Curtain CallNotes:BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExLWZ5ar67A&list=RDExLWZ5ar67A&start_radio=1
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter TextAt the same time, a fair, pale hand reached in from the side and closed around Sunny's wrist—the one holding the Prowling Thorn.
The pressure was gentle. Impossibly so.
Yet it was absolute.
The dagger Memory shuddered and came to a halt a few mere centimeters from Nephis' left eye, its shadowed edge trembling in midair. Sunny froze, every muscle locking at once, shock slamming into him so hard it felt like his bones had turned to glass.
Someone had stopped him.
Not overpowered him.
Not deflected the strike.
Simply… decided that he would not move any further.
Sunny stared at the hand clasping his own, his mind blank, struggling to reconcile what he was seeing. Nephis, meanwhile, was in a far worse state—no, catastrophically worse. A katana of pure shadow had skewered her throat from behind, punching out through her mouth like some grotesque parody of a spit-roasted offering. Silver blood ran freely down her chin and soaked into her armor.
Yet even then, her silver flames ignited.
They burned from within her flesh, radiant and furious, clinging desperately to life as they tried to knit ruined tissue back together. But the blade was still there, anchoring the wound open, denying the flames any purchase. Healing could not complete while the cause of the injury remained embedded.
Sasrir grunted behind her, expression hard, and twisted the shadowed katana further. The motion forced a wet, choking sound from Nephis' throat, and her flames flickered, weakening, guttering like candles in a storm.
Then the owner of the pale hand spoke.
"God said: Light and Flame are ineffective here. Shadows and Degeneration are more effective here."
The voice was soft. Calm. Almost tender.
It carried the cadence of a shepherd reciting scripture to a flock at dusk, measured and soothing, as if nothing about this moment were extraordinary. The words rang with unmistakable authority, settling into Sunny's ears—and deeper still, into his soul.
An intense glow of golden sunlight bloomed behind him, warm against the nape of his neck. It did not burn. It comforted. And then Sunny felt it—his shadows stirring, thickening, writhing like living things as a surge of elevation flooded through him. Power pressed into his being, vast and crushing, yet guided with surgical precision.
"Judgement—passed," the voice said.
Sunny's body jerked.
Slowly, stiffly, like a marionette with snapped strings, he turned his head, following the pale hand up along a white-robed arm, to broad shoulders draped in immaculate cloth, and finally to a face framed by a neatly kept blond beard. Blue eyes regarded him warmly. Kindly. Blond hair caught the sunlight like a halo.
Adam smiled down at him.
It was the smile of a patient parent looking upon a wayward child—not angry, not alarmed, merely disappointed.
Two fingers pinched the blade of the Prowling Thorn with casual ease.
"Such things are too dangerous to be played around with, Sunless," Adam said gently, as though offering advice rather than halting an attempted murder. "What if you had killed her?"
Sunny's thoughts scattered. His mind felt submerged in molasses, sluggish and distorted from the unnatural overdrive triggered by the near-completion of his True Name. His body still hummed with alien sensations—triumph, elevation, horror—all tangled together. Forming words felt impossibly difficult.
"Why are… how are…" he managed weakly.
"Why are we here?" Adam supplied smoothly, his eyes twinkling with faint amusement. "Well, we noticed that you and Changing Star hadn't come down yet. Sasrir and I are far too conscientious to abandon companions, you see, so we decided to catch up."
He gestured vaguely upward.
"We had only just neared the top when the structure exploded, and the two of you came plummeting down. And, most shockingly," he added with a mild chuckle, "you appeared to be attempting to kill one another."
Sunny's stomach dropped like a stone into deep water.
Adam did not give him time to process.
"Oh, and by the way," he continued cheerfully, "we found Caster's corpse on the way up. Your handiwork, I would presume, hmm, Sunless?" He waved away any protest with a serene smile. "Do not trouble yourself. I don't blame you. I suspected that Legacy was up to no good—anyone with functioning eyes and a brain could see he harbored malicious intentions toward Lady Changing Star."
While Adam spoke as though recounting idle gossip, Nephis gurgled weakly to the side.
Sunny glanced at her and felt something twist painfully in his chest. Her silver flames—those once-omnipotent fires—had dwindled to little more than embers, trapped beneath her skin, unable to spread. Sasrir had braced himself behind her, his stance brutal and efficient. One careless movement, one attempt to struggle too violently, and he would rip her head from her shoulders without hesitation.
Just as she had once done to Gunlaug.
Adam's gaze flicked toward her, taking in her condition with clinical interest.
"Ah. What a shame," he said, shaking his head, his voice tinged with mock pity. His expression, however, remained pure, untroubled. "But alas, this is simply how Fate operates, my Lady. Had you merely knocked him unconscious or driven him away, I would not have interfered."
He looked back to Sunny.
"But you attempted the unforgivable."
Understanding struck like lightning.
Sunny's eyes widened. So did Nephis', terror and fury blazing together in her gaze.
No. Impossible.
He can't know. He can't—
Cassie?
Sunny's thoughts spiraled. She might choose Nephis over him. She might betray him for what she believed was right. But Adam? No. She would never reveal his biggest weakness to Adam, never hand the chain to his collar to a man she barely knew. She couldn't, she wouldn't...
Adam looked down at him once more, and in the glow of the radiant cruciform sunlight behind him, his blue eyes seemed to turn molten gold.
"Isn't enslavement such a dreadful thing, my dear Lost from Light?"
The words detonated inside Sunny.
A sound tore free from his chest—half scream, half sob—as something deep within him finally reached saturation. Completion. A missing piece he had never known was absent slammed violently into place. The sensation was overwhelming: cathartic, ecstatic, horrifying. Like revelation and violation all at once.
His mind shattered under the strain.
Sunny collapsed.
His body struck the ground limply, shadows dissipating as consciousness fled him entirely.
Adam looked down at the fallen boy, amusement curling faintly at the corners of his mouth.
Behind him, Nephis thrashed and screamed through the blade lodged in her throat, her silver flames erupting anew from her eyes and skin, her body blazing like a newborn star. Sasrir responded instantly, planting his foot against her back and heaving downward. The katana bit deeper, slicing through muscle and sinew, nearly tearing her head free.
Another two inches, and it would be over.
"Peace, Lady Changing Star," Adam said mildly, kneeling to lay Sunny's unconscious form gently on the ground before turning to her.
Nephis glared up at him, hatred incandescent, fear flickering beneath the rage—not of death, but of understanding too late.
Adam smiled.
"I thank you for your contributions thus far, my Lady," he said pleasantly. "But I must now request that you return the Dawn Shard to me."
Nephis' eyes widened further. A muffled scream tore from her ruined throat.
Adam did not blink.
"Return my Shards, Lady Changing Star," he said, snapping his fingers once, sharply. "Or I will order Lost from Light to murder Cassia—and your Hollow mother."
At that, Nephis went utterly still.
Not even the flames moved.
Thirty seconds passed.
They stretched into an eternity.
Adam remained where he was, hands folded loosely before him, smiling serenely without uttering a single additional word. His silence was not impatient, nor expectant—it was absolute, as though the outcome had already been decided and time itself was merely catching up.
Nephis lay frozen beneath Sasrir's blade, her chest rising in shallow, uneven breaths. Every second carved itself into her nerves. The pressure of the katana against her ruined throat, the lingering pain where flesh had been cut and re-knit only to be torn again, the suffocating certainty that one wrong sound, one wrong movement, would end her existence—
Her silver flames flickered weakly, restrained by fear for others rather than herself.
Finally, it was Sasrir who broke the stillness.
