The moment the five of them stepped through the door at the end of the alley, the din of Karatash—minecarts clanking, hawkers calling, festival ribbons snapping in the wind—all dropped away like a curtain had been pulled.

  Dain’s first instinct was to glance back and make sure the door was still there. It was. Of course it was. It just felt like it shouldn’t be for how quiet the outside world suddenly got.

  Inside, the magic materials shop was a dim little stomach of smoke and clutter. Incense burned in shallow brass bowls, sweet and sharp. Strings of trinkets hung from the ceiling: tiny bone charms, glass rosary beads, knotted cords with dried petals, and copper bells that swayed on their own, ringing faintly. Dusty jars crowded the shelves in stacks that had no business standing, and they were filled with all sorts of pressed mosses, powdered stones, and slivers of little things that didn’t look particularly ‘powerful’, but rather… peculiar.

  And the walls…

  His gaze lingered on the framed paintings on the wooden walls. They were abstract oil swirls, thick and wet-looking even in the dim orange light. They were shapes that resembled faces but failed. They were colors that tried to become roads only to fold back into incomprehensible knots. The longer he stared, the more his brain suggested he stop.

  So he did.

  Behind the counter at the end of the shop, a small old lady sat slumped in a chair, head dipped. A wide-brimmed hat with rosary cords draped from the brim like a curtain of beads hid most of her face, and the cords clinked faintly when she breathed. She was asleep. Her snoring was soft—almost playful, like she was doing it on purpose.

  Dain narrowed his eyes.

  That’s… a familiar looking hat.

  Where have I—

  Sahlir tapped a jar of crystalline pickles a little too hard, and the old lady jolted upright. The rosary cords swayed. It took her a second to realize she had customers, but when she finally did, she leaned forward into the dim and grinned.

  Dain caught the flash of her impossibly pale teeth.

  “... Welcome, welcome,” she said, warmly. “Oh, my. I’m surprised someone actually found my little store.” Then she tilted her head, brim lowering. “Which one of you saw my door?”

  Rena immediately pointed at Sahlir, Ilvaren, and Kargun. The hawkkin straightened like he’d been praised by a chieftain. The elf lifted her chin, already smug, while Kargun grunted, unimpressed by being perceived.

  The old lady’s grin widened as she looked them up and down through her bead-curtain.

  “Of course,” she murmured. “A dwarf, an elf, and a hawkkin. All of you are naturally resistant to mental manipulation effects from Cognitum-Class relics, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at all that you managed to spot my door.”

  Dain blinked once.

  The name hit his tongue before his brain caught up.

  “You’re one of them,” he blurted. “A Sweet Dreamer.”

  The failure four all turned towards him at once.

  “A what?” Rena asked.

  He exhaled through his nose and glanced back at the door they’d come through, then at the old woman behind the counter.

  “The Sweet Dreamers are a wandering faction of Cognitum-Class relic holders,” he said. “Vagrants, technically. They drift from country to country, continent to continent, and they set up shops in weird places so they can offer one service above all others: dreaming. Deep sleep, memory-walking, that sort of thing.” He glanced behind him again, at the little triangular mirror nailed to the top of the door. “And that door behind us isn’t just a normal door.”

  ***

  Name: Obfuscation Mirror

  Type: Active Cognitum-Class Relic, Common-9

  Attribute Addition: None

  Ability Description: When mana is channeled into the mirror, any minor object it is attached to will make others dull in perception when it is stared at. The activation cost is 20 mana, and each activation lasts for one hour.

  ***

  “The mirror makes it so people can look straight at the door and forget it was ever there,” he said, glossing over its Tag. “They won’t ever register that they passed by.”

  Rena’s brows lifted. “Then, how did we—”

  “Because these three aren’t most people,” he said, looking back at Ilvaren, Kargun, and Sahlir. “Dwarves, elves, hawkkin all have naturally high resistance to mental manipulation. You don’t just shrug off all mental manipulation effects, but… you feel them. Like an itch you can’t ignore. Humans, on the other hand, are usually terrible at that sort of thing, which means the three of you were probably drawn to the door without realizing why.”

