For a moment, after he had spoken of his bitter outlook on his own "life", he closed his eyes. Blanketed in the darkness of his vivid dream, in the thick, compact silence of the limitless cavern, he felt - safe? Alone? In the space before Ophelia replied to him she was silent, too silent for him to hear even the ticking of her heart: she had no smell, no warmth, no signs of life. This, this was what death should be like - complete, and dark. Not a mocking masquerade, where all the people you had known were paraded in front of you like twisted, altered beings, wholly unknown. Death should not be an endless torment of forced remembrance. No matter where he ran in this Helovia of death did they leave him alone. Someone always found him. Someone always reminded him of life, of the sweet spring air and the scent of your friends. Everything here was marred by that notion that it wasn't real, coloring even the most vibrant of sunsets different shades of gray.

"You are not alone. I do not know what is real, but I know that I am speaking with you now. We are not alone." A bitter laugh escaped his dark muzzle as his winter-sky eyes opened again, pupils dilating to drink in the sparse light. Black, crimson and gold made up their world. How I want to believe you, Ophelia, his heart murmured, but his voice said: "Ah, Ophelia, Ophelia... If that was so, you're only talking to the dead." And you're nothing but a dream, but to tell her that would be rude, and so counter-productive to trying to fall back into the lack of knowledge of his own dreaming. I want to believe, that you are here, that you are real. That you are talking to me. But more and more I'm coming to realize, that I have died, and spend my days walking among the dead aspects of others - the personalities that could never be, because their histories shaped them different. I am dead, and they are dead, beyond reach. His gaze slid into the darkness, his mind trying to forget the taste of her name upon his tongue.

From the corner of his guarded, sad eye, he saw her head tilt up, looking at him; the scarlet light danced along the refined edges of his face, creating a surreal, otherworldly ghost of red sitting just outside his own skin, the shadows even darker. Lead on? He let his gaze sweep across the canvas of his dream, trailing the three paths, staring at the point where the darkness swallowed them. And the gold, the gold swam out in the blackness, untouched by any of the red. For a moment he looked down at the roses pooling beneath their hooves, and the faint shimmer of gold dust where he had struck the earth.

"I hope you're not afraid of the dark," he told her quietly, and stepped out into the sea of shadows.

Mauja had never been one to abide to the rules of a box, of a cage: he went where he pleased and took what he wanted, breaking boundaries and laws at his whim. If none of the paths led to where he wanted to go - why should he follow them? And so, he breached the darkness, carefully feeling that the earth bore his weight before committing to each step. Walking lightly, with his neck arched, he stared at the world beyond them, as if he could penetrate the darkness with his eyes. The crimson paths seemed to fade, dull, and the further he walked, the more gold the world seemed. It shimmered in the air around him, gradually solidifying into a sphere, an aura of it, and beyond it, shadow entities threw themselves at it, howling and raging, like fanged, clawed beings from his nightmares. He merely watched them warily, stepping closer and closer to the beacon of gold he had somehow revealed, until they were there - and at their hooves, lay a pool of liquid gold, shimmering and shining but offering no reflection.