"I have the Shard."
His voice was rough, stripped of mockery. A statement of fact.
Something inside Nephis shattered.
The last dam holding her upright gave way, and her body slumped forward in sudden, total exhaustion. The motion tore open freshly healed skin along her neck, silver blood seeping once more as she gasped in pain. Sasrir reacted instantly, shifting his stance and loosening the angle of his blade just enough to avoid decapitating her by accident.
Adam clapped his hands together.
The sound was light. Joyous.
"Ah," he said brightly, as though witnessing the final piece of a puzzle slide into place. "Then everything is finally complete."
He turned away without another glance at Nephis.
Crossing the stone with unhurried steps, Adam knelt and lifted Sunny's unconscious form into his arms. He did so gently, reverently, cradling him as one might a sleeping child—or a bride carried across a threshold.
Nephis watched, wide-eyed, disbelief and horror hollowing her chest.
The Gateway loomed ahead, its ancient geometry humming faintly. Around them, the Crimson Spire shuddered and groaned, its structure resuming its long-delayed collapse, satisfied—as if appeased by the spectacle the four Sleepers had enacted beneath it.
Just before stepping onto the dais, Adam paused.
He looked back at Nephis.
His face was impassive now, the warmth drained from his expression, leaving only clarity.
"Why so unhappy, my Lady?" he asked softly, his voice smooth as velvet and sharp as a blade all the same. "Isn't this what you wished for?"
Her lips parted.
She wanted to scream that it wasn't. That she had never wanted this—never wanted Sunny broken, never wanted chains forged from his soul, never wanted Adam's victory bought with blood and coercion.
But before a single sound could leave her throat, Adam stepped forward.
Light folded in on itself.
And he was gone.
The Gateway sealed.
The silence that followed was deafening.
It was just her now.
And Sasrir.
Without the Unshadowed Crucifix, the Notarization dissolved like mist under the sun. The invisible pressure anchoring reality snapped loose.
Silver flames erupted from Nephis.
They did not merely burn—they revolved, howled, screamed, swelling outward like a newborn star going supernova. The air warped. Stone hissed and cracked. Heat rolled across the chamber in violent waves.
Sasrir had already moved.
The instant Adam vanished, his body collapsed into shadow and flowed backward, dispersing like smoke caught in a gale. The inferno tore through the space he had occupied moments earlier, annihilating stone and air alike.
Now he stood at a distance, solid once more, watching calmly as the last scion of the Immortal Flame raged and healed before him.
Nephis rose unsteadily to her feet.
Her wounds sealed under the wrath of her Aspect, silver fire crawling across her skin. Her breathing steadied, fury crystallizing into something sharp and lethal. She drew her blade, and it ignited instantly, flame licking along its edge as she fixed Sasrir with a gaze so saturated with hatred that the ground beneath him began to glow.
"Damn Sovereign peon," she spat.
Sasrir chuckled.
Slowly, deliberately, he wove the Dawn Shard into being above his head. Light cascaded downward, settling over him like a crown. The radiance did not repel his shadows—it fused with them, intertwining dawn and darkness into something deeply wrong.
"You are mistaken, little girl," he said lazily, settling into a ready stance. "The only master I serve… is the Lord."
Nephis laughed.
It was wild. Unhinged.
"You think you can beat me?" she demanded, flames flaring higher. "Adam and his sunlight Memory are gone. And don't think I didn't notice how your skin blackened when my flames touched you earlier. You're Corrupted, aren't you?"
Her smile sharpened.
"What heals normal humans purifies you instead."
Sasrir did not answer.
"And what," she continued coldly, "just because you have the Dawn Shard, you think you can win?" Her killing intent flooded the space, heavy and suffocating. "That Memory doesn't distinguish between friend and foe. It empowers me too."
"Indeed it does."
Sasrir nodded once, posture relaxed, almost respectful.
"Fighting a Dormant Tyrant bearing the Lineage of the Sun God alone would indeed be suicide for a Dormant Beast," he said calmly. "Was Sunless not proof of that?"
Then he smiled.
And looked down at himself.
"However," he continued softly, "if it is suicide for a Dormant Beast…"
Power surged.
The air darkened. Shadows thickened, twisting violently around his form as something vast and predatory unfurled from within his soul. The Dawn Shard blazed brighter, its radiance sinking into him, reshaping him.
"…how about an Awakened Devil?"
Invisible sigils ignited in the air.
[Name: Sasrir]
[True Name: — ]
[Soul Core: Devil [4/7]]
[Aspect: Hanged Man]
[Aspect Rank: Divine]
[Attributes: Flame of Divinity, Uniqueness of Hanged Man, Envisioned, Radiance of Dawn]
[Memories: Moonlight Shard, Steel Memento, Azure Blade…]
[Echoes: — ]
[Flaw: Hanged Man]
[Attribute Description — Radiance of Dawn: You are empowered by the Dawn Shard, and all your characteristics are improved (Dormant ⇒ Awakened).]
[Sequence: Shadow Ascetic ⇒ Rose Bishop]
Nephis' grin widened, manic and incandescent, discarding whatever words Sasrir had just said. She was in no state no listen.
The battlefield trembled.
And the real fight began.
Nephis did not answer.
She moved.
The distance between them ceased to exist.
Her sword came down in a line so perfect it seemed inevitable, a stroke that did not seek Sasrir's body so much as declare that space itself must be divided there. The blade sang, white-hot, carrying annihilation in its wake.
Sasrir raised a wall of shadow.
It died.
The flames carved through it like judgment through sin, shearing the darkness apart and biting into Sasrir's shoulder. Flesh vaporized. Shadow hissed. Degeneration bloomed—but was immediately burned out, overwritten by purifying fire that refused to allow corruption to exist.
Sasrir staggered, then stepped into the blow instead of away from it.
Madness.
His body softened, boneless, allowing the blade to pass through his torso without resistance. The fire burned him hollow, incinerating organs, turning blood to steam—
—and then his flesh collapsed inward, swallowing the blade, clamping around it like a living vice.
Shadow surged.
Black thorns erupted from the ground, spearing upward to impale Nephis from every angle. She twisted, impossibly precise, severing three with a single rotation of her wrists, letting the rest pierce her body cleanly through.
Silver fire exploded from the wounds.
The thorns disintegrated from the inside out, shadows screaming as they were purified into oblivion. Nephis ripped herself free, skin already sealing, blood evaporating into light.
She drove her knee into Sasrir's chest.
The impact caved him in. Ribs shattered. His spine snapped with a wet crack.
Before his body hit the ground, Nephis reversed her grip and beheaded him.
The head hit the stone and rolled.
For half a second, there was silence.
Then Sasrir's corpse laughed.
The body collapsed into liquid flesh, flowing toward the severed head like a tide of gore. Shadows wrapped around it, pulling it back together, stitching meat and bone with obscene intimacy.
The head reattached.
Sasrir rose again, coughing up blackened blood that hissed where it struck the ground.
"Again," he said softly.
Nephis screamed.
Not in pain—she refused to ever voice her pain—but in fury so absolute it distorted the world around her. Her flames surged higher, denser, condensing until they burned white-blue at the core. The Dawn Shard flared in resonance, sunlight bleeding into shadow and forcing Sasrir's form to flicker, his body dragged halfway toward Awakening by stolen radiance.
He welcomed it.
Shadow creatures tore themselves out of the ground around him—half-formed, screaming things that clawed at reality itself. They rushed Nephis in a suicidal tide.
She waded into them.
Each swing of her sword was execution. Each step left scorched footprints in the stone. Shadows died by the dozen, erased rather than slain, their essence burned so thoroughly that nothing remained to return to darkness.