  Ilvaren crossed her arms, chest puffing slightly. “So you’re saying we found this place because we’re built different.”

  “Aye,” Kargun said, nodding heavily. “But I spotted the blasted door first, mind ye. Felt wrong in the skull like a bad note in a forge-song.”

  “No,” Sahlir said flatly, jabbing a thumb at himself. “I saw first. Door looked like nothing. That mean important.”

  They started bickering immediately, voices overlapping as each tried to claim credit, while Dain stepped aside and let it happen. The old Dreamer watched them with open amusement, her grin widening until the pale tint of her teeth showed again.

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  “You’re quite knowledgeable, mister,” she said at last, turning her attention back to Dain. “Most people who stumble in here don’t even know what to call us. Just where might you have heard of us Sweet Dreamers, hm?”

  He didn’t quite want to say he’d read about them in The Tales of Seeker Orland—they showed up a fair amount in the later books—so he gave a normal answer instead.

  “I was a relic merchant,” he said plainly. “I hear things sometimes.”

  “Hm. A fair answer.” The Dreamer chuckled softly. “It’s rare to see a party of so many non-humans in Obric. It's predominantly a human country, after all, so it’s been a long while since I’ve had any proper customers. Welcome, welcome. You’re free to browse my wares, of course. I’ve been told I sell rather strange materials.”

  Dain’s gaze immediately drifted to the shelves, cataloguing jars, vials, and wrapped bundles by memory alone. There were at least three things he recognized on sight and two more he strongly suspected were illegal in Obric.

  Tempting. Very tempting. But he forced his eyes back to her first.

  “Oh, I’d love to browse,” he said honestly, “and I might later, but that’s not why we came in. We saw your sign outside. You can use your Cognitum-Class relics to help people dream?”

  “Of course,” the Dreamer said, spreading her hands. “That is our true work, after all. Those who manage to find their way to our shops are always troubled, minds knotted with grief, guilt, or memories that won’t lie still. If we can give them even one night of deep sleep, one stretch of honest dreaming… then that’s something we ought to do, isn’t it?”

  Dain smiled at that. “I’d like that service then.”

  “Perfect!” She clapped her hands together and grinned. “That’ll be ten thousand curons for one person, then.”

  Sahlir’s eyes went so wide Dain thought the hawkkin might actually tip forward and headbutt his pickle jar out of shock.

  “Ten thousand?” Sahlir blurted “That… big coin. Big, big.”

  Kargun leaned forward with a hard glare. “Helpin’ folk sleep by skinnin’ ‘em alive, are ye?” he growled. “Ten thousand curons to close yer eyes? I could get a whole keg-row of ale for that. I could get a—”

  But Rena tapped his shoulder to silence him, stepped forward, and slipped one of her many satchels off her shoulder. Nobody spoke as Rena loosened the drawstring and began drawing out coin pouches, but the Dreamer’s pale teeth showed again when she finally placed the last pouch down on the counter.

  “Ten thousand curons,” Rena said, patting the pouch pile lightly. “Can you make him dream?”

  The Dreamer’s grin sharpened. It was like she knew Rena wasn’t lying about the amount, because she didn’t even check the amount before sweeping the pouches towards herself, pushing them off the counter.

  “Mm,” she hummed. “A mountain of small suns, stacked neatly. Very well, very well. Follow me.”

  With that, the Dreamer turned and began climbing the narrow staircase behind the counter, each step answered by a soft creak. As the five of them followed, Rena glanced back at the rest of them, her smile just a little bit unapologetic.

  “Well, that leaves us with a thousand curons for rent tonight,” she said cheerfully. “But we’ll survive, I’m sure.”

  Sahlir made a wounded noise. “That buy closet. No window.”

  Ilvaren scoffed. “The human’s sleeping on the floor if he gets no answers.”

  Kargun grunted, shaking his head. “Ten thousand curons for a bit of sleep. World’s gone mad.”

