Chapter 29: Fade Walkers
The air in the castle’s great hall tasted of ozone and dread. The long tables had been shoved against the walls, clearing a wide circle on the stone floor. In the center, Connor lay on a pallet of folded blankets, his small body unnervingly still, his chest barely rising. The boy looked like a wax effigy of himself, pale and hollowed out.
Around him, the four Circle mages—Irving, Wynne, and two senior enchanters Daylen knew only as Karl and Mera—sat at the cardinal points. A complex, interlocking pattern of ground lyrium, powdered silver, and crushed drakestone was etched into the flagstones around the boy, glowing with a soft, persistent blue light. The hum of power was a physical pressure against Daylen’s skin.
Irving looked up, his face drawn. “The anchor is set. The boy’s mind is the door. We will hold it open, but we cannot guide you within. The Fade will shape itself around your perceptions, your fears. You must find the demon’s core.”
“And try not to get lost in your own head,” Alistair added from the sidelines, his attempt at levity falling flat. He stood with the other companions, a tense line of armed readiness. Morrigan’s golden eyes were fixed on Daylen, unreadable. Leliana was whispering a prayer. Sten simply watched, arms crossed.
Wynne caught Daylen’s eye. Her usual warmth was tempered by a deep, professional gravity. “Remember, the Fade is a mirror. It will show you what you expect to see. The demon’s power is illusion. Your will is the only truth.”
Daylen nodded, stripping off his outer layers of armor until he was in just his padded gambeson and breeches. He kept his twin longswords sheathed at his hips. The Staff of the Magister Lords felt like a live nerve in his hand. He stepped into the circle, the lyrium lines flaring brighter at his presence, the energy crackling up his boots.
“Ready,” he said, his voice sounding strange in the thick air.
Irving began the chant, a low, resonant incantation in ancient Tevene. The other mages joined, their voices weaving together. The glow from the circle intensified, rising in a shimmering cylinder of light that enveloped Daylen and the boy. The world outside the light warped, the faces of his friends stretching and blurring. The hum became a roar.
Then, the floor vanished.
It was not falling. It was unraveling.
The solid stone of Redcliffe’s hall dissolved into a vortex of impossible colors and non-sounds. He felt his body disintegrate, not into pain, but into concept, a thousand scattered memories and sensations. For a timeless moment, he was everything and nothing—a child’s laugh in the Tower gardens, the metallic taste of his first successful spell, the smell of Morrigan’s skin, the crushing weight of Joining ale.
It coalesced.
He stood on a surface that was neither stone nor earth, but something that gave like firm moss while reflecting a bruised, twilight sky. The air was thick and scentless, carrying a faint, psychic echo of forgotten dreams. The landscape was a nightmare of architectural nonsense—floating chunks of castle wall drifted past, connected by bridges of solidified shadow. In the distance, a vast, blackened spire that looked suspiciously like the Circle Tower pierced a green, boiling sky.
Connor’s Fade.
A child’s terror, given form.
He started forward, his boots making no sound. The Staff of the Magister Lords pulsed in sync with the alien rhythm of this place. He didn’t get ten paces before the whispers started. They came from the shifting walls, from the ground itself.So proud. The First Enchanter’s pet.
She dreams of you, you know. The old woman. Such delicious, forbidden thoughts.
Jowan trusted you. Look what you did.
Daylen clenched his jaw. “Show yourself,” he growled, his voice swallowed by the dense air.
It obliged.
From a pool of iridescent sludge at the base of a floating staircase, figures pulled themselves free. They wore the tattered robes of apprentices, but their faces were smooth, featureless blanks. Desire demons in the shape of regret. Three of them glided forward, their movements sinuous and wrong.
No time for subtlety.
Daylen didn’t raise his staff. He simply pushed. A wave of pure force, invisible and crushing, erupted from him. It wasn’t a spell he chanted; it was an extension of his will, amplified a hundredfold by the Fade and the staff. The lead two figures exploded into motes of fading light.
