It was a common dream by now, a better one than the ones that had once disturbed you relentlessly. If you had known before that going to Emre would change the setting the dead found themselves in, you would have gone immediately, but you knew it wasn’t the location, but the time that had passed. Ten years, ten long years since the end of the Auratus War, of the Emrean Liberation. Years away from Vitelia, years with new people, new family, away from much of what was before. The memories of war and blood had faded, the sting of loss had receded to numbness. Instead of the mud and ash, the snow and the flames, you found yourself back at the Angel’s Dawn Coffee House, in the twin capes of the north of Emre. It was always bustling in your dreams, not solemn like it had been in truth. All those you had lost were there and doing what had once been done back in Lapizlazulli, or Sella Castella. Everybody had survived the trials of the war in these dreams, mingling with those you would meet later, and the coffee was as bright and pungent as it had been in the good old days. Visions of better times that you woke from with a smile upon your face.

This time was subtly different in a way you didn’t notice, until the subtlety melted away.

As ever, you found yourself outside the place. The surroundings were a blur- they were insignificant. There was no temptation to go anywhere else. A different mix seemed to be in the coffee house each time, though they were ever all familiar faces. The first change. Figures that you didn’t recognize, not even as a facsimile made by your mind of people you didn’t know like the friends and comrades of Jean-Phillipe Debon, whom you had managed to keep in touch with through odd mails.

The first person you sat beside with a small cup of espresso was Chiara to your right, the noble daughter who had taken you with her to tankery. She always looked different each time you came here, since you couldn’t be sure how ten years might have changed her. This time, she was dressed as boyishly as she had been in life, her hair tied in a neat ponytail, though she didn’t bind her chest as she once did, so she was unmistakably a lady.

“Good morning, <span class="mu-i">Colonello</span> Bonaventura,” she said, “I can’t help but be envious from what I’ve heard of you. You have been up to what I’d have liked to do, had I been more fortunate.”

These specters were also discomfortingly aware of their own passing. “I’ve done plenty I regret. Wouldn’t you also have liked to take your place at Leo’s side?”