can feel it. You lost something else. Something you needed.”
Lian Mei forced herself to stand. She picked up the dream-catcher, turning it over in her hands. It was warm, almost alive, and she could feel the nightmares trapped inside it, waiting.
“I lost the memory of my father’s voice,” she said, and the words came out hollow, without the weight they should have carried. “I can’t remember what he sounded like when he said my name.”
Chen said nothing. There was nothing to say.
She hung the dream-catcher above her cot, its light casting strange shadows on the walls. Then she lay down, her body heavy with exhaustion, and closed her eyes.
The dream came quickly, as if the Soul Hunter had been waiting for her.
She was in the execution courtyard again, but this time, the dream-catcher was there, hanging from the sky like a second moon. Its light was cold, silver, and it pulsed with a rhythm that matched her heartbeat.
The Soul Hunter stepped out of the shadows. He was tall, his face obscured by a hood of woven darkness, his hands long and pale. He reached for her, his fingers brushing her cheek, and she felt the familiar tug as he tried to pull her memories free.
But this time, something pulled back.
The dream-catcher flared, and the Soul Hunter screamed. His hand stuck to her face, the darkness of his form unraveling as the dream-catcher dragged him into itself. He thrashed, fought, but the nightmares she had forged were stronger than he was. They wrapped around him, pulling him down, drowning him in her suffering.
“What have you done?” he howled, his voice breaking.
“I made a cage,” Lian Mei said. “And you walked right into it.”
The Soul Hunter dissolved, his essence sucked into the dream-catcher like water into a drain. The courtyard vanished, replaced by a void of white light, and Lian Mei found herself standing alone in the emptiness.
She was free.
She woke to the sound of Kael shouting.
“Lian Mei! Lian Mei, wake up!”
She opened her eyes. Kael was leaning over her, his face pale, his hands gripping her shoulders. The dream-catcher hung above her, its light now a steady, peaceful blue. The Soul Hunter was trapped inside it, she could feel him, a writhing presence that beat against the metal like a caged bird.
“I’m awake,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’ve been asleep for two days. I thought you were dead.”
Two days. She had lost two days. She sat up, her head spinning, and looked at the dream-catcher. It was beautiful, but it was also a reminder of what she had sacrificed.
“I trapped him,” she said. “He can’t hurt me anymore.”
Kael’s eyes widened. “You forged a cage for a Soul Hunter? With what? We don’t have the materials for that kind of binding.”
“I used my nightmares.”
He stared at her, his expression shifting from confusion to horror. “Your nightmares? Lian Mei, that’s—that’s your soul. You can’t just carve pieces of your soul out and throw them into metal.”
“I can. I did. And it worked.” She swung her legs over the edge of the cot, standing on unsteady feet. The room spun, but she forced herself to stay upright. “The Soul Hunter is gone. Lord Feng doesn’t know where we are. We have time.”
“Time for what?” Kael asked, his voice bitter. “Time for you to kill yourself a little more each day? I see what this Art is doing to you. You’re fading, Lian Mei. You’re becoming a ghost.”
“I’m becoming a weapon,” she corrected. “And weapons don’t get to complain about the cost.”
She walked to the forge, her steps slow but deliberate. The Starlight Iron was still there, waiting. The god-killing weapon was still a dream, a shape she could barely imagine. But she had taken the first step.
She had survived.
And as long as she survived, she could forge.