The scorching heat hit him first.
Soren opened his eyes to the expansive, strangely blue sky looming over him.
Sweat soaked the back of his neck and the dark green cloak that felt suffocating against his skin.
He blinked, rubbing his face with a trembling hand.
“Ugh,” he heard his own mouth groan, weakly fanning himself on instinct.
“It’s so damn hot out here.
Do we seriously have to wear these damn cloaks?”
He rolled onto his stomach, heart hammering violently against his ribs.
He scooched over to the edge of the roof and pressed the crystal communicator nestled in his ear.
“It’s so damn hot, Shindo,” Soren echoed faintly, thinking the heat was the source of the jitters.
“I’d rather end myself than wear this for one more moment.”
Below him, leaning against the alley wall, stood Shindo.
Golden hair flowing past his shoulders and into the cloak that was drawn tight, looking peac—.
Well, Soren couldn’t quite see his expression as it was quite mosaic, but he merely attributed it to the shadows.
“Can you shut your mouth for one moment?” Shindo replied, his voice flat.
“I’m not going to deal with your complaining.”
A burning warmth flooded his chest.
Soren chuckled before he froze.
The conversation he had with Shindo was entirely too similar to a conversation he could’ve sworn he had just minutes ago.
Suspicious, he decided to test something.
“So what?
You have to admit that it’s a great plan,” he said, echoing the words that flowed right out of mouth.
“We’ll snag the riches and become the rich ourselves!”
Silence followed, almost as if Shindo was waiting for something before he said something chilled Soren to his bone.
‘You’re so dumb.
It’s risky enough going for the guard’s sword but you want to steal the money pouch right next to it?
Dumbass.’ Soren predicted.
“You’re so dumb.
It’s risky enough going for the guard’s sword but you want to steal the money pouch right next to it?
Dumbass.” Shindo said.
A cold sweat, entirely distinct from the smoldering heat of Genesity, broke out across his forehead.
Every word, every movement, every breath—he had just lived this.
He remembered the giant guard catching his bolt.
He remembered Malphas’s betrayal.
And he remembered that the Emperor was reduced to a shriveled husk before a sphere of void-black consumed Genesity whole.
It was an Order Break.
According to his limited knowledge that he accumulated from word of mouth, Order Breaks were disasters beyond the scale of natural ones.
It happens from the specialized deaths of those climbing the Orders of Ascensions and from what he saw killed the Emperor, an Ascender—those climbing the Orders—of high rank killed him.
An assassin in the midst of the Grand Coronation.
Soren felt his heart drop as he realized what the hell was going on.
He was in an Order Break and the thing impersonating as Shindo was likely an Abyssal Creature—a creature that roamed the Abyss within Order Breaks.
He pressed his lips together in an attempt to prevent any unwanted sounds from coming out and thinked.
If he was going to survive the Abyssal Creature and see the next day, he’d have to prevent the creature from knowing anything was wrong by following the script.
“Ahaha,” he chuckled nervously, wincing at the weak acting.
“Oh so stoic Shindo got mad at little ol’ me.
Relax.
Everyone will be looking at the Grand Stage when we go in.”
Below in the alleyway, Soren saw ‘Shindo’ remain entirely still.
He didn’t look up or make any movements that a real human would make.
He just stood frozen against the wall like a marionette with its strings cut.
Soren’s pulse raced as he moved to stop looking at the thing.
He slowly lifted his binoculars to his eyes and looked towards the distant street where the giant guard was supposed to be sleeping.
Through the heavily magnified lenses, the guard lay face-down on the bench, snoring loudly.
But as Soren focused, the chest wasn’t rising nor falling and the face was mosaic, much like the fake Shindo’s face was.
‘This isn’t real,’ Soren thought, mind racing as he thought of the variables that added up.
‘This is some sort of sick illusion that’s messing with my mind.’
The sky above him suddenly flickered before the brilliant blue produced a small crack, revealing a sliver of a lightless void bleeding through the fracture.
“Child of Vulcanis…” The Emperor’s magically amplified voice suddenly echoed.
However, the speech glitched, repeating over itself:
“Children of… Children of… look upon me…”
Soren took a cautious breath as he looked at the shattered sky, grimacing at the throbbing in his head that came with it.
He attempted to continue the script to find a way out.
“The idiot is even sleeping on the job!
Literally nothing can get more perfect than today.”
Down in the alley, ‘Shindo’ didn’t deliver his next line.
Instead, an unnatural, bone-crunching crack came from the alleyway.
Soren’s breath hitched as he turned to look at the ledge of the rooftop.
Heavy thuds thumped against the wall as Soren slowly backed away from the ledge, trying to distance himself from the monstrosity that was coming.
An arm extended beyond the ledge, twisted and broken.
It hauled a mass of dark, grotesque flesh that was warped with faux human flesh over the stone with an unsettling, janky motion.
The entity stood up, but it no longer looked like Shindo.
The green cloak ripped apart as multiple jointed limbs tore from its torso while the body swelled in size.
When Shindo’s face had been, there was now only a smooth, featureless oval of dark, reflective glass.
“You went off-script, Soren,” a voice reverberated around the creature’s body, stripped of all humanity.
Soren scrambled backwards on his feet, the coarse basalt thudding against his boots.
Terror clawed at his throat as he met a creature beyond humans—An Abyssal Creature.
He couldn’t fight this nightmare here and certainly not as an unawakened.
“Get the hell away from me!” He yelled, hands going inside his cloak.