Sasrir struck from behind.
A blade of shadow pierced through Nephis' abdomen, erupting from her back in a spray of silver blood.
She did not fall.
She twisted, letting the blade tear her wider, and seized Sasrir by the throat with her free hand.
Silver fire poured into him.
It was not heat.
It was condemnation.
His flesh shrieked as it burned—not rotting, not degenerating, but being judged unworthy of existence. Cells unraveled. Shadow authority collapsed wherever the fire touched, burned into meaninglessness.
Sasrir howled, voice breaking as he tore free chunks of his own burning flesh to escape her grip, regenerating even as he burned.
They crashed together again.
Sword against shadow.
Flame against degeneration.
Each blow should have been fatal. Each wound would have killed any lesser being a dozen times over. Nephis fought like a god intent on murder; Sasrir fought like something that had already accepted damnation and decided to drag heaven down with him.
The battlefield became a charnel pit of light and darkness, flesh and ash, shadow and screaming fire.
And still, neither of them stopped.
Because stopping meant dying.
And dying was something neither of them was willing to do—not yet.
Sasrir stopped laughing.
Instead, he spread his arms—and tore himself apart.
Wet, tearing sounds split the air as chunks of his own flesh ripped free, swelling and pulsing before detonating mid-flight. Flesh bombs burst against the ground and Nephis' flames alike, erupting into rains of corrosive blood that hissed and screamed as they ate into stone, shadow, and even light itself. The acid did not burn like fire—it consumed, clinging, crawling, trying to dissolve her radiance cell by cell.
Nephis charged straight through it.
Her flames surged outward, turning the corrosive rain into boiling vapor, but not before patches of her skin blackened and peeled away. New flesh ignited and replaced the old in the same breath. She moved like a falling star, sword a streak of annihilation, cutting through the haze in merciless arcs.
Sasrir answered by mutating.
Bones burst from his forearms with sickening cracks, elongating, sharpening, twisting into serrated swords of ivory and shadow-veined marrow. His feet split open as well, talons and blade-bones erupting downward, anchoring him to the ground like a living siege engine. Every movement was accompanied by the sound of snapping cartilage and flowing meat, his body reconfiguring itself faster than reason allowed.
He lunged.
Bone-blades met silver steel.
The impact sent shockwaves through the Spire, pulverizing what little structure remained. Nephis carved through one arm, severing it at the elbow; Sasrir responded by letting the limb explode into corrosive gore point-blank. The blast tore strips of burning flesh from Nephis' side and hurled her backward.
She hit the ground—and was already rising.
Flames roared higher, no longer contained to her skin. Her sword moved too fast to follow, a continuous, merciless blur. Bone swords shattered. Shadows were flensed apart. Sasrir's body was reduced to a ruin again and again, only to reassemble mid-motion, regeneration accelerating with each passing second.
Still, he pressed closer.
Closer.
Darkness welled behind him, thickening, deepening—an abyssal tide that swallowed the ground and climbed the walls, blotting out the silver glare. Shadow manipulation, shadow shaping, shadow summoning—every technique layered atop the others in a grotesque symphony of annihilation.
Nephis burned through it.
She always burned through it.
Her blade pierced his chest and pinned him to the stone, flames flooding into his core, incinerating organs, turning blood to lightless ash. She leaned into the strike, eyes blazing, preparing to finish it—
And Sasrir bit her.
His jaw unhinged wider than any human's should, teeth elongating, serrated, dripping with corrosive saliva and shadow. He lunged forward with his mouth, ignoring the sword embedded in his body, and clamped down on her neck and shoulder.
There was a sound like tearing cloth.
Nephis reacted instantly, her knee slamming into his ribs with godlike force. Bone shattered. His torso folded grotesquely around the blow, sending him flying backward.
But it was too late.
He tore free as he fell, ripping away a massive chunk of her neck and shoulder—burning flesh, muscle, divine blood—still writhing with silver flames.
And then—
Gulp.
He swallowed it whole.
The effect was immediate.
Sasrir's body lurched, shadows convulsing as if electrified. Regeneration surged into overdrive, flesh knitting at a speed that bordered on obscene. Burned tissue restored itself instantly. Destroyed organs reformed before the damage fully registered. The divine residue screamed inside him, trying to purify, to annihilate—
—and was dragged down, digested, corrupted, twisted into fuel.
He laughed again, breathless and ecstatic.
Nephis staggered.
For the first time, her flames faltered.
The wound at her neck burned, yes—but it did not close instantly. Silver fire struggled there, flickering, as if something essential had been torn away. Blood streamed down her chest in liquid light, evaporating slower than it should have.
Sasrir hit the ground running.
He threw himself back into the fray with manic abandon, bone swords regrown and larger, shadows billowing behind him like a living storm. Darkness rose up in towering waves, trying to drown her, to smother her radiance, to drag her into a place where light could not exist.
"Mine now," he hissed, voice layered with hunger and triumph. "Your flesh remembers me."
Nephis straightened.
Her breathing was ragged. Her flames were thinner. But her eyes—
Her eyes were still merciless.
She raised her sword.
And stepped forward to meet the darkness head-on.
The battle ceased to be a contest of styles and became a war of instincts.
At times, it resembled a duel worthy of legends.
Steel met bone and shadow with surgical precision. Nephis' sword traced perfect arcs through the air, every cut economical, every step measured. Sasrir countered with warped elegance—bone blades snapping into place, shadows hardening into edges that caught and redirected her strikes by fractions of an inch. They grappled, locked wrist to wrist, foreheads almost touching, muscles screaming as divine flame and corrupted flesh ground against one another.
Then, without warning, all grace collapsed.
Nephis slammed her forehead into his face, felt cartilage cave, and followed by driving her teeth into his arm.
She tore.
Hot, corrupted flesh came away between her jaws. The taste was vile—rot and shadow and something older—but her flames surged inward, burning away degeneration before it could even reach the back of her throat. She swallowed, eyes blazing, and ripped herself free as Sasrir's claws raked her back, opening her from shoulder to hip.
Sasrir laughed.
Not recoiling. Not slowing.
He hammered his head into hers, cracked bone knitting even as it broke, and drove both hands into her abdomen. Fingers sank into burning flesh, gripping organs that tried to turn him into ash. He squeezed anyway, tearing free, and Nephis screamed—not in fear, but in fury—and answered by smashing her knee into his spine.
They fell together, rolling through rubble and fire.
Hands replaced blades.
They clawed, gouged, ripped, and crushed. Nephis tore out his throat once—only for it to regrow as her fingers were bitten off and regrown in turn. Sasrir impaled her through the thigh with a bone spike and dragged her closer, teeth snapping inches from her face, shadows coiling around her limbs like strangling serpents.
She burned them away and headbutted him until the ground cratered beneath them.
Minutes blurred.
Or hours.
Time lost meaning inside that maelstrom of blood, shadow, and flame. The battlefield was no longer stone—it was churned ruin, glassed by heat, soaked in corrosive gore and glowing with divine embers. Both of them were barely recognizable as human anymore.
Nephis' radiance flickered, surged, dimmed, and surged again, fed by stubborn will rather than abundance. Her body was a tapestry of wounds that refused to stay open, yet healed slower with each repetition.
Sasrir grew more monstrous with every exchange. Bone protrusions multiplied. Shadows clung to him like extra limbs. His regeneration, fueled by stolen divinity, became obscene—yet his form warped further from anything sane, his movements less controlled, more feral.
Still, neither yielded.
Until the world itself did.
A deep, resonant groan rolled through the Crimson Spire.