  “You’re all partly to blame for not having any curons yourselves,” Dain muttered back, then gave Rena a thankful nod. “I owe you one. This’ll be worth it.”

  “It better be,” she said.

  Upstairs, the room they entered was somehow even thicker with sweet and resinous incense in the air. Unlike the shop downstairs, the room was mostly bare and round except for faint chalk sigils half-smudged by age on the wooden walls. At its center sat a thin cushion—fit for kneeling—and a wide glass bowl set into the floor like a basin. The Dreamer was already kneeling on the cushion, tilting a squat kettle that poured a translucent, glowing silver liquid into the bowl.

  “Climb in,” she said, waving Dain over. “As you would a bath. No need to undress. You won’t be wet.”

  Dain hesitated. Of course he did. A relic merchant who didn’t hesitate around unfamiliar Cognitum-Class relics didn’t live very long. Still, he exhaled, rolled his shoulders once, and stepped into the bowl.

  The liquid parted for him like mist given weight, curling around his boots and calves as he lowered himself down. As the Dreamer said, it didn’t soak into his cloaks. It didn’t really cling to him the way water should, either. Instead, it simply pressed against him with that cool, glassy presence, making him shiver a little.

  “This will make the mind more willing to open,” the Dreamer murmured as she lifted more kettles from the corners of the room, continuing to fill up the bowl. “More open to the touch of thought. You need not worry its effects will linger after you leave this room.”

  Dain swallowed as the cold liquid climbed to his shoulders and stayed there, perfectly level.

  “Now lean back,” the Dreamer said gently. “Look up, and let the ceiling hold your gaze.”

  He obeyed, easing his spine against the curve of the bowl and tilting his head until the dim ceiling lamp blurred into a soft halo. His silverplume owl immediately fluttered off his shoulder and onto Sahlir’s head, while his wingcloak wriggled once in discomfort. It’s just gonna be a little while, he thought at it. Stay still and don’t panic. It’s not like you have to breathe anyways.

  “From our eyes, it will appear as though you will sleep for only ten minutes, but from yours…” The Dreamer’s grin widened beneath the veil of rosary cords. “It will be as though a full night has passed. Eight hours of rest with a dream worth remembering.”

  Dain glanced back at her—more specifically, at her gloves. They were oversized and stitched with unfamiliar sigils, but the leather was obvious: deadlull deer hide. They were deer that could lull their predators to sleep with their mana-emitting antlers, so their parts were typically used to obtain Cognitum-Class relics with similar effects.

  ***

  Name: Dreamlull Gloves

  Type: Active Cognitum-Class Relic, Uncommon-0

  Attribute Addition: None

  Ability Description: When mana is channeled into the gloves, the holder can lull living beings lower than or within five grades of this relic to sleep for ten minutes. The gloves must be hovered close to the target, and the activation time is one minute of continuous channeling. The activation cost is 100 mana.

  ***

  “Are the dreams always good?” he asked, a little nervous upon seeing the gloves’ Tag.

  The Dreamer chuckled. “A sweet dream isn’t always a gentle one. It is simply the dream you most wish to see.” She tilted her head. “Do you know what you want to see?”

  “... I do.”

  “Then close your eyes.”

  He leaned back fully, letting his head tip until he was staring straight up, and closed his eyes.

  The silver liquid lapped softly against his shoulders, unmoving but present. With Common Hollowbreath sharpening his awareness, he felt the Dreamer move behind him without seeing her. He felt the faint displacement of air as both her gloved hands hovered near his temples, and then her muttering began—a prayer or a chant in a tongue he didn’t recognize.

  Mana stirred in the room, thickening the air until it hummed against his senses. His world immediately tipped.

  His thoughts loosened, edges smearing together as dizziness washed through him in a slow, spiraling wave. Up became sideways. Sideways became nowhere at all. He felt like he was drifting, surfacing, sinking, nausea blooming briefly before dissolving into warmth once again.

  This is… kinda bad.

  I wonder if we can get a refund if—

  Then he went under, and it was like he was pulled into the silver liquid by four pale hands on his wrists.