“I swear to the Heavenly Angel!”
The monstrosity tilted its head, taking steps towards Soren while raising its six arms.
The reflective glass warped until a face appeared grinning—Shindo’s.
The monstrosity lunged, all six razor-sharp limbs outstretched to mince Shindo into countless pieces.
Soren didn’t dodge.
He brought the crossbow out of his cloak rigged with a bolt and squinted through the crosshair with one eye, looking straight at ‘Shindo’s’ face.
“Eat this, dumbass.”
The iron bolt flew before it slammed into the Abyssal, shattering the glass face into thousands of shards.
The dream creature let out an unnatural, ear-splitting shriek of static as its hold on Soren’s consciousness shook.
The false blue sky cracked even further, exposing the pitch-black void sky above them even more.
It staggered back, flailing its arm and cradling its shattered face.
It stepped backwards until it slipped and fell back into the alleyway.
It screeched as it fell until it landed with a thud, groaning in pain with Shindo’s voice.
Soren glanced upwards to see if the sky changed at all but found that it didn’t, sighing at the sight.
However, he assumed that if he killed the dream creature then it would shatter the sky and free him from the nightmare.
Although he’d love to kill it right now, he wasn’t brash enough to think that he could kill the abomination without a weapon.
He was witty and resourceful, not suicidal.
He put those charming traits of his to use, whacking his mind to think of anything that could possibly give him a lethal edge before smacking himself in the forehead.
‘The royal guard’s sword!’ He finally realized, looking out the entrance of the alleyway.
‘If I manage to run past the monster, then I could sprint over to the royal guard and take the sword.’
Soren walked to the edge and peered down, catching a glimpse of the Abyssal Creature sprawled across the stone ground.
Although a normal person would suffer heavy traumatic injuries from the five-story fall, the creature seemed more hurt from the bolt to the face rather than fall.
It was already starting to orient itself, ripping the bolt out of its face and using its six arms to push itself up.
Soren didn’t have any time to waste so he looked at the alleyway and looked at the building around him.
After thinking about it, he shook his head in exasperated disbelief at what he was going to do.
He took a step back before running and jumped off the building, right into the opposite building.
He landed against the opposite building’s wooden pillar, sliding down until he launched himself back, landing into the fabric awning below him.
He crashed through the awning and onto the ground where he groaned out in pain.
“Curses,” he moaned, clutching his bruised ribs as he stumbled back to his feet.
“I am never doing that again.”
Looking behind him, he saw the Abyssal Creature back on its feet, staggering around as it used its six arms to stabilize itself.
It looked up, noticing Soren looking at it, and glowered, its shattered reflection promising death on him.
Without a second thought, Soren spun on his heels and sprinted down to the exit of the alleyway.
He burst out into the empty streets and ran as fast as his legs could carry him, the sounds of heavy footsteps echoing closer behind him every moment.
Up ahead, resting face-down was the giant royal guard.
Beside his waist rested the weapon that he and Shindo planned to steal.
Soren didn’t slow down.
He threw himself across the bench and reached down, gripping the guard’s heavy broadsword by the leather hilt and pulled it free with a sharp metallic clang.
The guard didn’t react as everything in the world was artificially created by the Abyssal Creature who didn’t have the entropy to manipulate the finer details.
The moment his fingers locked around the hilt, the weapon reacted to the dreamscape.
The polished steel of the blade rippled like liquid metal, warping into a silver, metallic glass that shimmered with a tranquil sheen.
Looking down at the blade, Soren saw no reflection of himself but the reflection of the monster rushing him from behind.
He felt something pulse on his chest but ignored it.
The Abyssal Creature screeched, lunging at him with all six arms that sought blood.
Soren turned, planted his feet into the stone, and swung the glassy broadsword with everything he had.
The blade cut through the air with an effortless, weightless precision that a heavy broadsword shouldn’t possess.
It cleaved straight through two of the monster’s reaching limbs before driving deep into the center of its torso.
He screamed, putting all his strength into the strike as the sword cut the creature in half.
“Dream’s over,” Soren growled, raising the sword and impaling it straight through its head, completely shattering its face.
The sky above shattered into millions of tiny fractures before the blue expanse gave way to the pitch-black void.
The false blue atmosphere and the burning heat peeled away into nothing.
Soren gasped violently as cold air flooded his lungs, making him cough uncontrollably.
The sweltering heat of Vulcanis was gone, replaced by an unnatural chill.
He no longer found himself standing on a sunny street where he killed the Abyssal Creature anymore.
Now, he was on his side on a basalt roof, covered in dust and soot.
Soren sat up, groaning as his body protested, but his hands remained tightly wrapped around a weapon.
Resting in his grip was the actual, physical broadsword he had stolen from the royal guard—its blade transformed into a silver, mirror-like glass that rippled quietly in his hand.
Soren grinned slightly at the sight.
Abyssal Creatures either dropped their nothing, their entropy, or an item and the dream sword was the latter.
It was definitely an Abyssal Weapon—a weapon dropped by Abyssal Creatures on death—and anything that was an Abyssal Item sold for a lot of money in the black markets.
However, his mood instantly vanished as soon as he looked up.
Above him stretched a lightless, terrifying void veined with faint purple auroras.
Around him, massive fragments of the shattered city of Genesity floated, suspended in the dark expanse like isolated islands.
And below him lay the Starlight Abyss that seemed to contain the entire universe within its expanse.
He was in the Abyss.