Arthur dreamed of a structure suspended in the void.
From the outside, as if he didn't belong there, he watched what his mind tried to arrange as an endless corridor. It wasn't really a corridor, but a succession of spaces connected by floating portals, each separated from the next by impossible distances. From that forced perspective, everything looked aligned, but Arthur felt that each zone existed at a different point in space and time.
The first thing he saw was decay.
The closest section appeared as a cracked stone chamber. Four figures rose within, barely recognizable as statues. Their surfaces were eroded, fragmented, as if time had been chewing at them for centuries. Parts were missing, others were deformed, and distinguishing their original forms was difficult. They didn't transmit threat, only abandonment.
Beyond that, through the next portal, stretched a dead forest. Tall, bare trees, with blackened trunks and broken branches. The ground was covered in dry remains, with no trace of life. Everything there seemed frozen in a post-collapse state, as if something had happened a long time ago and had never been repaired.
The third zone barely held its form. Large stone fragments floated irregularly, remnants of what once was a floor. The surfaces were cracked, the edges worn, and any hint of color had been erased by time. The remains looked more like ruins than structures.
The last room remained intact.
It was a massive chamber, silent, covered by a thin layer of dust suspended in the air. In its center, an altar rose, and behind it, a throne. On the throne, a seated figure remained still. It showed no signs of deterioration, as if the passage of time hadn't touched it.
Then, time began to reverse.
It wasn't a sudden motion, but a constant and silent inversion. Cracks closed, statues recovered missing fragments, forms defined themselves. The gray forest changed: the ground regained color, sprouts emerged, the air grew dense, alive. Trees that once were dead rose covered in leaves. Scattered fragments returned to their places, platforms reassembled, and colors were reborn.
Millions of years seemed to compress into seconds.
Finally, the reversal stopped.
Arthur was no longer watching from the outside.
He was standing in a space that existed before everything he had seen. There were no walls or structures, only an open expanse that seemed to never end. In the center, a fountain reflected a soft light with no clear origin.
In front of him, suspended in the void, there was a single portal. It emitted no sound or visible energy.
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]
Standing in the last room the vision had shown him, Arthur checked his surroundings for any threat. Nothing. He started inspecting his body: it was in good condition, with proportions practically identical to his real ones.
He also felt something strange every time he moved, like when someone moves near you and you feel the air pushing against your skin, but it wasn't air. It was something more essential, instinctive, tied to the nature of the world. Hard to explain.
Taking advantage of that weird sense and the fact the room seemed relatively safe, Arthur decided to summon his runes. With just the thought of "status", text appeared in front of him.
Name: Arthur Leywin
True Name: —
Rank: Aspirant
Soul Core: Inactive
Memories: —
Echoes: —
Attributes: [Born of Aether], [Residual Echo], [Djinn Descent]
Aspect: [Aether Resonance]
Aspect Description: [Your soul does not generate power on its own. Instead, it reacts instinctively to irregularities in the world. You perceive subtle distortions in space, matter, and essence, as if something invisible were vibrating out of place. You cannot control these resonances, only feel them.]
'Well, that's not too bad. Explains this weird feeling... it's like having a sixth sense. I'll have to test it to see how far it goes,'
Attribute: [Born of Aether]
Description: [Your existence was not formed outside the Aether, but in coexistence with it. You don't understand or control it, but your soul recognizes it as an environment that existed before any learning, something that never needed explanation.]
'So it's not something I need to learn from scratch. It's not a hidden power waiting to awaken either. It's more like a baseline, like my starting point is different from everyone else,'
Attribute: [Residual Echo]
Description: [Remnants of a previous existence persist in your soul, not as memories, but as behaviors. Under pressure, decisions you don't remember learning emerge without you knowing where they came from.]
'A previous existence? That's confusing as shit,'
Attribute: [Djinn Descent]
Description: [You descend from those who sought to understand the world before dominating it. Their affinity with Aether was considered a threat, and for that, they were erased. From them, you did not inherit power, but the ability to feel what the world tries to hide.]
'Djinn? Maybe it's related to the [Residual Echo] thing. Maybe that previous existence was one of those Djinn,'.
In summary: his aspect and attributes gave him affinity with something called Aether, which must be what helped with this sixth sense. What he didn't get was how he could have affinity with something he couldn't control or understand. The [Residual Echo] attribute gave him a bit of vertigo: having remnants of another existence in his soul wasn't great. They acted like instincts under pressure.