The third lunged, a clawed hand extending, elongating like taffy. Daylen dropped into a combat crouch. He didn’t cast. He moved. His right longsword slid from its sheath with a sound like a sigh, the blade sheathed in frost he willed into being the moment it cleared the scabbard. He pivoted, the icy sword severing the demonic limb. It shrieked, a sound of breaking glass, and dissolved.
He straightened, breathing hard. The Fade thrummed around him, responsive, malleable. He could feel it—the barrier between spell and sword, between mind and muscle, was tissue-thin here. He sheathed the frost-coated blade, feeling the magic dissipate as it touched the scabbard, and drew the other. He focused, and this one ignited, flames licking down the steel without burning his hand.
Arcane Warrior. The theory in the Tower’s dusty tomes was one thing. This was another. This was truth.
He pressed deeper into the shifting dreamscape. He passed through a corridor that was a perfect replica of Redcliffe’s great hall, but empty, the chairs and tables looming and oversized like a child’s memory of a frightening place. A giant, distorted version of Arl Eamon, his face kind but eyes weeping black smoke, reached for him. Daylen shattered it with a concentrated blast of telekinetic energy.
The challenges grew more personal. He rounded a corner and found himself in a perfect copy of the Tower’s Harrowing chamber. The form of a Sloth demon, bloated and yawning, sat in the center. “So much effort,” it sighed, its voice like settling dust. “Would it not be easier to rest?To dream? She is waiting in the dream, you know. Wynne.”
The name, here, was a weapon. A sudden, unbidden image flashed in Daylen’s mind—not the composed senior enchanter, but the woman from his own secret thoughts, from the heat of his own private imaginings. It was vivid, warm, a distraction that threatened to unspool his focus.
He gritted his teeth. “I’ve had my Harrowing,” he said, and charged.
This time, he didn’t rely on pure force. He weaved spell into strike. A flash of lightning from his staff blinded the demon as he closed the distance. He brought the flaming sword down in a sweeping arc, following it with a point-blank pulse of raw spirit energy from his free hand. The Sloth demon came apart with a wet, sighing gasp, the illusion of the chamber dissolving into swirling mist.
He was learning. The Fade was a realm of thought. His fighting style became a brutal, beautiful expression of will. He’d parry a tentacle of shadow with a sword wreathed in lightning, the shock traveling back into the creature. He’d plant his staff and use it as a fulcrum to launch himself over a swarm of crawling, fear-shaped things, raining down blades of solidified magic as he fell. It was exhausting, a drain on his mind as much as his body, but the staff fed him energy, converting the ambient power of the Fade into a cold, sustaining current.
Finally, the chaotic landscape funneled him towards a single point of terrible focus. The blackened, twisted spire that mocked the Circle Tower. At its base was a playground. A simple, sad swing set, a rocking horse with peeling paint. And on the swing, moving slowly back and forth, was Connor.
Or a version of him. The boy looked up. His eyes were pools of liquid gold, and his smile was too wide, too knowing.
“You’re not Connor,” Daylen said, stopping twenty feet away. He let his flaming sword extinguish, sheathed it. He kept the staff in his left hand.
“I am what he wanted,” the thing said, its voice a melodic blend of Connor’s youth and something ancient and slick.“A friend. Power to help his father.Safety. I gave him that. And he gave me… a door.” It stood from the swing. The playground around it melted, reforming into a opulent, sensual boudoir of silks and low light. The demon’s form shimmered, resolving into a figure of breathtaking, impossible allure—a perfect fusion of Morrigan’s wild beauty, Wynne’s compassionate curves, and Leliana’s innocent charm. It was everything designed to pull at him.
