Dreams back home never treated Joshua with any particular inequity. Rarely pleasant, usually forgettable, occasionally harrowing, they didn't catch hold of him. It helps to work oneself to the point of exhaustion. Tire out the body, tire out the mind; tire out the mind, and it has no means to concoct visions of any sort.

Songerein, by its very nature, provides no opportunity for such respite.

Anyone (like a certain radio-inclined demon) who happens to walk into this dream will enter at the edge of an endless field made entirely of bleak, desolate ash stretching as far as the eye can see. The sky above is gray, the kind of eternal melancholy devoid of any warmth or color, broken only by the blackened, gnarled arms of dead trees pining for a nonexistent sun. The world has been stripped of its vibrancy, leaving only a somber palette behind.

Swathes of hooded figures trudge along towards the horizon, where a colossal crystal towers over the barren land, casting an ethereal glow against the muted sky. Regardless of one's aesthetic leaning, its beauty is undeniable, but chilling, like the call of a siren waiting to drag hapless sailors into the deepest, cruelest depths of the unforgiving ocean.

Off in the distance is a single spark of color, a splash of bright red in the overwhelming monotony marching against the unyielding crowd.