I did not deign to respond, merely staring away from him towards Father.
Hazkar continued, "Now, it would be pertinent for her to master the ability of dream-walking, so she may lead the way while we protect and follow her."
"How do you propose I do that?" I asked, interjecting.
"You need to enter the dreamscape, and while you are divining with Mother, you need to learn to instinctively control your physical body to walk," Hazkar answered.
"That does not sound as effortless as you make it out to be," I spoke, deeply apprehensive of my ability to do what was being discussed.
"No, it is not. But we have time," Father concluded.
So began my days of sleeping—or rather, the agonizing attempt to control a body I could no longer feel.
Initially, it was an absolute failure. I would slip into the trance, the world blurring away until I stood barefoot upon that phantom cobblestone path. In the distance, the faceless woman in the rich blue dress would call out to me. I would desperately try to step toward her, attempting to forcefully map the movements of my dream-self onto my sleeping limbs in the waking world. But the tether was completely severed. I would walk miles in my mind, only to wake up hours later in the exact same patch of damp mud where I had lain down.
After days of relentless, fruitless frustration, Father intervened with a rigorous, methodical regimen. If I could not connect my mind to my body, we would force the connection by systematically isolating my focus.
He started with my sight. Wrapping a thick, heavy cloth tightly around my eyes, Father plunged my waking world into absolute darkness. I was forced to navigate the treacherous, root-choked ruins entirely blind. I stumbled around and fell, relying solely on the crunch of the mud and the chill of the mist to map my surroundings. It took days of bruising effort before I could walk the perimeter with confident, unseeing steps.
Once my spatial awareness adapted, Father cast a localized silencing charm upon me. The sudden quiet was maddening. Robbed of the sound of my own footsteps and the ambient rustle of the dead forest, my balance completely skewed. For days, I existed in a silent void, learning to trust the pressure of the earth against my boots instead of my ears.
Then came the damp sometimes rotten scent of the mist, stripped away by a simple charm. And finally, the most terrifying deprivation of all: touch.
Through a potent numbing spell, Father deadened my physical skin. I became a ghost trapped within my own flesh. I could not feel the cold air, the ache in my muscles, or the ground beneath my feet. I had to command my limbs through sheer, raw willpower and deeply internalized spatial memory. I spent excruciating days mastering the mechanics of walking while completely detached from the physical sensation of it.
With my physical senses utterly muted, Father pushed me into the next phase. I was told to sleep but instructed to keep my Occlumency shields raised to their maximum capacity. I had to violently fight off the divining connection to Chroyane, keeping my mind locked in a state of blank, black marble. In this heavily fortified unconscious state, I was tasked with sleepwalking.
It was a psychological hell. I drifted in a void of sensory nothingness, forcing a numbed, deaf, and blind body to rise and pace the camp.
When I finally achieved this unguided sleepwalking, Father permitted me to let the dreamscape back in. I stood upon the cobblestones, Mother Rhoyne calling out through the blur. I reached for my waking body. For the first time, I could feel it—a faint, sluggish tether dragging behind my consciousness. I tried to command my physical legs to move, but the resulting motions were jerky, uncoordinated, and impossibly heavy.
I was fighting myself.
Months had bled into an entire year of this torturous, isolating routine. I was physically and spiritually exhausted, trapped in a purgatory of partial success.
Watching my failed, clumsy attempts to synchronize the two realms, Father finally realized the very crux of the problem. My mind was too fortified.
"Lower them, Hermione," Father commanded one evening, his voice cutting through the damp fog. "Completely lower your Occlumency shields before you enter the dreamscape. You are trying to control the resonance while actively resisting it. You must fully surrender to the divination."
It was a terrifying prospect. Lowering my shields after having kept them up for nearly my entire life. It felt as if I had cut off my own limb. But it was required of me and I wanted my actions here to matter.
I lay back in the mud, closing my eyes. I took a deep, shuddering breath and deliberately dismantled the thick, black marble walls within my mind. I laid my psyche completely bare.
The transition was violently instantaneous. The dreamscape did not slowly blur into existence; it snapped into blinding but perfect clarity. The cobblestones beneath my feet felt as real and damp as the mud of the waking world. Mother Rhoyne stood before me, her presence radiating with an overwhelming, divine gravity that washed over my unshielded soul.
Without the heavy resistance of my own mental barriers, the tether to my physical form ceased to be a burden. We were perfectly aligned. I took a deliberate step toward the goddess in the dream.
In the waking world, my physical body rose smoothly from the earth, my boots crunching heavily in the mud, mirroring the movement with effortless precision. Over a year of hellish deprivation had finally forged me into the perfect conduit. I could walk the waking world while dreaming of the divine.