“And you,” the Desire demon purred, taking a step forward. The air grew warm, heavy with the scent of amber and sweat. “So much want in you. So much… hunger. You wear your discipline like a hair shirt, Daylen. It must chafe.” Its form emphasized Morrigan’s sharp cheekbones, Wynne’s gentle mouth. “You could have this. Always.No more duty. No more fear. Just the pleasure.The release. I have tasted it in the little one’s dreams. I know what you like.”
It was a violation, seeing his private desires sculpted into this false thing. Rage, cold and pure, cut through the psychic seduction. “You’re in a child’s mind,” Daylen snarled. “You don’t get to talk about what I like.”
He raised the Staff of the Magister Lords. The ruby at its head blazed like a captured star. “This is for Connor.”
The demon’s beautiful face contorted into a mask of fury. The boudoir exploded outwards, the illusion shredding to reveal the raw, chaotic stuff of the Fade. The thing swelled, shedding its enticing form for its true one—tall, horned, with skin of polished obsidian and eyes of fire. It shrieked, a sound that tore at the fabric of the realm, and lunged.
The real fight began.
The real fight began.
It was less a duel and more the demolition of a nightmare. Daylen didn't bother with finesse. The demon's obsidian claws shattered against a shimmering barrier he projected from his staff, the impact ringing through the Fade like a cracked bell. He didn't wait for the recoil to fade. He charged through the dissipating shield, leading with a pommel-strike sheathed in kinetic force. The blow landed with a wet crunch of not-bone.
He moved in a blur, years of Tower drills merging with the Fade's liquid rules. A sword materialized in his hand—not steel, but solidified intent, jagged with frost. He drove it into the demon's thigh. It howled, the sound sucking the color from the air around them.
Its retaliation was a whip of raw desire, a psychic image so potent it stole his breath: Wynne, her hands on him, her eyes dark with a hunger he’d only guessed at in his own quiet moments. The heat was instant, disorienting, a poison in his veins. He gritted his teeth until they ached.An illusion. A weapon.
“Pathetic,” he spat, not at the demon, but at his own reacting body. He ripped the sword free and, in the same motion, conjured a second blade of crackling lightning in his other hand. He became a storm of sharp edges and colder fury. He was not fighting a monster. He was pruning a cancer.
He carved pieces from it. Each strike was a surgical removal of its influence. A horn, severed by a sweep of ice. A section of its burning wing, cauterized by a lash of pure fire from his palm. The arena around them—the twisted mockery of the Tower—began to destabilize, chunks of black masonry dissolving into gray mist as its concentration broke.
The demon was shrinking, its form leaking essence like smoke from a doused fire. It stumbled back, its fiery eyes wide with a new, raw understanding. This was not a conflicted mage, burdened by conscience. This was annihilation with a shaved head and cold eyes.
It tried to speak, to offer another bargain, another whisper of promised release.
Daylen didn’t let it. He slammed the Staff of the Magister Lords down. A ring of force erupted, pinning the creature to the disintegrating ground. He placed a boot on its chest, the pressure making its obsidian shell crackle. He leaned down, his face inches from its agony.
He saw the smirk then. A flicker at the edge of its burning maw. A final, desperate gamble. It thought it saw a loophole, a mage’s arrogance. It thought dying here would just scatter its essence back to the chaos, leaving the boy’s mind empty, vulnerable, a door still unlocked.
Daylen went very still.
His killing strike, already in motion, halted. The crackling blade of energy an inch from its throat dissolved into harmless sparks. The cold fury on his face didn’t warm. It deepened, settling into something far more terrifying. The focused anger of the warrior melted away, revealing the something underneath. Something ancient, and patient, and infinitely cruel.
He released the force ring. The demon gasped, a ragged sound of hope.
That’s when Daylen smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes.
“You think death is the worst thing here?” His voice was soft, almost conversational. He knelt beside it, the movement slow, deliberate. “You don’t understand where you are. Time here… it’s a suggestion.” He reached out a hand, not to strike, but to hover over the weeping wound on its leg. His fingers traced the air, and the wound deepened, burning with a slow, blue-tinged fire. The demon jerked, a silent scream contorting its face.
