"...Me?"
The word sounded ridiculous the moment it left his mouth.
Yet the man standing before him gave him no reason to think otherwise.
Severin studied him again, taking in the older features and the familiar expression. It was like looking into a mirror that showed him a version of himself from years into the future.
Except this version of him looked completely at ease in a world that had been reduced to ruins.
And that smile...
Severin wasn’t sure he liked that smile.
He glanced around the valley.
The endless sea of skulls.
The broken weapons.
The ruined city.
The castle that had seemed so strangely familiar.
Then he looked back at the man.
A possibility slowly began to take shape in his mind.
What if this wasn’t a dream?
What if he was seeing something that hadn’t happened yet?
A glimpse of the future, perhaps?
Or maybe this was something else entirely.
He looked into the man’s silver eyes once more.
’Could this be what happens when I lose control of Curse Mode?’
The thought lingered for a moment before another possibility occurred to him.
What if he was dead?
He had already died once before. Somehow, he had been given another chance at life, along with a new body.
It wasn’t as though the idea of dying again was completely beyond the realm of possibility.
Still, Severin found it difficult to believe that he would end up like this.
Sitting on a throne in the middle of a ruined world?
Surrounded by enough skulls to make an entire kingdom’s worth of graveyards look small?
And smiling like a lunatic?
That was a rather unpleasant future to consider.
"If I’m dead..." Severin murmured, looking at the older version of himself, "then what exactly is this place?"
For the first time, the man reacted.
A quiet laugh escaped his lips.
It began as a low chuckle, but there was something unsettling about the sound. It echoed through the valley, growing louder until it seemed to come from every direction at once.
Severin frowned.
"What’s so funny?"
The man’s grin widened.
And then the world began to shake.
The ground trembled beneath Severin’s feet. Cracks spread across the valley, cutting through the dark earth and splitting apart the piles of skulls.
In the distance, the ruined buildings began collapsing one after another.
Severin stumbled as the ground shifted beneath him.
"What the hell?!"
Above them, the crimson moon seemed to grow larger. The clouds twisted violently around it, their dark shapes stretching across the sky as though the entire world were being pulled apart.
Severin looked back at the man.
He was still smiling.
Not a trace of surprise crossed his face.
If anything, he looked as though this was exactly what he had expected to happen.
That alone was enough to make Severin uneasy.
"Hey! What’s going on?"
The older Severin didn’t answer.
Instead, the world around them began to disappear.
The skulls dissolved into darkness. The broken weapons vanished, followed by the ruined buildings and the distant castle.
Even the black throne began to crumble, its massive structure breaking apart into fragments that faded before they could hit the ground.
Severin took a step forward.
"Wait a second!"
The man stood motionless as the darkness swallowed everything around him.
For one brief moment, their eyes met again.
Those silver eyes.
That familiar face.
That ridiculous grin.
Severin reached out instinctively.
"Hold on! I still have questions!"
The older man raised one hand.
Whether he was waving goodbye or simply acknowledging Severin’s words, it was impossible to tell.
Then his figure began to fade.
The last thing Severin saw was that strange smile, still stretched across the face he recognized as his own.
And then everything went black.
Severin woke with a start.
He sat upright in bed, his breathing momentarily uneven as he looked around the room.
For several seconds, he didn’t move.
Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating the familiar furniture. His desk stood against the wall, his books were scattered across its surface, and his clothes lay where he had left them.
Everything was exactly as it should be.
No ruined city.
No valley filled with skulls.
No crimson moon hanging over a dead world.
And certainly no older version of himself sitting on a black throne.
Severin slowly exhaled and rubbed a hand over his face.
"...A dream?"
He leaned back against the headboard.
It had certainly felt like one, but something about the experience bothered him.
The details were still remarkably clear. He could remember the ruined landscape, the strange moon, and the feeling of standing in that desolate world as though he had actually been there.
But more than anything else, he remembered the man.
His own face, only older.
And those silver eyes.
Severin lowered his hand and stared at the floor.
"Those eyes..."
His brows drew together.
He knew what they reminded him of.
Curse Mode.
The resemblance had been too strong to dismiss. The color was almost identical to the silver that appeared in his eyes when he entered that state.
But why would an older version of himself have those eyes?
Was the man simply using the same power?
Or had something happened to him in the future?
Severin considered the possibilities, but none of them gave him a satisfying answer.
He glanced toward the window.
Outside, the night was perfectly peaceful. The moonlight falling across his room looked ordinary, and there was nothing in the sky to suggest that an entire world had been destroyed beneath a crimson moon.
He let out a quiet sigh.
"That was one hell of a dream."
Normally, he would have dismissed it as a strange nightmare and gone back to sleep.
This time, however, he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that.
The older man had looked too much like him.
Not just in appearance, but in the way he had smiled, tilted his head, and regarded Severin with that almost carefree expression.
It was unsettling to realize that he might look like that someday.
Even more unsettling was the possibility that the man had actually been him.
Severin rubbed the back of his neck.
"If that really was my future self, then what happened?"
He glanced at the ceiling, thinking.
Had the world been destroyed because of a war?
Had something gone wrong with his powers?
Or had Curse Mode somehow changed him into the person he had seen?
He didn’t know.
And the more he thought about it, the more questions seemed to appear.
Why had he been shown that particular world?
Why had the older version of himself been waiting on that throne?
And why had he looked so amused by the whole situation?
Severin couldn’t help but feel that the last question was particularly important.
He could imagine himself getting into trouble. He could even imagine making a few questionable decisions along the way.
But sitting among countless skulls in a destroyed world while grinning like a complete lunatic?
That was a little too much.
"...I really hope I don’t become that kind of idiot."
A faint smile appeared on his face.
The thought was ridiculous enough to ease some of his unease.
Still, he couldn’t completely shake the feeling that there had been something meaningful about the dream.
He had already experienced one impossible event in his life: dying and somehow receiving another chance.
Perhaps this was connected to that experience.
Perhaps it was a warning.
Or perhaps his imagination had simply decided to torment him with the worst possible version of his future.
There was no point in jumping to conclusions.
Severin had learned that much, at least.
He glanced toward the clock on his desk.
Two in the morning.
He stared at it for a moment before letting out a tired sigh.
"Two o’clock already?"
He had spent far too much time thinking about a dream that might not mean anything at all.
Whatever the explanation was, he wasn’t going to find it by lying awake and staring at the ceiling.
"I’ll think about it tomorrow."
He settled back into bed and pulled the blanket over himself.
For a while, his thoughts continued to wander. Every time he closed his eyes, he remembered the older man’s face and those unmistakable silver eyes.
Eventually, however, his exhaustion won.
His breathing slowed, his thoughts grew quieter, and he drifted back into sleep.
The strange world began to fade from his memory, but the questions it had left behind remained.
Somewhere deep inside him, a faint sense of unease lingered.
Perhaps it had only been a dream.
Perhaps it had been a warning.
Or perhaps the man on the throne had been showing him something he wasn’t supposed to see yet.
Only time would tell.
And if that really had been his future self, Severin could only hope that he had a very good explanation for the ridiculous grin.