The pale light pitched shadows into the boy’s eye sockets. “Just because something is imagined doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. Sometimes the things we believe in are the most dangerous things about us. That’s why people build entire worlds in their minds. Because they think they’re safe, but they’re wrong. Dreams are like parasites. They grow up in the dark within us, and they grow deadly. Trust me when I tell you these reveries can kill you.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“You don’t have to believe it. You just have to survive it.”

“How?”

The boy pulled them into a cavern with a vaulted ceiling and irregularly spaced columns.

“Reveries don’t last forever. As they reach their ending, they become unstable and start to collapse. If you can last until then, you can unravel it.”

Unravel, like the Others had said.

“Unravel it how?”

“I guess we’ll see.”

The boy enforced silence after that. The roaring crowd Kane had heard earlier was much louder now. The sounds vibrated right from the stones. When they walked out onto the remains of an ancient, truncated bridge, the roaring resolved into chanting.

No, cheering.

He stepped to the edge and then wheeled back, dizzy from the height. This cavern was a vast bowl; thousands of people swarmed the shallow slope. They chanted and stomped, giving the whole view the reeling, spacious chaos of a stadium. And as inconceivable and chaotic as the space was, it was all drawn like a gasped breath toward one single feature: a monstrous shrine at the far wall, carved to look like a face contorted with rage. The mouth, full of a golden inferno, was so big a house could sit on the tongue. The plucked-out eyes poured forth streaming white waterfalls that sizzled against the cracked lips. Steam swept into the crowd, which writhed and cried out for more.

“What on earth is this? Where did all these people come from?” Kane gasped.

“Most aren’t real,” said the boy. “You can tell by the eyes. The people created by the reverie have white irises.”

Kane remembered the icy stare of the barbarian leading the caravan. Everyone else had been from the football team, but he had been a creation of this world.

“What are they doing?” Kane asked.

“Look closer, at the court.”

The court was a platform of obsidian wreathed in magma, giving it a malevolent under-glow. In the center whirled a man in filthy robes, shouting as he wielded a gnarled staff topped with a rattle of tiny skulls.

“The High Sorcerer,” said the boy.

“What is he doing?”

“Look closer.”

Stabbing up through the black tile of the court was an altar of pale marble, carved in the shape of a gigantic hand and draped in chains. Things were bound to it.

Not things. People.