He had fallen into a fitful sleep, plagued by strange distorted dreams of living shadows bent on the ruination of "the one". He could feel their frosty breath on the outskirts of his mind, could hear their raspy snickering. He tried to fight them, but how did one go about fighting darkness? Turning his efforts from the struggle against phantoms of the night, he instead grappled to wake up. Or was he already awake?

He was losing the battle when he felt an intense pressure at the base of his skull. It was fleeting- gone the instant it came. The shadows merged and fell away, harmless figments of the mind.

A light touch caressed his cheek as his breathing evened out and settled into a steady rhythm.