This picture, made in April 2017 as my first colored fanart, was mainly inspired by the April Fools Day comic and the comments for it suggesting that "Beyond the Western Deep" was all (modern) Dakkan's fantasy.

If you start from the top, Quinlan was initially drifting through a dreamless void. He happens to be there ever since blacking out from being shot with an Ermehn bolt near the end of Chapter 2. Is he asleep? Comatose? Dead? Who knows? But he's interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious being that looks eerily similar to his best friend Dakkan, only wearing clothes in a style not recognized anywhere in the Four Kingdoms. The being only takes Quin's hand and leads him back out of the void, only telling the Tamian that he's not done yet, that his story is not yet over. Quin would have gotten to ask who this strange Lutren is, but that Lutren only tells him that he can't stay long, thus hurrying to return Quin to the land of the living. Once the brief journey is over, Quin finally awakens in page 9 of Chapter 3, though he didn't get the most ideal 'welcome back to the land of the living'-greeting.

Getting to the bottom, you see the real reason the Dakkan-being had to hurry up and leave after escorting Quin. Long story short, there's a lecture going on, Dak's mind is somewhere else, Principal Tosch happens to come by and decides to get Dak paying attention again HIS way. Dak's classmate can only brace himself for something that's about to get ugly real fast, hoping Dak snaps out of his daydream before the principal does that for him.

So if the rumors of the Four Kingdoms being the product of Dak's daydream are true, what does that make Dak? A god? An avatar? A medium? An incarnation or reincarnation? The true creator of Dunia? What does that say about the friendship between Quinlan and Dakkan of Sunsgrove? Is Quin and all the other characters who exist in the current story real to begin with? Or are they fake, just altered doll versions of people Dak knows whose faces they happen to wear? Who knows?