Both of them felt it.
The tower shuddered, cracks racing through its foundations like veins of doom. Massive slabs of stone sheared free and fell away into the abyss below. The air filled with dust, fire, and the sound of something ancient finally deciding it had endured enough.
The Spire began to collapse.
A section of floor gave way beneath them, dropping them into a freefall of debris and screaming wind. They collided mid-air—still fighting—Nephis driving her sword into Sasrir's chest as he wrapped around her, bone blades punching through her ribs in return.
They hit another collapsing platform hard.
Stone exploded outward.
Nephis rolled, came up on one knee, coughing blood and flame. Sasrir hauled himself upright opposite her, half his torso missing, shadows desperately holding his shape together.
The tower was dying around them.
And still, they advanced—because neither of them knew how to stop.
Behind Sasrir, his shadow stretched and swelled, no longer a mere absence of light but a presence unto itself.
It rose like a gargantuan leviathan, vast enough to dwarf the ruins around them. Five distorted heads writhed at the end of elongated necks, their outlines never quite stable, as though reality itself struggled to define their shape. At the center of the middle face burned a single ruby eye, luminous and hateful, watching Nephis with ancient, hungry intent.
The shadow convulsed.
Filthy mud leaked from its form, dripping onto the shattered stone—except it wasn't truly black. Nephis realized that only after staring too long. It merely appeared black because it contained too many colors at once: bruised purples, sickly greens, blood-dark reds, hues that did not belong in any sane spectrum. Chaos, layered so densely that it drowned itself out.
She felt hollow.
No—worse than hollow.
Nephis knew, with absolute clarity, that she was spent. Every one of her five Soul Cores had been burned nearly dry. Even the excess Essence she had torn from the Crimson Terror was gone, consumed in the mad slaughter that followed. Fighting Sunny had cost her perhaps a quarter of her reserves.
Fighting Sasrir had devoured almost everything else.
If she pushed herself further—if she dared to channel her flames outward again—she would not have enough left to heal. And without healing, even she would die.
Her jaw clenched.
The rancid taste of Sasrir's flesh still lingered in her mouth, half-memory, half-reality. She could feel where she had torn into him, could still remember the texture giving way beneath her teeth. It made her stomach churn with a mix of disgust and something far more dangerous: grim satisfaction.
Across from her, Sasrir was no better.
In truth, he was worse.
He could feel it now—the strain, the fractures spreading through his being like invisible fault lines. His mortal shell was at its limit. Another push, another indulgence of that monstrous power, and it would fail completely. The Chaos Sea sealed within him would burst forth, unrestrained.
He would survive.
The indestructible Godhood bound to a Uniqueness, the obscene resilience of the Hanged Man Pathway—those would see to that.
But what emerged afterward would not be Sasrir.
It would be something like the Crimson Terror. Depraved. Corrupted. A thing of instinct and hunger, stripped of will and reason.
He had no desire to become that.
And so, as if guided by the same unspoken calculation, the same cold clarity born of exhaustion and experience, they stopped.
The battlefield fell silent save for the distant groan of the dying Spire.
The Gateway was gone—shattered beyond recovery. Even if one of them managed to kill the other, there would be no escape waiting at the end of victory. Only endless ruins and the vast cruelty of the Dream Realm.
Nephis had never been so furious in her life.
Her hatred burned white-hot, sharper than any blade.
And yet… her reason remained intact.
Killing Sasrir would gain her nothing. No salvation. No freedom. No meaningful advantage. Only another corpse, and perhaps her own death soon after.
So she turned her flames inward.
Silver fire withdrew beneath her skin, no longer raging outward but knitting flesh, sealing torn organs, forcing her battered body to hold together a little longer. Pain receded, reluctantly, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary ache.
Sasrir did the same in his own grotesque way.
He digested the last remnants of stolen flesh taken from her neck and shoulder, feeling the surge of vitality spread through him, fueling regeneration that was already slowing under the strain. Bone retracted. Shadows loosened their grip. With a thought, he dismissed the Dawn Shard, the oppressive radiance vanishing as if it had never been.
When both of them were standing again—whole, but far from unscathed—he looked at her.
"Now what?"
His voice was rough, stripped of mockery, stripped even of menace.
Nephis answered with a glare sharp enough to kill weaker men.
"You tell me, monster."
Sasrir snorted softly, then shrugged. He turned and sat down on a slab of broken stone, rubble crunching beneath his weight, as casual as if they had not just tried to tear each other apart moments ago.
"Well," he said mildly, "we're trapped in the Dream Realm until we either find another Citadel… or conquer the Second Nightmare. Take your pick, Princess."
The word should have infuriated her.
Instead, as Nephis stared at the man she had just engaged in mutual slaughter with—this corrupted, smiling thing who spoke of impossible trials like inconvenient travel plans—an unexpected thought crossed her mind.
For the briefest of moments, she understood Sunny.
Truly understood him.
The frustration. The disbelief. The sheer, soul-deep exhaustion of dealing with someone like this.
Her lips curled.
"Are you crazy?"
Notes:And thus ends the official second volume of the original novel, and the first for mine.
I will be releasing a QnA like I promised in a few hours, so please saveany questions you have till them. It will also serve as a map of my thoughts, plans and what was changed and what was abandoned entirely.
-Pidgeon
Mid-SequenceChapter TextOnce again, Adam found himself suspended in the endless space between dream and reality.
There was nothing around him but a boundless black void, illuminated by a myriad of distant stars. Between those stars, countless strands of silver light stretched and intertwined, woven into a pattern so beautiful and inconceivably complex that it defied comprehension. The luminous weave pulsed faintly, alive with purpose, as though it were both a machine and a living organism at once.
Once again, Adam felt as though he had glimpsed the inner workings of the Spell itself.
Was it merely an illusion born of Ascension, or was he truly able to see more now?
This time, it felt different. His gaze did not simply slide off the impossible geometry of the weave. Instead, faint impressions surfaced in his mind—hints of meaning buried beneath the titanic brilliance, fragments of logic behind what had once been pure incomprehension.
He had changed since his First Nightmare, after all.
Before Adam could dwell on the sensation, the Spell spoke. Its voice echoed through the void, layered and harmonious, like countless whispers speaking as one:
[The Second Seal is broken.]
[Awakening dormant powers…]
Adam lifted his gaze toward the nebulous strings of light, then slowly closed his eyes. He did not resist. Instead, he allowed the incoming power to rise through him and wash over his being.
Internally, his awareness turned inward—to his Soul Sea.
Four Soul Cores floated there, radiant and whole.
They burned with an ethereal heat, subtle yet unmistakably real. Essence surged from them in rhythmic pulses, circulating through his entire body. Wherever it flowed, it changed him—strengthening muscle and bone, refining nerves, reinforcing flesh.
The sensation reminded him of absorbing a Soul Shard.
Only this was incomparably greater.
A thousand times more powerful.
And far deeper.
Adam drew in a sharp breath and clenched his eyes shut, focusing entirely on guiding the Awakening. The power flooded every fiber of his existence, saturating him completely. A familiar euphoria rose unbidden, washing over his mind like a warm tide.
Yet Adam did not let himself be lost in it.
He wanted to understand.
He wanted to remember.
Every fleeting nuance of this moment mattered.
It was more intoxicating than anything he had ever tasted—across both of his lives.
Beneath the obvious physical transformation, beneath the sharpening of sinew and the perfection of form, another change was taking place.
His soul was evolving.
For once, Adam found himself without words. Unlike the birth of his auxiliary Soul Cores, there was no agony. Unlike the torment he had endured bleeding himself upon the Unshadowed Crucifix, there was no suffering.
