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CHAPTER FOUR

The Deadworld is a prison. However, people tend to
misunderstand those moments when it seems to defy its most
hideous, despicable features. Forests, by way of example,
are often romanticized for their beauty—but they are merely
cracks in the dirty prison walls that keep us from the dream
we came from, and exist as nothing more than fleeting
reminders—symbols—for our freedoms lost beyond all
this dying flesh. Granted, a dark forest is one of the thinner
barriers separating us from whence we came—and thus why
some confuse it for the beauty it imprisons—but a barrier
nonetheless. Obviously, the same can be said for basements
filled with the moldering dead, attics containing chests of
burned toys and faded photographs, forgotten graveyards
steeped in twilight, and all other places where the darkness
endures beyond the day.
Undoubtedly, all these prisons contain boundless
wonders vigorously testing the locks to their cells, but to
my knowledge, none have ever escaped—though I can’t
remember a single thing that happened during the Great
Darkness, so I could be wrong on this point. This isn’t to
suggest that the Deadworld is without limits. Its prison walls
can be scaled, even demolished, as was demonstrated by
the rise of New Victoria. However, the relevant distinction
between New Victoria and the dreams that strain behind
even this world’s darkest environs is that the nightmare city
was never a prisoner. It came here from deepest sleep, from

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