Forty-Five: Darkness and the Pitch-Black Nightmare

“Nidhogg?” The Little White Dragon spun in alarm, searching for the Black Dragon’s silhouette, but only snow drifted down from the sky and settled by Lilith’s hand.

“What’s going on?” Frustration thumped behind her eyes; she tapped her forehead, forcing her breath to steady, like frost smoothing a pane.

No doubt she’d been hit. Nidhogg’s protection had quietly helped her block a strike, or some wider influence, a thin ward like a veil over winter glass.

But Lilith still didn’t know what had its claws in her. The thought scraped cold; her heart tightened first, then her lungs pulled a shaky breath.

When did the Undead get to her? The question hissed like wind under a door.

After reaching this floor? Unlikely. She’d stayed with Nidhogg the whole time, a shadow-to-shadow closeness, snow to boot—unless this Nidhogg was fake from the start.

On the way down, then? She pictured the descent, bodies pressed tight like icicles fused together. No gaps. No time for a Wraith to whisper a hook into her mind.

So it must’ve been at the very beginning—when Lilith touched that door. The Nidhogg that came down afterward had been a painted mask on black scales.

“Damn it.” Her teeth bit the word; heat flared in her cheeks at the memory of sweet lines that had bloomed like plum blossoms in snow—lines spun by Undead tricksters.

“I hate anyone who messes with people’s minds.” The complaint puffed out like fog. Lilith skimmed her surroundings; she needed to anchor herself, to know which layer she stood on.

“Hmm… snow doesn’t lie, right?” She crouched, cupping a palmful of flakes. This time she didn’t shove them into her mouth; she pinched a bit, brought it to her nose.

“Smells wrong. Not like snow.” Her brows knit. The moment she’d realized she was under suggestion, the world’s filter had cracked like thin ice. Even the snow she’d tasted looked different now.

The scent wasn’t pure winter energy. Threads of other smell ran through it, the iron-cold tang of death, a grave chill like ash under ice.

“So annoying.” She let the flakes sift back to the ground. She could confirm it—third layer. She had walked the snowfield for a while, steps quiet as falling petals.

She just didn’t know whether the Nidhogg in her head had been her own conjured shadow, or a mask worn by the Undead under the Moonswallow Mist.

She hoped it was the former. Better a lonely clown dreaming of Nidhogg’s embrace, holding herself with ice and snow like a frost-born cradle, than the arms of a nameless Undead.

Lilith sighed; the sound was a small plume of white. “One step at a time.” She turned along her old trail; her sled left two slim ruts, clean lines in the drift.

Beside them, no footprints of Nidhogg. That quiet absence pressed like silence. Her guess held: that tender, impossibly gentle Nidhogg had been born in her mind’s snow.

Sadness landed heavy, like a crow on a branch. She breathed, shook her head, then faced forward, letting resolve settle like packed powder.

She’d retrace her way back. If she was right, Nidhogg hadn’t descended yet. If she had, Lilith could hunt the Black Dragon’s prints like a wolf reading tracks.

She knew herself. Her mind wasn’t built for this kind of maze; panic fluttered, then dulled like a muted bell. She needed her external brain—Nidhogg—as soon as possible.

For now, her small share of wit was a toy for some hidden Undead Wraith, a cat playing with a moth under moon-pale fog.

Lilith kicked into motion. It irked her that she hadn’t thought to ride the ice from the start; annoyance sparked like static against wool.

It must’ve been the Wraith’s suggestion slowing her down. Definitely that—absolutely not her own brain stacked like wet kindling. Absolutely not.

She called up the knee-deep snow, the white mass rising in rippling waves, a winter sea under command. She stood atop the crest and sped toward the way she came.

And then, something felt off. When she’d arrived, she’d moved slow, sled humming like a low drum on ice, imagined Nidhogg tugging her forward with a gentle pull.

They hadn’t gone far from the drop shaft. She should’ve reached it easily, like following lanterns back to a gate.

Yet after skimming low over the snow for a while, she realized she’d barely moved. Her path had twisted like a snake swallowing its tail.

She followed the track, and it bent her in a clean circle, chalk drawn on white, bringing her right back to where she’d started.

She knew this trick. In her homeland, they had a name for it—ghost wall—roads folded by spirits, loops woven into the world like a spider’s web.

“Why do I keep running into this?” She sighed again; memory flickered like a paper charm. The first time she met Sakunae Mashiro, she’d stumbled into the same loop.

Back then, she’d thought it was Mashiro’s power. Now? Most likely the work of an Undead Wraith. Or Eternal Life pulling the strings through the Moonswallow Mist.

With the shape of her trouble clear, she started thinking through fixes. A Wraith, somewhere, was warping her map of the world, turning straight lines into circles.

While she weighed her next move, the little path she’d been tracking jerked like a compass needle. She lifted her gaze along it and saw a white cottage sitting on the snow.

Lilith knew exactly where she had to go next. The sight felt like a lantern lit in a winter storm, a quiet door in a sea of dark.