This felt natural.
Right.
Profound.
As though he were drawing closer to something he had always been meant to become—one step nearer to completion.
A better being.
Gradually, the blazing heat receded, replaced by a soothing, crystalline cold. When Adam opened his eyes, his thoughts were calm and lucid. The lingering aches of the Forgotten Shore, the accumulated strain of two years of detention, and the invisible weight of constant vigilance were gone.
He felt reforged.
Like a sword drawn from a crucible—tempered, fortified, and perfected into cold, flawless steel.
His body was stronger, faster, and far more enduring. The sensation was similar to being under the effects of Notarization, though subtler and more permanent. He knew instinctively that this enhancement would grow even more pronounced once he used the Crucifix again.
Yet physical power was not the true distinction.
Adam understood that the fundamental difference between Dreamers and the Awakened was not strength, but access.
Dreamers learned to perceive Soul Cores.
The Awakened learned to command Essence.
Before, his power had been contained—locked within his Soul Cores, visible only as a distant, luminous mass in his Soul Sea. He could feel when it was empty, and when it brimmed with force, but it remained separate from him.
Now, that barrier was gone.
Essence flowed freely, circulating naturally between his cores and his body, passively saturating every movement with latent power. With a thought, Adam understood that he could guide this flow—concentrating Essence where it was needed.
Explosive strength in his arms.
Unnatural speed in his legs.
A single leap spanning dozens of meters.
He would not be permanently monstrous, shattering walls by accident. Instead, through precise control, he could unleash brief surges of truly inhuman might, while enjoying a constant, lesser enhancement at all times.
And with this…
'…I can finally repair the Mantle of the Underworld.'
Although the control came instinctively, Adam knew mastery would require instruction. Specialized instructors at the Academy existed for this exact purpose—to teach newly Awakened how to wield Essence efficiently and without waste.
And beyond that lay a deeper layer of combat.
Sleepers fought like empowered humans.
Awakened fought tactically.
Essence replenished itself, but not instantly. In battle, it was a finite resource. Victory belonged not to the strongest, but to the most disciplined.
There was also progression.
As an Awakened, the invisible ceiling that had restricted him as a Sleeper was gone. He could now advance beyond Devil. Tyrant was no longer a theoretical endpoint.
The Spell, however, was not finished.
The true culmination of Awakening had yet to arrive.
The void trembled as the Spell spoke again:
[Awakening Aspect Ability…]
[...Aspect Ability acquired.]
[Aspect Ability Name: Psychiatrist.]
Adam smiled and summoned his runes.
Name: Adam
True Name: True Creator
Rank: Awakened
Class: Devil
Shadow Cores: [4/7]
Soul Fragments: [3500/8000]
As expected, all four cores had fully Awakened. For the first time, he could see his exact progression toward Tyrant. Nearly halfway—but now that he was Awakened, Soul Fragment acquisition from lower-ranked beings would slow dramatically.
At least, that was how it worked for Sunny.
'Over four thousand fragments left…'
Adam felt no disappointment.
In raw capability, he already eclipsed nearly every Awakened alive. Even Nephis and Caster fell short in sheer statistics. Only Effie surpassed him in brute strength.
Morgan?
In theory, perhaps.
In practice, no.
His weapon skill remained mediocre. Against intelligent Devils with refined combat techniques, he would lose a direct contest. The Visionary Pathway was not forged through blood and muscle.
'Enough stalling.'
With a thought, Adam examined his new ability.
Aspect Ability: [Psychiatrist]
[Ability Description:]
They can induce emotional and psychological states in a target, throwing them into Frenzy and inflicting severe mental damage.
This affects the Body of Heart and Mind as well as the Spirit Body.
A Psychiatrist's Frenzy may cause loss of control.
Telepathy:
Through mediums such as candlelight and extracts, they may induce partial hypnosis and communicate directly with the target's Body of Heart and Mind.
This allows entry into the deepest layer of the target's Soul—their dreamland—where a corresponding mental scene manifests.
Psychological Cue:
Through specific words, methods, and mediums, a Psychiatrist may implant cues that influence a target's actions without conscious awareness.
They may also use this ability on themselves to enter the Sea of Collective Subconscious.
Targets may be compelled to honor deeply rooted promises.
Awe (Dragon's Might, Mass Chaos):
Targets within range may panic, freeze, or descend into chaos, as if confronted by a dragon.
Resistance depends on mental fortitude and forewarning.
Placate (Psychoanalysis):
They may stabilize those on the brink of losing control.
Success depends on relative Sequence.
Placate may also be used to calm instability, facilitate communication, or awaken memories.
Physical Enhancements:
Overall physical attributes are improved.
Enhanced vision, night sight, heightened smell, increased health.
Strengthened Ability:
Body Language Analysis—can now be performed indirectly, even from images.
Adam laughed quietly.
'So I was right. Advancement through the Spell mirrors potion progression—no, closer to a Boon, directly engraved into the soul.'
A terrifyingly versatile power.
Non-lethal only in the narrowest sense.
Minds could be shattered. Souls reduced to silence. And no blade would ever be drawn.
He would need time to experiment.
Placating Corrupted beings?
Influencing Awakened?
Testing the limits of insanity itself?
There was much to learn.
But first, reality awaited.
The Spell whispered one final time:
[Wake up, True Creator!]
And in an instant, the star-filled void—along with the silver weave—vanished.
Adam returned to the waking world.
Deep beneath the Academy, on one of the restricted underground levels of the hospital complex, a small, sterile room lay sealed behind reinforced doors.
At its center stood a massive rectangular dream pod, its surface frosted with a thin layer of condensation. Beneath the transparent glass lid, a delicate girl with pale blond hair slept motionless, wisps of cold vapor curling around her serene face with every regulated breath.
For a long time, nothing changed.
Then, without warning, a series of indicator lights flared to life across the pod's surface. Medical equipment stirred, monitors chiming as dormant systems activated in rapid succession.
A heartbeat later, the girl's striking blue eyes flew open.
The first thing she did was scream.
High above the city, on the top floor of an exclusive private care facility, sunlight streamed through towering windows into a spacious, luxuriously furnished room. Polished surfaces gleamed softly, and the air carried the faint scent of fresh flowers arranged meticulously around a state-of-the-art sleeping pod.
Inside it lay a beautiful young man.
For three years, he had not moved.
For three years, not a single minute passed without supervision. Nurses rotated in silent shifts, flowers were replaced weekly, and diagnostic reports were reviewed obsessively.
Yet the young man never changed.
Until now.
The attending nurse, seated beside the pod, suddenly stiffened. Her eyes widened as the readings on her display spiked violently.
Before she could react, the sleeping pod erupted in brilliant white light. Its glass lid slid aside with mechanical precision, retracting into its housing.
The young man rose into the air.
He levitated, suspended as though held aloft by an unseen hand.
For several seconds, the nurse could only stare, frozen in disbelief. Then instinct returned all at once. She sprang from her chair and slammed her palm against the emergency call panel.
In a cramped apartment in one of the city's less prestigious districts, an aging dream pod occupied nearly the entirety of a tiny bedroom. Its casing was scratched and discolored, its design long obsolete—perhaps the last functioning unit of its kind.
Yet it was still the most expensive object in the apartment.
The bedroom door stood open, allowing the sound of a news broadcast to spill inside.
"…an unprecedented surge in simultaneous Awakenings," the confident voice announced. "Authorities are urging calm as representatives of the great Legacy Clans—"
The broadcast cut off mid-sentence.
Silence fell, heavy and oppressive.