In all the books he'd read, Arthur had never seen the word Djinn. "You descend from those who sought to understand the world before dominating it." That phrase bothered him. It implied they could dominate the world if they wanted, but they were erased. How do you erase someone capable of that? They were either taken by surprise or they were peaceful. Because otherwise Arthur didn't see how they disappeared without leaving a trace.
He hesitated between training a bit to adapt to this sense or reflecting on the nightmare, but for the second he lacked information, and for the first there was a better approach.
Arthur decided overthinking wasn't going to get him anywhere. The best way to learn the theory was by practicing it, he guessed. It felt more like an excuse than an actual strategy, but he had to do something. The problem was something else: how the hell was he supposed to kill four monsters without a weapon? Just him, his body, and this new Aether sense he still didn't understand.
'For fuck's sake, not even a rock to throw at them,'
He took a deep breath and walked toward the room. Crossing the portal, the hall was so silent it felt like it swallowed any sound. The four chimeras were still there: lined up like statues, waiting for someone to activate them. They didn't move. That calm didn't reassure him. Arthur advanced. The air felt heavy, like it compressed around him. The chimeras were in different degrees of deterioration, yet they seemed more alive than him.
When Arthur finally stood in front of one, the first one moved.
There was no roar or warning. It went from still to lunging at him. It was about three meters tall, two legs thick like pillars supporting it and four sinewy arms: the lower two hung lifeless, but moved when needed, like bony whips. The upper arms were more robust, ready to tear apart. Its fingers looked like semi-transparent claws, like sharpened bone breaking through old flesh. Its head was a mix of feline and reptile, but it had lateral gills that opened and closed as if breathing in two realities at once. Yellow eyes, no eyelids.
'It moves way too fast for something that big, holy shit,'
Dodging to the side, its claws passed inches from him. His skin crawled. Not from fear, but because something inside him reacted before his brain. Residual Echo and the Aether sense. It was like he knew where the attack was coming from before seeing it, a vibration in his muscles anticipating the movement.
Arthur started dodging. The chimera attacked without technique, but with enough force to pulverize him if it landed. Looking for openings, he realized it didn't matter since he had nothing to use to exploit them. Still, he refused to give up and kept dodging by a hair, some movements more fluid than others, like his body was adapting to its speed and fighting style. It was undoubtedly a dormant monster.
He didn't know how long he kept going, dodging and moving back, but it felt like a full minute. His legs started to burn, his breathing turned frantic. And just when Arthur thought he could keep up and adapt to the first chimera, the second one rose.
It was thinner, like its body had been stretched. It had two normal arms and two others made of tense tendons, almost like whips. Its steps were irregular, and every time its feet hit the ground, it trembled. Its skin was covered in dark marks that looked like veins, but moved like worms under the surface.
'What an ugly bastard,'
Now there were two attacking him.
The pressure was immediate. His body reacted, but his thoughts didn't arrive in time.
'If this isn't pressure, then I don't know what the fuck could be,'
The Residual Echo attribute was already active, but now its efficiency and reaction speed were way higher. He didn't feel it. He didn't feel anything except his heartbeat and the strange flow of Aether moving, following the chimera's attack patterns.
However, being between two creatures gave Arthur an unexpected advantage. They got in each other's way. Every time one attacked, the other had to adjust, making them less precise. Between a clash of claws and a clumsy move, he saw the first real opening: the big chimera exposed its side for a second.
Arthur threw himself into a punch, just using his weight. It sounded like hitting an immovable wall. Not even a crack, not a grunt. Nothing. The hit was useless. He tried to step back, but it was already too late. One of the chimera's arms hit his torso. The impact lifted him from the ground and threw him several meters back. The hit knocked the air out of him.
'Great… I can't even scratch them and I'm the one getting wrecked,'
Supporting himself on the wall to avoid falling, he managed to stand. The Aether sense flooded his brain, too much information at once, and his current state didn't help at all. Meanwhile, the chimeras kept advancing.
Arthur looked for something that could give him an advantage, but there was nothing. The only thing he noticed was that the blow had sent him flying close to the portal.
Without really knowing why, his first instinct was to run to the portal, hoping he could return to the previous room to recover and make some kind of plan.
Luckily, his instinct was right, because when he reached the portal the two chimeras were towering over him, about to attack, and before they could do more damage, he crossed the portal and returned to the previous room. It looked like a waiting room or something like that, since the chimeras didn't follow. If they had, he would've died for sure.
'Thank god, because another hit like that and I'm going straight to heaven with zero chance of doing anything,' Arthur thought.