Everything went still.
Time slowed.
The fireball hovered in the Divine General's palm—glowing, monstrous—seconds from devouring Kael whole.
His fate should have been sealed.
But then—
Kael smiled.
Not out of madness.
Out of certainty.
The General saw it.
That quiet, unsettling smirk through bloodstained lips.
And it confused him.
That hesitation was all Kael needed.
He whispered, soft as falling water:
"Dreamweaver... First Form."
The world fractured.
A ripple split across space itself, and reality cracked like glass under a whisper.
***
Darkness.
That was the first thing the General saw.
He blinked, breath caught in his throat.
This wasn't a domain.
This wasn't magic.
It was wrong.
A palace made of shifting shadows loomed around him.
Alien geometry twisted endlessly into the void.
The ground pulsed.
The sky had no stars.
The rules were broken.
Then—
He fell.
A sudden, endless drop.
The wind howled in his ears.
He hit the ground like a corpse from heaven.
CRACK.
The General screamed—pain tearing through every nerve.
Then—
BOOM. BOOM.
Two meteors crashed down from the dream-sky, slamming into him with soul-shattering force.
His body shattered.
Pain. Pure. Blinding.
He should have died.
But the next moment, he was whole again—intact, unharmed.
Except… he could stillfeel the pain.
It lingered in his nerves like a ghost.
Because this wasn't real.
He was trapped in Kael's Dreamrealm.
He tried to fight.
Tried to wake up.
Tried to move.
But torment came in waves.
Fire devoured his skin.
Ice froze his blood.
He was flayed.
Drowned. Crushed. Impaled.
Each death worse than the last.
Each moment longer than the one before.
And his body?
It reset.
Again.
And again.
And again.
"Boy!"he roared into the void.
"What kind of hell is this?! What tricks are you pulling?!"
No answer.
Only more agony.
***
Outside, in the ruined chamber, Kael trembled violently.
Blood streamed from his eyes.
A nerve in his face burst, leaking crimson across his jaw.
His breath came ragged.
Limbs shaking. His body was failing.
Yue clutched him, frantic.
"Kael, STOP—what are you doing?!
You'll die if this goes on!
RELEASE HIM!"
He didn't answer.
Couldn't.
He was only a Rank 1 mage.
He had no right to pull a Rank 3 into a Dreamrealm—not without consent.
Not without consequence.
This wasn't just spellcraft anymore.
This was a battle of willpower.
Whoever broke first would lose.
***
Inside the Dreamrealm, the General screamed in agony.
He had been burned alive.
Frozen. Torn apart.
Crushed by gravity.
Drowned in poison.
Thousands of deaths.
Each one more real than the last.
Time stretched.
Sanity cracked.
He wept.
Begged.
And finally—
He broke.
"ENOUGH!" he howled into the blackness.
"I ACCEPT MY DEFEAT! I YIELD! STOP THIS NIGHTMARE!"
And with those words—
The Dreamrealm shattered.
Like a mirror dropped on stone.
***
The fireball in his hand vanished.
The chamber returned.
The General collapsed to his knees, drenched in sweat, breath ragged.
Kael lay slumped against the stone, his chest rising and falling in shallow gasps, barely clinging to life.
Blood streamed from his eyes, his body a mangled wreck, each breath a struggle.
Then—
BOOM.
The tunnel erupted with an earth-shaking explosion, the walls shuddering under the force.
Yue's head whipped toward the sound, panic twisting her already fragile composure.
"No… no, no, no—"
Without a moment's hesitation, she sprang into the air, a ghostly blur through the cold, dark stone.
Her heart—if she still had one—pounded in her chest.
She reached the corridor in seconds, and the sight before her made her stomach drop.
The heavy vault door—shattered.
A pile of scorched metal and stone lay in ruins, and through the smoke, figures emerged.
Shadows that radiated dark power.
Rank 3 mages.
More than half a dozen.
Their presence oppressive, like the weight of the world pressing down.
Yue froze, heart racing, her mind whirling with fear.
"This... This can't be happening..."
They had breached the vault.
And with Kael in no state to fight, they were already too close.
She spun around, flying back through the tunnel, her voice tight with urgency.
"Kael! Kael, wake up—"
She burst into the chamber, panic thick in the air.
But as she flew to his side, something stopped her—something strange caught her eye.
Kael's hand, still clutching a strange object.
Aglass bottle.
It hadn't been there before.
It shimmered in the dim light, golden liquid glowing faintly within, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Yue blinked, confused, staring at the object in his hand.
It seemed to have appeared from nowhere.
"What... what is this?" she murmured, her thoughts a chaotic storm.
This was the Rank 4 healing potion Kael had just retrieved from the system.
Yue didn't understand how it worked.
How it appeared.
All she knew was that in this moment, with mages closing in on them, there was no time for questions.
She shook herself out of the daze.
"Kael—they're coming.
We need to move—NOW."
Kael's hand, shaking from exhaustion and pain, moved with startling precision.
He took a single, careful sip from the bottle, then sealed it again in a quick motion.
Without hesitation, he tossed it to the General.
The glass bottle sailed through the air, a quiet arc in the tense silence.
Despite his blindness, the General's senses were razor-sharp.
He reached out, fingers brushing the air with an almost unnatural accuracy, catching the vial in one swift motion.
Kael's voice cut through the quiet:
"Drink."
The General hesitated for just a moment, then uncorked the bottle.
He sniffed it.
The scent hit him first—potent, sweet, almost too sweet.
"Healing potion…" The General muttered under his breath, though he was careful not to show weakness.
"This will not affect me this quickly…"
But as the liquid poured into him, something unnatural happened.
The warmth spread through his body, and the agony of his injuries—the shattered limbs, the broken bones, the mangled flesh—began to recede.
His muscles unwound.
His joints cracked, realigning with a sickening pop.
His body felt like it was being remade, restored.
The mages arrived, their footsteps heavy on the stone floor.
Their eyes widened at the sight before them.
The General, once a broken, tortured shell, stood tall, reborn in an instant.
His eyes—both of them—returned, gleaming with the fierce light of someone who had been pulled back from the brink of death.
His legs, once ruined, now moved with flawless precision.
Every mark of his cruel torture, every burn, every scar that had marred his skin—gone.
He stood there, unrecognizable.
A warrior restored.
And then he opened his eyes, those newly healed eyes.
His gaze swept over the room, taking in the faces of those around him.
He blinked, as if seeing for the first time.
His thoughts reeled.
Who was this child?
This boy, bold enough to make even the mighty Divine General kneel—to make him drink from a vial of magical healing in his moment of weakness?
The General's gaze flickered, then froze.
Before him, standing in the shadows, was Kael.
The boy—bloodied, broken—was barely alive.
His veins, once vessels of magic and power, now burst with blood, his skull a cracked mess.
Blood poured from his eyes in rivers of crimson.
He was crying, eyes clouded with agony, yet he was grinning.
The smile stretched across his face, wide and unsettling—grinning at the General as if he were the victor, not the one broken and dying.
The General's eyes widened in shock, his breath hitching.
He had felt the power of the potion, had experienced his own rebirth, but now… this?
This boy—this wreck—was still alive, still grinning, still staring at him as if he were nothing.
The General's thoughts shattered.
"What… What are you?"
He wasn't sure if it was the potion still swirling in his veins or the sheer impossibility of Kael's smile, but in that moment, the Divine General, the very terror of Velmora, felt a gnawing unease deep within his chest.
And that, more than anything, was what unsettled him the most.