Slow, hesitant footsteps approached the room.
Then, without warning, a fist slammed into the armored glass lid of the pod from the inside.
Cracks spiderwebbed outward with a sharp, metallic screech.
Back at the Academy, in a medical room identical to the first, the lights flickered violently.
Then they went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Something crashed to the floor with a thunderous clang, followed by a sharp intake of breath and a pained curse:
"Damnation!"
A moment later, the lights snapped back on.
A lithe young man with pale skin and dark hair stood amid overturned equipment, one hand braced against a medical monitor. His expression was disoriented, unfocused, as though he had been violently pulled from a dream he was not ready to leave.
The sleeping pod behind him was still sealed.
But it was empty.
Even deeper underground, far beyond the reach of casual access, lay another room.
It was larger than the others, its walls reinforced and its entrances guarded by layered security systems. The atmosphere inside was quiet—reverent, almost.
At its center stood a simple sleeping pod.
Beneath its transparent lid, a young woman with ivory skin and long silver hair slept peacefully, her expression untouched by fear or pain.
Outside, alarms echoed faintly through distant corridors. Personnel rushed, voices overlapped, and confusion spread like wildfire.
Inside the room, nothing changed.
The pod did not activate.
The machines did not stir.
Imprisoned within her glass coffin, the silver-haired girl continued to dream, as though bound by an unbreakable curse.
Sunny slowly opened his eyes.
For a few seconds, he simply lay there, staring at the ceiling as awareness returned piece by piece. The world felt… heavier. More solid.
Real.
He turned his head slightly, taking in the cramped space, the sterile white walls, the familiar hum of medical equipment.
"…Academy."
The realization struck him fully.
He was back.
He had returned to the waking world.
Alarms blared around him, red lights flashing across the surface of the sleeping pod. The lid remained closed, sealed tight.
Sunny frowned.
'Then how the hell did I get out?'
He pushed himself upright—and immediately froze.
Looking down, he realized he was completely naked.
"…Right."
Without hesitation, he summoned the Puppeteer's Shroud. Black threads slithered out of nothingness, weaving themselves into armor around his body. As the familiar weight settled onto his shoulders, Sunny exhaled slowly.
Much better.
Still, he had to forcibly suppress the instinctive urge to summon the Midnight Shard as well. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to arm himself.
But this wasn't the Dream Realm.
This was reality.
He needed to adjust.
The timing proved impeccable.
The door slid open, and a woman in a white coat rushed inside, clearly responding to the alarms. She took one look at Sunny—and stopped dead.
Her eyes widened in pure shock. A hand flew to her mouth as she struggled to suppress a scream.
Sunny blinked.
'What's wrong with her?'
Then he caught his reflection in the polished surface of a nearby medical console.
"…Oh."
His body was pristine, untouched by scars.
The Puppeteer's Shroud, however, told a very different story.
The silk armor was torn and frayed, soaked so thoroughly in dried blood that its original color was nearly impossible to discern. It looked less like armor and more like the remnants of something dragged through a battlefield.
Sunny cleared his throat, suddenly self-conscious. Forcing a smile, he spoke in a hoarse, unused voice—the voice of someone who had not spoken in over a year.
"Uh… hi. Could I maybe get some clean clothes?"
The woman stared at him for several long seconds before managing to speak.
"Slee—Awakened Sunless?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "Sir… you're awake?"
'Sir?'
Sunny grinned.
"I certainly hope so," he replied lightly. "I've been asleep for a year and two weeks."
The tension drained from the doctor's face all at once. Relief flooded her expression, followed by something else—wonder, awe, genuine admiration.
She straightened, smiling despite herself.
"Welcome back to the real world, sir."
Adam opened his eyes and stared blankly at the ceiling.
For a few long seconds, nothing registered. White panels. Soft lighting. A faint reflection of his own face distorted in the curved surface above him.
Then the glass lid of the capsule slid open with a muted hiss. Cold air rushed in, and noise flooded the room—alarms silenced, status indicators chiming, speakers embedded in the walls announcing system checks in calm, artificial tones.
Adam did not move.
His body felt impossibly heavy, as though every limb had been filled with molten lead and left to cool in place. He was awake—fully conscious—yet utterly unwilling to act. There was no urgency, no curiosity, no relief.
Only emptiness.
Just moments ago—or perhaps eternities—his soul had stood before the Spell. He had felt elevated, sharpened, exalted. Power had coursed through him, intoxicating and absolute. His thoughts had burned bright and feverish, his sense of self stretched thin by awe and satisfaction bordering on madness.
Now, back in the Waking World, that state was gone.
He was flesh and blood again.
And with it returned the version of himself he had left behind—the one eroded by Justice. The one scraped hollow by obligation, restraint, and expectation. Emotions dulled. Desires blunted. Everything unnecessary stripped away, piece by piece, until only function remained.
Adam wanted to go back.
The door slid open.
Footsteps entered the room—measured, careful. Adam did not turn his head, but he registered the presence of three people. One man in front, two women behind him.
A doctor. Two nurses.
They stopped several feet away.
Protocol.
No sudden movements. No approaching. No raised voices. An Awakened who had just returned from the Dream Realm was an unknown variable—unstable, potentially violent, possibly fractured beyond repair.
After all, no one could truly know what horrors had taken root in their mind.
The doctor cleared his throat softly.
"Sir Adam?"
The voice was low and controlled, like the ebb of a tide—calm, patient, deliberately unthreatening.
It was enough.
Something in Adam stirred.
His gaze shifted toward them, slow and deliberate. The moment his eyes focused, one of the nurses flinched and took an unconscious step backward.
She was an Awakened herself.
Where the doctor and the other nurse saw only a pale, blonde young man with an expressionless face, she felt something else entirely. For the briefest instant, an overwhelming pressure washed over her senses—a vast, swirling presence lurking behind Adam's eyes.
Gold, deep and ancient, churned beneath the surface of blue.
It was gone in less than a heartbeat.
The pressure vanished as if it had never existed. Adam's eyes settled into their natural color—clear blue, bright and unassuming, shimmering softly like cut diamonds beneath hospital lights.
"Hello?"
His voice was quiet. Gentle. Almost fragile.
It sounded like a child waking from a long, uncertain dream.
The contrast was jarring.
The nurse swallowed, forcing herself to remain still. The doctor exhaled subtly, mistaking the momentary tension for exhaustion rather than instinctive fear.
Adam continued to lie there, unmoving, staring at them without hostility or interest.
Empty.
And somewhere deep beneath that calm, something vast and patient waited.
The doctor hesitated for a moment, then stepped half a pace closer—still well outside arm's reach.
"Sir Adam," he said gently, "before anything else, I need to give you a brief overview of your condition and… circumstances."
Adam inclined his head slightly, granting permission.
"You have been asleep for two years and five months" the doctor continued. "Your vital signs remained stable throughout, but there was no neural activity indicating consciousness until just now. The Government and Academy...had labelled you as a Hollow."
Adam absorbed the information without visible reaction.
"However, shortly before you woke up," the doctor went on, choosing his words carefully, "a great deal changed. The situation surrounding the Forgotten Shore has… rjust been made awareto us. The Academy itself has been reorganized in order to deal with it, and while I am deeply regretful Ihave to say this, please remain within the premises while we try to undertsand what happened and gleam the full picture."
Adam's gaze drifted briefly, unfocused.
"And the others?" he asked quietly. "The Sleepers."
The doctor exchanged a glance with the two nurses before answering.
"Approximately thirty minutes before your Awakening," he said, "six hundred and thirty individuals were confirmed to have Awakened simultaneously. It is the largest recorded Awakening event in modern history."
