Across an ancient, reddened galaxy called Thuliv, a nightmare chases a man.

In it, a child screams. A shadowed figure tugs her away, the wails of her parents joining hers in anguished harmony.

The child has many faces. Sometimes she is an elf. Sometimes a faun, or a naga. Sometimes she is the child of a species the man doesn’t recognise, with silver fur and tall ears. And sometimes, on the worst nights, she is human, with a spray of freckles and candle-flame hair, and he wakes to the sound of his own screams.

He doesn’t go back to sleep, those nights.

The man is no stranger to restless sleep and fitful dreams, but this nightmare is new, unique to the galaxy he’s drifting through. It haunts the space between the old, cold stars and ruined planets.

It’s fitting, he supposes, that nightmares would hunt men in so bleak a place as Thuliv.