"Asterion."
"Why do I hear my name?" Aster thought to himself. The call was soft and almost inaudible in a suffocating silence. But slowly, it grew louder.
"Asterion."
It came again, this time almost deafening. Whoever the voice belonged to sounded panicked, screaming the name like the world depended on it…
And maybe it did?
For a moment, the call didn't feel directed at him. The call was still deafening, but now bearable enough to be endured.
That's when he realised that he couldn't see.
The world around him couldn't be perceived with sight. It was bleak and born of darkness.
He panicked, desperately wondering what had gone wrong. He hadn't remembered losing his eyes… so why was he blind?
In a frenzy, he attempted to perceive the world through any other means of sensory experience apart from his hearing, but found himself incapable.
He felt bare…
…and to an extent, void.
Like something that existed outside the fundamental laws that governed reality.
The call came again, louder than ever, drowning the darkness around him with a single name.
'Asterion.'
Followed by it was a cacophony of screaming metal, like a thousand swords clashing at once.
He felt his eardrums—or rather, what he could perceive of them—bleed under the chaos.
He could hear distorted screams and pleas of a million voices, bled into one, their cries threatening to tear his mind apart.
But with all the pain, he couldn't look away.
It wasn't that he didn't want to—
…but he found himself unable to drown out the agonised wails.
Slowly, he felt a chill spread through his void-like being.
He could feel again.
But rather than be happy, his mind bore the weight of the torture that came with it.
The world around him was enveloped in an unfathomable chill, and yet at the same time, it was blazing hot.
Both contradicting climates battled over the world's dominance, making a part of Aster's body feel as cold as a corpse and another like it was doused in flames.
He dropped to his knees, his hands scraping the ground in an attempt to find something—anything—that could release him from this torment.
The ground felt muddy, and the terrain felt very off.
This wasn't any of the streets he had grown accustomed to.
Where the hell was he?
Still disoriented by the muddy terrain, his ability to perceive the world through smell crashed into him all at once.
Countless scents barraged him, but one came with an overwhelming presence.
For some reason, he found his mind innately capable of discerning what it was.
The stench of blood.
The world around him was bleeding, dying, and if it wasn't for the distorted voices and continuous ring of metal that plagued his mind…
Aster would have concluded that it was dead.
Everywhere he turned was plagued with the stench of death, and for reasons unknown, he was at its centre.
"Asterion."
He heard his name, but as usual, the innate feeling that the call wasn't directed at him clouded his broken mind.
The world began to grow restless.
The agonised wails and screams had grown more frantic, desperate to end their suffering.
The echoing ring of metal rejuvenated once more in one final attempt.
The torture of having his body frozen and burnt had grown absolute, and the world finally drowned in the dark stench of death.
Everything was coming to an end.
And after all he had experienced and endured…
He didn't witness anything of the dying world.
With a yelp, a black-haired boy fell from his makeshift bedding and onto the damp stone floor.
The first rays of morning sunlight that leaked through the broken ceiling rested on his face and gave his slightly tanned skin a golden hue.
His dark lashes flickered, the intrusion of light disrupting his not-so-peaceful slumber.
The lashes parted to reveal his attractive yet piercing green gaze.
Aster had woken up.
He groaned, pulling his aching body from the cold floor to a sitting position.
His eyes seemed lost, slowly taking in and registering his environment.
He tried to think, but his mind felt slow, uneasy.
Like he had been in reality… and all this was currently a dream.
But slowly, everything began to come back to him.
Pieces of his disoriented consciousness began to fit back together.
He remembered the dream.
The wails, the battle, the stench— all of it felt more real than reality itself.
The slight call of his name still lingered in his mind for a moment, and even in reality, it didn't feel like it was meant for him.
Aster looked around, taking in the familiar surroundings.
His shack had remained the same. Its broken wooden ceiling and uneven stone walls, with growing moss, hadn't exactly changed much over a single night.
If anything, they were a little damp from the morning dew.
He stood up, his demeanour slightly composed for someone who had suffered both physical and mental torture a few moments ago in the depths of his consciousness.
Well… why wouldn't he be?
As disastrous as it had been… this wasn't the first time he had suffered under its twisted reality.
Eventually, he had begun to grow less helpless than before.
He could remember it all too clearly.
The first of them—he had felt nothing.
Just the soul-crushing thought that he had died.
The world around him couldn't be interacted with by any of his senses.
He was bare.
Void.
The second of them, he had finally regained the ability to hear.
Although, he always remained baffled whenever his mind was forcefully pulled into its depths.
He could never predict it, nor prepare mentally for the torture.
It came and left like it had a mind of its own.
There was no pattern.
It could take days, weeks… or years before the next one.
And eventually, he had grown slightly accustomed to it.
After finding out the dreams weren't something others experienced, he had concluded that, maybe, it was just the nature of his reality.
The forceful plunge into the second dream had left him with something—
a name from which he derived his own.
There had never been family to name him.
As far as he could remember, he had been called 'brat' or 'boy' for the better part of his current life.
So in its own twisted sense, the dreams had been the ones to name him.
And to them, he also gave a name.
'The call of Asterion.'