That, finally, drew a reaction.
Adam's fingers twitched once against the edge of the capsule.
"So many…" he murmured. "Then they made it."
"Yes," the doctor nodded. "Many did. Not all—but more than anyone dared hope."
One of the nurses shifted, clearly uncomfortable.
"There is something else," the doctor added. "The reason the Government became aware of your Awakening almost immediately. Your name… and your role in the events on the Forgotten Shore, reached them shortly after the first Sleeper returned. Representatives are already en route to the Academy. They requested a full assessment of your condition."
Adam looked back at him, eyes calm.
"I see."
There was no surprise in his voice. No pride, either.
After a brief pause, he asked:
"Did anyone not wake up?"
The question landed heavily in the room.
The doctor did not answer at once.
His mouth opened—then closed again. His jaw tightened, and for a long moment, the only sound was the low hum of medical equipment.
Finally, he exhaled.
"…Yes."
Adam waited.
"Lady Changing Star," the doctor said softly. "She remains unconscious. There has been no neurological response, no indication of imminent Awakening. At present, she is still classified as missing in action."
The nurse beside him lowered her gaze.
Adam nodded.
Slowly.
As though he had been expecting nothing else.
"She didn't make it out," Adam said quietly.
All three adults stiffened.
The doctor looked up sharply. "Sir Adam—are you certain?"
Adam turned his head to look at them fully now. His expression remained composed, but there was a subdued gravity in his eyes.
"Yes."
The word was simple. Final.
"Lady Changing Star was too far away."
Silence followed.
Adam spoke again, his voice steady but tinged with something that might have been regret.
"When the Crimson Spire began to collapse, the Gateway destabilized. I was with another Sleeper at the time—injured. I barely managed to reach the Gateway before it fully formed."
He paused, as if recalling the image.
"Lady Changing Star was elsewhere," he continued. "She had gone ahead, trying to evacuate those who hadn't reached the Spire yet. She was still fighting when the structure fell."
The nurse covered her mouth.
"You're saying…" the doctor began, then stopped.
"That she chose not to retreat," Adam finished calmly. "Yes."
The room seemed smaller suddenly.
"She could have escaped," Adam added. "But she didn't. That was her nature."
The words carried no accusation. No bitterness. Only a quiet, resigned sorrow.
"For what it's worth," he said after a moment, "her actions saved many lives. More than will ever be officially recorded."
No one spoke.
The doctor's shoulders sagged slightly, the weight of the confirmation settling in. The nurses looked stricken, grief and disbelief etched into their faces.
Adam lowered his gaze.
"Lady Changing Star fulfilled her duty," he said softly. "And paid its price."
For the first time since waking, there was something unmistakably human in his voice.
Mourning.
The three medical personel looked at him with deep sympathy, and the Mundane nurse even had tears building up in her eyes. Noticing this, the dorcotr coughed and decided to end their conversation. "Sir Adam, please come with me while we prepare a better room for me. And I apologizeif this sounds rude but..." the doctor hesitated.
"D you have clothes?"
Adam blinked, then looked down to realise he was completely naked.
The hospital complex and the administrative wing of the Academy were in complete chaos.
The weeks following the winter solstice were always demanding for everyone working at the periphery of Awakened society. Traditionally, most Sleepers who ventured into the Dream Realm during the year returned within one or two weeks. A month was rare.
…Those who returned at all.
This year, however, that fragile rhythm had been shattered.
The sudden Awakening of hundreds of Sleepers who had been missing for years—officially declared lost, mourned, and quietly written off—sent shockwaves rippling through every layer of human civilization. Governments scrambled, Legacy Clans mobilized, and the Academy found itself at the epicenter of an unprecedented storm.
It was chaos.
Joyous chaos, but chaos nonetheless.
On the surface level of the hospital, in a modest administrative office reinforced with discreet security measures, a young woman sat behind a desk, hurriedly typing up a report. She wore black slacks and a crisp white blouse, her dark-brown hair pulled into a neat high ponytail. Thick glasses perched precariously on her nose, slipping down every few minutes and forcing her to push them back up with an absentminded gesture.
Her name was Teddy.
She was one of the Academy's administrative officers tasked with the initial debriefing of returning Sleepers—a role that placed her at the intersection of data, trauma, and fragile human lives.
She had heard incredible stories before.
She had heard horror stories.
And far too many heartbreaking ones.
But today was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Every Sleeper she interviewed was anomalous.
Every single one.
Their testimonies were so extreme, so far removed from anything previously recorded, that more than once Teddy had felt a fleeting urge to dismiss them outright. Yet she couldn't. The lie-detection systems embedded subtly within the walls ensured that deliberate falsehoods were nearly impossible.
And so she listened.
And typed.
And felt her blood run cold.
'Incredible…' she thought, fingers trembling slightly as they moved across the keyboard. 'They're all incredible.'
To survive for years in a region of the Dream Realm completely cut off from human territory—one infested with Nightmare Creatures far beyond what a Dreamer should ever face—was not merely rare.
It was miraculous.
The thought filled her with awe, compassion, and a fragile, hopeful pride.
Humanity had been handed an unexpected gift today.
When she finished the report and sent it to her superior, Teddy exhaled, straightened her glasses, and pressed the button on her desk.
The door slid open.
A young man with blonde hair, a smooth babyface still retaining proof of youth and startling blue eyes-wide and pure like a baby seeing the world for the first time- stepped inside.
Teddy had grown accustomed to interacting with people who were strikingly attractive—almost all Awakened possessed an otherworldly refinement. This young man was not the most remarkable among them, not by conventional standards.
And yet, for a moment, she found herself unable to look away.
A natural smile spread across her face before she even realized it.
There was something about him.
He was of medium height, with a slender, almost delicate build and rosy skin with the slightest gold tone. His blue eyes held both innocence and a deep sagicity beyong normal years. He walked gentle, yet with absolute precision that she had only seen in Awakened of many trials. Though she knew she was just an Awakened, he seized the room like an Ascended.
And beneath all that—
The bronze cross hanging around his neck was especially conspicious.
The young man smiled and sat down across from her.
Her smile widened in response, despite herself.
"Good day," Teddy said warmly. "My name is Teddy, and I'll be your interviewer today, Awakened… uh…"
She paused deliberately.
Of course, she already knew his name. His file was open on her screen, displaying every scrap of information the Academy possessed on him. But protocol—and basic decency—dictated that interviews begin gently.
'If even half of this is true,' she noted, glancing briefly at the file. 'Then the Great Clans will go crazy over him…'
The young man replied easily:
"Adam. Adam Gospel." He tilted his head. "Awakened Gospel sounds weird, though. Just call me Adam."
Teddy nodded, typing as she spoke.
"Very well, Adam. I'll be asking you a series of questions about your time in the Dream Realm. The goal is to improve our understanding and to determine how best to assist you going forward. Any information you provide could help future Dreamers—but you're free to decline answering anything you're uncomfortable with."
Adam nodded solemnly.
"I understand. I promise to be honest." He smiled faintly. "I'm a very honest person."
Teddy smiled and began.
"How long did you spend in the Dream Realm?"
He exhaled slowly.
"Two years and a half," he said. "Although… that number might not be completely accurate. We all struggled to keep track of time in there."
That matched the file.
'Gods, what hell did they go through…' she thought, heart tightening.
"You did very well," Teddy said encouragingly. "Especially considering you were sent to a region known as the Forgotten Shore."
Adam frowned, tighetning his brows as he looked down at the floor.
"Yeah. That's what we called it."
She typed quickly.