“I can make this last,” Daylen continued, his tone that of a scholar explaining a fascinating theorem. “A decade for every second you’ve tormented that child. I can stitch your essence back together just to take you apart again. I have the will. I have the focus they beat into me in the Tower.” He leaned closer, his breath ghosting over its featureless face. “And I have absolutely nothing better to do.”
He let that hang in the air, let the demon feel the utter sincerity of it. The void behind his words.
“You will leave Connor. You will sever every thread, heal every scar you made. You will make him forget your whispers. And you will tell every horror lurking in this drifting shit-hole that his mind is mine.” His voice dropped to a whisper, cadaverous and final. “If any claw, any shadow, so much as brushes his dreams again, I will find you. I will remember the taste of your fear. And I will spend what feels like an eternity proving to you that this… was me being merciful.”
The demon stared up at him. It saw past the mage, past the Warden. It saw the truth in the flat grey of his eyes, in the absolute conviction of his promise. This was not a bluff from a righteous hero. This was the vow of a monster who had found a purpose, and that purpose was her endless, screaming pain. Its smirk was gone, erased. In its place was a chilling, absolute comprehension.
It tried to form words, to bargain, but only a thin whimper escaped.
It nodded, a sharp, jerking motion of terror.
Daylen didn’t move. He held its gaze, pouring every ounce of his will into that silent transaction, sealing the pact not with magic, but with pure, undiluted dread. He watched the understanding turn to submission in its fiery eyes. Only then did he slowly stand up.
“Good,” he said, the word flat and empty.
He turned his back on it, a gesture of supreme disregard. The false Tower around him was melting away, dissolving into streams of gold and grey light that flowed upward. The connection was severing. As the Fade released him, the last thing he felt was not triumph, but a profound, greasy fatigue. The final thing he heard was not a howl of defeat, but the faint, silent pop of a door in a child’s mind being slammed shut, locked, and the key thrown into an abyss.
The world snapped back with a violence that left no room for grace.
One moment, he was standing in the dissolving nightmare of the Fade, the taste of ozone and dread in his throat. The next, he was crashing to his knees on the hard, cold flagstones of Redcliffe’s great hall. The impact jarred up his spine, real and solid and wonderfully, painfully normal. Sound flooded in—the crackle of the hearth, the startled gasp of a woman, the rustle of heavy robes. The lyrium lines etched around him were dark and inert, just colored powder on stone.
For a second, he just stayed there, head bowed, breathing in the mundane scents of woodsmoke, sweat, and candle wax. They were glorious. He pressed a palm flat against the floor, feeling the gritty, unyielding truth of it.
“Daylen!”
Alistair’s voice. A hand clamped on his shoulder. Daylen looked up, blinking against the steady torchlight. The hall seemed too bright, too loud, after the muted chaos of the dreamscape. His companions were a blurred circle of concerned faces leaning in. Behind them, the Circle mages were slumped in their positions, looking drained. Irving was slowly getting to his feet, using Wynne’s offered arm for support.
And on the pallet, Connor stirred.
A soft, confused cough escaped the boy’s lips. His eyelids fluttered open, revealing clear, sky-blue eyes, no trace of the molten gold. He looked small and lost in the folds of the blanket, but his color was returning, a faint pink washing over his cheeks.
“Connor?” The word was a breath, a prayer. Lady Isolde, who had been held back by Teagan, broke free. She fell to her knees beside her son, her hands fluttering over his face, not touching, as if he were spun glass. “My boy. My sweet boy.”
“Mother?” Connor’s voice was thin, rusty from disuse. “I had… a bad dream.”
A sob tore from Isolde. She gathered him into her arms, her shoulders shaking silently. The raw, unfiltered sound of her relief filled the high ceiling of the hall. Tears tracked clean lines through the dust and worry on her face. She looked over her son’s head at Daylen, her expression one of such profound, wordless gratitude it was almost difficult to hold her gaze. “Thank you,” she whispered, the words thick. “Maker bless you. Thank you.”
