"This is the end
Hold your breath and count to ten
Feel the earth move and then
Hear my heart burst again

For this is the end
I've drowned and dreamt this moment
So overdue I owe them
Swept away, I'm stolen"    -    Skyfall, Adele

*

                The night air was crisp, cleansing. The moon, not yet full, shone brightly across the wintry landscape. Something was amiss, Wooyoung could feel it. Exhaling deeply, he wished he could see the vapour of his breath. Looking across the vast expanse of snow and trees he couldn’t help but smile. He was finding that more often than not these days, he needed a place like this, one of absolute solace. There were no buildings here, no cars, no machines, no modernity. There were no visions of things changing. Looking down, he flexed his bare toes before burying them in the cold, powdery fluff. Well, it was supposed to be cold. He couldn’t feel anything. He would have preferred to feel the biting chill instead of nothing. A sharp pain burst through his chest and he gripped his shirt. His muscles began to spasm and tense, alternating painfully. Exhaling again, he looked up. The blanket of stars flickered at him in spite, he was sure. Slowly, they seemed to grow smaller and smaller. He realised he had fallen, the pain finally ebbing away. “It’ll pass...” He muttered over and over again. When it finally receded, he closed his eyes. “Why did you curse me like this..?”

                The ground felt different, warm, and smooth. Opening his eyes Wooyoung sighed softly. This wasn’t a dream, but it may as well have been. Wooyoung slowly came to sit up to a roaring fire. Many times he had been back here, seated in exactly the same place. Sometimes they were dancing; sometimes they were lifeless, those people he had once known. He had long forgotten many of their names. But, there were times, like now, where he sat before the flames alone. He was so devastatingly alone, and the sounds of the flames were his only comfort. This was at times his most favourite and most depressing memory. It played in his mind again and again. The flickering of the flames, the desolate landscape – they were the lands of his birth, the world of his creation.

                Tonight was the start of the end of one cycle and the beginning of a new. It happened every four hundred years. However, this time it felt different. This time he had more in his life than before, and he could feel a change coming. And he knew, because the skeletal moon hung above him; blue and glaring. The only protection he had in these vulnerable 'dreams'.

                Hearing a soft flutter of footfalls around him, he opened his eyes. Once again fully conscious, his gaze was met once more with the stars. He was on his back, the chilling snow beneath him. The presence was right beside him. A tail swished back and forth, breath leaving wisps of mist with each and every exhale. Alive. He turned his attention back up. Above them, blaring and not yet fully formed, was the reflection of the moon in red.

                “It’s coming...Wooyoung. Do the visions cause you pain?”

                Jaw clenching, he twisted his body around and cut through the black figure. An illusion. “Get out of my head!” He yelled, crouched low.

                Hollow laughter met his ears. He spotted the figure of the wolf further off. “You’re the one who keeps me here. You seek it but you never indulge in it, and that hurts me...”

                Fangs elongating, pupils contracting, he cursed his very existence. How dare he so distastefully. A sharp, high pitched noise shot through his ears, and the illusion vanished. Something was amiss...

                --Attention all clans, the leaders of the Solar clan are deceased. I repeat, the leaders of the Solar clan are deceased. The culprit has yet to be identified and captured. Leaders Marigold and Wooyoung, and representative Sano are to report to the Council at Nightmare in one hour.--