I walk through a hidden garden beneath chill moonlight, the black bulk of the castle looming high above. A narrow window glows faintly with candlelight, a wavering point of hope amidst the bleak oppression of that edifice of uncaring black stone. The towers, cracked and broken through years of neglect, cast askew shadows across the wide lawns. I turn away from where the castle squats atop its crag, a shiver running through me. The gardens, though overgrown and haunted by memories, can only be inviting next to the cold and hollow mass of the castle I leave behind. Hidden shadows flit swifter than thought amidst the sprawl of leaves and stems around me. The moonlight splashes off the tangled leaves overhead and falls in dappled weave around my feet. Dewdrops sparkle, each one a gem, and each vanishing as my fingers brush their flawless surfaces. Mooncast shadows lie like veils across narrow winding paths, turning me away from them and guiding my footsteps onwards through the unending gardens.

The river lies before me, and for what seems like eternity I watch the black waters crawl hungrily beneath, lapping at the edge as if testing their constraints. The moonlight pours between willow-branches and splatters the river's wrinkled skin with molten silver. Transfixed, I watch until red light meets the silver. My eyes are drawn to a flickering fire across the river, a distant point dancing with the darkness all around it. I cross the ancient bridge, fearful that the rotting timbers will betray me and pitch my body deep into the hungry waters beneath. But they hold, and soon my foot rests on the soft grass of the other bank. The firelight seems brighter than before, and I walk closer, anxious to see what other wanderer drifts through this unhallowed place at so strange an hour. The flames rear high in greeting as I approach, but no others stand within its circle of warmth.

I step closer, but no comforting warmth touches my skin. Closer still, my hands almost brushing the searing orange silk of the dancing flames, but still my skin is gripped in ice. The fire is as cold as the distant moon, and even within them I would feel no warmth. But I am so close that as I look into the fire it stands and unfurls its wings, fills my vision, and I stare deeper and deeper still. I see the ghosts of my past dance in the torment of unending fire, and the fears of my uncertain future clustering around. I see hope leap and die like sparks, and I see the ashen ruin that will be all that remains when my life and my petty human dreams are but more ghosts of the past. I see my death, and I surrender myself into the annihilating eternity of the everchanging flames. I hear a voice. Her voice. She calls to me, though she is long dead, and I reach out to her as something beyond the extent of my dreams and nightmares drags me ever downwards. My hand brushes hers as the flames so icy cold curl around my heart…

My eyes snap open, the fire long dead before me, the dawn-light creeping above the horizon. I turn in fear, wanting to flee this place so strange, and see once again the castle waiting like a patient titan in the distance. For a moment I want to run back to that brooding mass of uncaring stone, lock myself inside its coldly comforting shell once more and escape the shadows of the infinitely strange world beyond that cursed river. But then the pale dawn turns the dew on a rose to a thousand tiny rubies, and in the time I stand watching the beauty of a rose, the candle in that narrow window flickers and dies. The castle is hollow and empty once more. The rose will endure no more than the blink of an eye in the castle's patient life, but for me its beauty is remembered. More than just a ghost of the past. I turn once more and walk between the crawling bowers of crimson roses turning to watch me walk away from what was but a shadow of my life.

The distant world may be strange, and the cold flames may wait for me somewhere, but I would rather burn to ash than age to dust.