Irving approached, his steps slow but his back straight. He stopped before Daylen, who finally found the strength to stand, Alistair’s grip helping him up. The First Enchanter’s eyes, usually twinkling with clever secrets, were wide with something else entirely—awe, and a deep, fierce pride. He didn’t say anything at first. He just placed both hands on Daylen’s shoulders, his grip firm, and gave a single, slow nod. The message was clear: I knew you could. I am glad it was you.
“By the Maker, kid,” Irving finally said, his voice husky. “That was… one for the histories.” He gave a soft chuckle, shaking his head. “To walk the Fade like a common corridor. To confront a desire demon in its own realm and not just survive, but…” He trailed off, his eyes flicking to the now-sleeping, peacefully breathing boy in his mother’s arms. “You healed him. Completely. There’s not a trace. That’s not just power. That’s artistry.”
Daylen opened his mouth to reply, but a familiar dry voice cut through the emotional air.
“Artistry is one word for it.”
Morrigan had hung back, leaning against a stone column with her arms crossed. Her golden eyes were fixed on him, appraising. There was no obvious warmth in her expression, but the usual dismissive curl of her lip was absent. She looked him over—the sheen of sweat on his bald scalp, the slight tremor in his hands from the aftermath of channeling so much power, the way he stood, weary but unbroken.
“I expected a grand battle,” she continued, pushing off the column and walking a slow circle around him. “A clash of titanic wills, blinding flashes of magic. Not… silence.” She stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell the wild herbs and peat smoke that always clung to her. “You stood over it. You spoke. And then it simply… gave up.” A smirk, genuine and intrigued, touched her lips. “What did you say to it, I wonder?”
Her gaze was intense, penetrating. It wasn’t just clinical interest. He saw the calculation in her eyes, the reassessment. He saw the flicker of something hotter, darker—an attraction not just to his power, but to the chilling, efficient finality of how he’d used it. Her pulse was visible at the base of her throat, beating a fraction too fast.
“I just explained the terms of the arrangement,” Daylen said, his voice rough. He met her eyes, holding that charged look. The fatigue was still there, a weight in his bones, but under her stare, it warmed into something else.
“Hmm.” Morrigan’s smirk deepened. “I suspect your negotiation tactics are… uniquely persuasive.”
Alistair clapped a hand on Daylen’s back, breaking the moment. “I’m just glad you’re back in one piece. And that the kid’s okay. Now maybe we can get something to eat that isn’t demon-tainted? My stomach thinks my throat’s been slit.”
Lady Isolde rose, still holding a drowsy Connor. “Anything,” she said, her voice firm now, ringing with the authority of a Arlessa restored. “This castle, its resources, my own sword… they are yours. For as long as you need them. You have given me back my son.”
She nodded to a servant, who scurried off, presumably to the kitchens. The tension in the hall unraveled, replaced by a weary, hopeful buzz of conversation. Wynne came over, her healer’s instincts overriding her own exhaustion.
“Let me see your hands,” she said softly, taking them before he could protest. Her touch was cool and professional, but her eyes, when they glanced up at him, held a depth of concern that made his breath catch. He remembered the demon’s whispered words, the poisoned image it had offered. A faint flush crept up his neck.
“I’m fine, Wynne. Really.”
“You channeled a tremendous amount of spirit energy,” she murmured, turning his palms over. A faint, lattice-like burn marked his skin where the power had seared through him. “It’s clean. No corruption.” She paused, her thumb gently passing over one of the marks. “It was… remarkably done, Daylen.” Her praise was quiet, meant only for him. There was a pride in it, too, but softer than Irving’s, warmer. When she released his hands, her fingers lingered for a half-second longer than necessary.
From across the room, Morrigan watched the exchange, one elegant eyebrow arched in silent, amused observation.