Teddy looked up from her screen, her expression carefully neutral as she asked the next question in a measured, professional tone.
"Based on other interviews, we believe the region you were sent to was populated primarily by Awakened-rank Nightmare Creatures and above. Can you confirm that assessment?"
Adam nodded slowly. His gaze drifted upward for a moment, as if he were looking past the ceiling and into something far away. Yet his posture remained steady, his breathing even. There was no tremor in his hands, no pallor in his face—none of the subtle signs of distress Teddy had learned to watch for.
"Awakened," he said calmly. "Fallen as well. Corrupted, too—though those mostly came out at night."
Teddy's fingers paused for the briefest fraction of a second above the pad before resuming their steady rhythm.
"I see," she said. "And did you engage such creatures in combat?"
"Yes."
The answer came without hesitation.
She glanced at the next line on her questionnaire. "How many did you kill?"
This time, Adam hesitated. His brow furrowed slightly as he tapped two fingers against his knee, the faint, repetitive motion suggesting calculation rather than discomfort. After a few seconds, he let out a quiet breath and shook his head.
"I can't recall the exact number," he admitted. "If I had to guess… around a thousand."
Teddy's typing slowed, but she did not interrupt.
"Though," Adam added evenly, "I was primarily in a support role. Athena, Gemma, and Sasrir did most of the heavy lifting."
Her fingers resumed their pace, recording his words with practiced precision. Outwardly, she remained composed. Inwardly, her thoughts raced.
'The daughter of Ki Song. Two Dreamers who were nobodies before the Forgotten Shore and came out infamous. And then there's that last name… if it can even be called a name.'
Teddy had already read dozens of reports over the past two weeks, piecing together fragments wherever she could. Six hundred and thirty Sleepers Awakening within half an hour of each other had overwhelmed even the Great Clans' administrative machinery. For once, the government's bureaucracy—vast, impersonal, and relentless—had proven better suited to the task.
Even so, the information was incomplete. Preliminary. Contradictory in places.
Still, a picture had begun to form.
Adam Gospel. Orphan. Biological parents unknown. Raised in a Christian orphanage from early childhood. Taken in as a disciple by an elderly Awakened whose name had surfaced in records only sporadically. Infected with the Nightmare Spell shortly after turning fifteen. Cleared his First Nightmare after several weeks—longer than average, but without incident.
Six months at the Academy. No outstanding combat scores. Instead, a heavy focus on survival courses, wilderness training, logistics. A cautious student, by all accounts.
His Aspect allowed him to perceive thoughts and emotions, enhancing his social intuition and interpersonal acuity. His Flaw remained undisclosed. Ranked in the lower-middle tier of Dreamers during his solstice intake—kept from the bottom only because his mentor had been a professional Awakened.
And then there was the anomaly.
Thirty months in the Dream Realm.
The Forgotten Shore.
Somehow, during that impossible stretch of time, Adam Gospel had not merely survived—he had become something else entirely. Reports spoke of him rallying hundreds of broken, half-mad Sleepers. Of organizing trainings, charities, holding settlements together through charisma and quiet authority rather than brute force. Of leading a Cohort that hunted and destroyed Fallen tyrants ruling over the ruined city and the Labyrinth beyond it.
He had befriended the daughter of Saint Song.
He had played a decisive role in overthrowing a tyrant who possessed a Transcendent Echo—an Echo that Adam Gospel now carried himself.
And finally, he had marched at the head of eight hundred Sleepers toward the Crimson Spire, fighting at the head alongside Changing Star.
And there he had revealed a Memory that was labelled as Ascended at the very least, but potentially even higher based on the overwhelming effects described.
His influence, according to those who spoke of it, had been subtler than hers—but no less profound.
Teddy swallowed, her eyes flicking briefly to the corner of the room. She knew, as did Adam probably did too, that they were not alone. Behind reinforced glass in an adjacent chamber, figures representing the government and the Great Clans were listening intently, parsing every word, every pause.
Yet even among all these revelations, one detail loomed above the rest.
The man who was always said to be at Adam Gospel's side.
The shadow that followed him everywhere. His blade and his shield. The one who had personally slain Gunlaug and made his Transcendent Echo flee in pain. The figure whispered about with equal parts fear and awe—the deadliest and most insidious killer in the entire Forgotten Shore, even counting the Corrupted abominations.
A man who, according to every database the government and the Great Clans possessed, had never been registered as a Sleeper at all.
And who had still not appeared.
Sasrir.
The questions that followed were measured, carefully polite, yet carried a subtle weight behind each word. Teddy was keenly aware of Adam's recent return from the Dream Realm—the blood-soaked nightmare that had stretched for over two years—and she made every effort to avoid the impression that the Government might be pressuring him too soon. Her tone was gentle, patient, and disarmingly conversational, as if speaking to a tired child rather than one of the most dangerous Awakened the Academy had ever cataloged.
Adam answered freely, though he maintained a deliberate understatement, downplaying the terrifying scope of his new power.
"My Aspect," he said, his voice even, "lets me make living creatures lose control over their emotions. Panic, fear, confusion—whatever you want to call it. But I don't think it would work on the undead, constructs, or anything inorganic."
Teddy made a careful note, her fingers pausing on the keyboard. She refrained from pressing him further on the subject of his Flaw, recognizing the delicate balance between information gathering and empathy. Adam sidestepped her probe gracefully, subtly guiding the conversation to safer topics.
For the next ten minutes, they spoke quietly, discussing the more procedural elements of the Awakening process, the adjustments to Academy protocols since the mass Awakening, and the psychological support available to those returning from the Dream Realm. Teddy allowed Adam to speak freely, listening to the way he framed his experiences, noting the calm, detached way he spoke of horrors that would have broken most people.
Finally, she lifted her hands from the keyboard, signaling the end of the session.
"Alright, Mr. Gospel," she said, her tone professional but warm, "I think we're done here. This offer should have been extended to you when you first arrived, but please know that we're always ready and willing to provide psychological treatment for any mental scars you may carry. Don't hesitate to reach out if you ever feel the need."
Adam inclined his head in acknowledgement, standing smoothly from the chair and extending a hand. "Thank you," he said, his voice steady. "In fact, I planned to visit someone immediately."
Teddy raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. "Oh? A fellow Sleeper? Or perhaps an outside friend? I'm afraid you can't leave the Academy yet, Mr. Gospel."
He shook his head, a faint smile curving his lips. "No, no," he said softly, his tone carrying a rare warmth. "They're already here. All three of them."
Actions↑ Top ← Previous Chapter Next Chapter → Comments (3)Kudosstringy70, Sereve67, Volboix, Shadow_of_Desire, Elikai, zecel, Shadow_of_Marethyu, Starving_Jabberwocky, CaesartheGreat, Helado_de_queso, TheStarWatcher, Eyeseau, ObviousGuy, D800, Clone112, OrfanTheOneAndMany, frugal_yoyo, FemRiddle_Enjoyer, uberslavik2012, Trookly, ThatOneDuck, o0Fed, sora_z1, Fortress_N9, Kurzgert, Dhestrya, Chipopo, jsregression, TurkishWasTaken, ButchersVanity, Tnccis, Rime_of_repose, Lotmthefox, King_ju, Thomasrojas1, Amon_010303, Can_not_think_of_a_name, Secime, libebebe, theycallmehelborne, Occult_Researcher, Dlomenic, paramont, Unramdo999, ThatOneBrother, randomnumnut, Ranobeshnich, spiritlibrarian18, Spelloyal, teem5611, and 177 more users as well as 672 guests left kudos on this work!
CommentsPost Comment