Russell is having the dream again.

Just as before, there is the cheap pine box at his sides, the grimy stone walls and ceiling above, the damp, pungent air smelling of mold and rot, and vampires standing all around. Just as before, the identities of the dead are all wrong. It is this way every time. It is this way, because Russell can't remember the true identities of the Kindred who put him in Torpor back in the thirties.

Or was it the forties?

That's how uncertain the fog of the long sleep is. You relive the truth over and over until it warps into an unbelievable lie. You discern feelings and events on the outside world that you aren't even present for. Occasionally feelings and events that haven't happened yet, or those that never will. It's enough to drive someone insane.

Back to the dream, now. The Kindred standing around come into focus as one of them lifts an old-fashioned lantern, casting a dim, orange glow about the faces. This is another inconsistency. In reality, Russell would have seen them all just fine until the light came up. Then he would be blind. Since his Embrace, he had never been able to control the Auspex through his eyes. Eh, it's just a dream, anyway.

This time, the hand holding the lantern belonged to his Priscus, Conner Greyson. Beside him, stood Martha. In fact, pretty much every Shadow Russell knew stood around. Or, the ones he'd spoken too, anyway. Chris Wooding is there, nearby, as is Amelita Cardosso, Erika Brady... Nosferatu were there, as well, though he couldn't smell Doctor Jo. He should have, she was right there, but again, warped daydream. With Dr. J are Brenn and Sidor, the harelipped haunt looking uncharacteristically just as grim as the others, shaking her head. Disappointed. Rounding out the madness, Sidor had a visible face. His eyes were still gaping holes of swirling blackness, but there was flesh there that Russell had never seen. An intense brow, strong but narrow nose, square jaw, severe frown... just a Russian stereotype.

Conner looks up to someone standing out of sight, commanding, "Do it."

The voice isn't right... it's a hiss... little more than a whisper.

The voice of Russell's Sire. This is new. He wondered in a detached way if his Sire had truly been present for this event when it really happened, or if this is merely another fabrication of his fractured psyche. There's no knowing for sure.

A sinewy arm comes into view. A rough, knobby hand with long fingers holds a ridiculous stake. The long kind, meant to impale so that it couldn't easily be worked out. Hardened, to resist decay. A stake that is intended for long-term imprisonment. Unable to move, as always, Russell's vision follows the twitchy pattern of scars up the arm; mostly illegible carvings of some unknown script. In places, he can make out words like Golgotha, grandeur, and torments. Where the knotted flesh ends in a simple rolled up shirt sleeve, Russell watches, waiting for the head to come into view. But it is no mystery. He already knows the face that's coming. The dream is always cruel.

Anton Flores slides up to the pine wall on Russell's right, standing opposite of Conner and leaning heavily on the wood with his other arm. Casually hanging from that hand is a heavy mallet. While the others look either grim, or silently reflective, he looks thoroughly, monstrously, amused. The worst face among them all bends closer, smiling hungrily in his twisted rigor rictus, curtains of stringy hair lolling to the sides.

"I will enjoy this. You will not."

"Get it over with."

Flores' voice is his own, but Conner's is still that of Russell's sire.

When the wooden pole is seated cruelly over Russell's heart with a rolling, twisting motion, he can swear that he feels it; actually digging into the flesh of his pectoral muscle. The whole vision sways with this, as different scents invade that he can't place, and something on a deep level suggests that there is only one standing above him, preparing to hammer the wooden stake through his body.

Martha, nearby Conner, is clutching something tightly to her chest, watching the scene with wide, innocent eyes. There is trouble in her brow, a frown on her lips. A touch of something else is there, too. Russell might use the term pity, but then, it might be more akin to sorrow, or compassion.

There is a raspy chuckle from the haggard Haunt as the mallet is raised high in the air. When it begins its descent, Russell has a dread feeling that he is going to feel this, too.

He is right.

As the hammer strikes, he has an instant to see Martha, Brenn, and Chris blanch just slightly, but the shock of pain drives the dream from his mind. Russell suddenly places the invading scents. It's the dirty stink of a musty, smoky hotel room, and his own charred flesh. The ringing of hammer on wood gives the Mekhet an amazing sonorous picture of the square room, and a lone figure standing over him. No details, no texture, but a strange three-dimensional picture that only a bat might really understand.

The dream is back. For good this time, Russell knows. The Sacramento crew turn and leave. Martha and Anton are the last, for apparently very different reasons. Normally incapable of even faking a portrayal of human emotion, the Nosferatu is looking pleased with himself. Herald Villiers is still frowning, and still holding something tightly in her hands... one of Russell's boot knives. The one he'd asked her to end his Requiem with, to spare him all of this. She steps a away as well, with one last glimpse of twin blonde ponytails as she turns, and the sound of a limping gait of mismatched footfalls.

A man in a trench coat and fedora leans over the side of the pine after an unknowable amount of time, where Conner had been standing. The hissing whisper matches in a way that is all too familiar. It is him. The man who Embraced Ethan Russell so long ago.

"I will return for you when I have need. I will make you useful to me, whether you desire it or not."

A name hits Russell, then. Wraith. A Shadow called Wraith? Yes, that had been it. The man had been as generic in appearance as his name. Unassuming as the ghost you never see. Only those who hadn't met him laughed at one who was referred to with such an evasive nickname. He had been a whisper in the dark that was widely feared, and for good reason.

He had watched Russell take the Torpid plunge the first time, just as guilty as the others. Russ hadn't really known what to expect, but he always figured it had something to do with Wraith. He'd imagined that perhaps he'd gotten his Sire destroyed, and that those loyal to him sentenced his Childer to the immortal sleep for their failure.

Yes, their failure. That was another key to the puzzle that Russell only just now remembered: He had siblings. Wraith maintained more than one progeny. It might take him another sixty years, or even much longer, but Russell is determined to find the truth.

Only, something is very wrong.

The staked Mekhet's entire perception begins to shake... The little world inside his torpid mind feels as though it is peeling away, with excruciating slowness. It's like paint thinner splashed on the canvas of his thoughts; what was once clear is now blurring, and leaking away. Terror grips the Mekhet in a manner that never has in his entire Requiem. It's like a thousand tiny hands scratching and pulling at him, all in different directions. He knows, he just knows, on some instinctual level, that he is coming apart at the seams. He feels like he is... melting.

Russell's soul screams.

Instantly, Russell knew that's what it was, though the sound has no natural correlation to anything he's ever heard. It reverberates through every fiber of his being. For the first time, Russell is aware of his Beast while trapped in death of sleep. A dark reflection of himself, it is hunched and twisted, with features that are stretched to exaggerated cruelty. And it's falling apart.

He sees the creature contorting with the pain of the unending screech by the spirit they shared, pain he felt himself. The mental image of the most hated companion begins to rattle itself to pieces, flesh and sinew sloughing off bone as though it were being boiled alive. Whatever the symbolism there, Russell feels it happening to him as well.

There is no hell for Ethan Russell. No judgement. No purgatory. There is no peaceful reintegration into the life forces of nature, no reincarnation, no rest. He doesn't simply wink out of existence. He is destroyed completely. Utterly. Painfully.

His very identity is ripped from him as his knowledge and experience is stolen into that of another.