Dead and Dusted by Lily Webb (most recommended books .TXT) 📗

That reminder gave me the courage and strength to take another step, and another, and another, and so many more that I lost count, until I found myself at the end of the ravine and on the edge of a very high cliff. A blast of wind belched up from below, sending me stumbling backward and making my heart race. If I’d been walking any faster, I might’ve stepped right off the edge. But would it have mattered? Or would it just have woken me up?

With another surge of confidence, I approached the lip of the cliff again, and gasped at what I saw. After the wind died down, taking the sheet of snow floating in the air with it, I clearly saw the twisted, gothic peaks of Kindred Spirits hundreds of feet below, which meant I had to be somewhere on Mount Starcrest again — a realization that made my heart race.

Though my dreams terrified me too much to notice before, as I stood staring down at Kindred Spirits and all of Starfall Valley sprawled out below, I realized these visions weren’t just a subconscious manifestation of my stress — they had been trying to tell me something all along. But what? Why would they keep showing me an avalanche?

“Invader,” a haunting voice whispered, giving my entire body goosebumps, and I whirled, but nothing was there.

“Who’s there?” I asked, panic rising in my throat and cutting off my voice.

“Invader!” the voice repeated, bouncing off the mountainous walls and making it sound like it’d come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. My eyes shot upward, and I caught a flash of a dark figure at the top of the left wall as it zipped away from the edge.

“Who are you?!” I shouted, tearing back down the ravine toward the shortest stretch of the wall, hoping I might climb it to chase after the source of the voice. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“Soon,” the voice answered before devolving into eerie giggles. “Soon nature will cleanse itself of those who don’t belong.”

My mind flashed to a wall of snow tearing down the mountainside, barreling straight toward Kindred Spirits — and I knew instantly what the voice meant. An avalanche would soon bury Starfall Valley and everyone living there. But why? I didn’t understand.

“You don’t have to do this!” I shouted as I reached for an outcropping of rock and, despite the pain throbbing in my head, used it to pull myself up. “Whatever it is you want, tell me! People don’t have to suffer.”

“Suffer,” the voice hissed, sending a fresh wave of goosebumps raging across me. “Suffer like me. Like us.”

I kicked my boot into the densely packed snow at the base of the wall and pushed myself upward, using my hand to pull. “Like whom? Who are you?!”

“Nature incarnate,” the voice answered. “Now leave before you trigger nature’s wrath.”

Frustrated and slipping, I kicked my other foot into the snow and reached for the next jut of rock that might support my weight. As if the source of the voice were waiting for me, it stopped talking, leaving me alone with the sound of the howling wind and my racing heart in my ears.

I cautiously climbed for what felt like hours, pushing back against my burning, screaming muscles, until finally, when again I reached for a handful of rock, instead my fingers found someone else’s. Horrified, my eyes shot upward, and I screamed when I found myself face-to-face with a stony-faced creature with glowing, ice-blue eyes.

“Invader!” the voice shouted, revealing rows of stalactite-like teeth. “INVADER!” it shouted, louder this time, and I jerked my hand away, sending myself sprawling backward. The wind roared in my ears as I fell through the air, mixing with my screams and those of the horrific creature.

“Selena! Selena, wake up, please! Wake up!” a familiar voice pleaded as its owner rocked me by the shoulders.

Gasping, I shot upward and almost started crying when I saw Jadis’ face. Without warning, I threw myself at her and buried my face in the crook of her neck. “Oh, Jadis, thank Lilith it’s you! This was the worst nightmare yet,” I sobbed, beyond grateful that she’d woken me up when she had.

“It’s okay! It’s over now, I’m here with you,” Jadis said while she rubbed my back.

“I saw this thing, with these terrible sharp teeth and a face that looked like someone had carved it right out of the mountain and—”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Jadis said, pushing me away from her to look me in the eye. “Take me back to the beginning.”

I shuddered as I tried to remember everything — when I would’ve much rather forget. “Okay. I woke up, in the dream I mean, and I was lying down staring at the stars. They were so beautiful, and so close, as close as I’ve ever seen them, but then I realized something wasn’t right, so I sat up and my head hurt so—” I stopped as my hand shot to the back of my head. Thankfully, it didn’t come back with any blood, so I breathed a rattling sigh of relief. “I checked it, like just now, and it was bleeding, like I’d fallen down into this ravine or something.”

“This sounds terrible already,” Jadis said with a grimace.

“It gets worse. So much worse,” I said, suppressing another shudder. “So, I was in this narrow area between two outcroppings of the mountain, and I walked to the end. I saw Kindred Spirits and Starfall Valley way, way further down, so I must’ve been on Mount Starcrest again. But then I heard a voice. It called my name.”

Jadis’ eyes widened. “That’s never a good sign in dreams,” she said, and I couldn’t help laughing because she was right. As cliché as it was, it was still terrifying.

“It kept saying weird things to me and—”

“Wait, what kind of weird things?” she interrupted.

“That it wanted to cleanse Starfall Valley, and that it was nature incarnate and everyone needed