“L—E…!
—IE!
LI—!”
The sound was a distant, fractured frequency, scraping through a vast expanse of nothingness.
It drifted across the cold dark void like a dying radio signal, distorted and hollow.
Slowly, the static began to recede, the syllables stitching themselves back together until the voice finally tore through the veil of his consciousness with sharp clarity:
“LIE!
LIE!
WAKE UP!”
Zhou Yuxuan’s eyelids fluttered open.
The transition wasn’t violent, but his pupils dilated instantly as they fought against a heavy, oppressive blur.
The stark yellow light of an electric wall lamp slowly crystallized into focus.
As the geometric lines of the room stabilized, two figures materialized over him, their expressions tight with a mixture of raw tension and profound exhaustion.
It was Ronald Denbergh and his mother.
Whamp!
With a sudden, calculated surge of kinetic energy, Yuxuan pulled his torso upward, his boots swinging over the edge of the mattress.
He sat rigidly on the simple white sheets of the guest bed, his chest rising and falling in steady, measured intervals.
His hand instinctively reached toward his chest, checking his pulse.
It was perfectly normal.
His clothes—the fresh white shirt and dark green trousers Ronald had lent him—were completely dry.
There was no blood.
There were no tears in the fabric.
“Oh, thank God…” Ronald’s mother exhaled, a visible wave of relief washing over her face as she stepped back, pressing a hand against her chest.
“You’re okay.
You’re actually okay.”
Yuxuan did not answer immediately.
His dark eyes darted around the sparse room, cataloging the wardrobe, the study table, and the blue mat on the floor.
Everything was exactly where it had been before he fell into that chaotic spiral.
The terrifying body horror, the splitting of the dining table, the floating astronaut statue in the abyss—none of it left a single physical scar on the environment.
“I had a dream,” Yuxuan stated, his voice dropping into its usual flat, low-frequency drone.
He was testing them, watching their micro-expressions for any sign of the demonic malice he had witnessed in the void.
“We know that,” Ronald revealed.
The reply was astonishingly casual, devoid of any hesitation or fear.
Ronald merely leaned against the wooden bedpost, his face shadowed by the dim yellow glow of the lamp.
Yuxuan’s eyes narrowed slightly, a rare flicker of surprise crossing his features.
“You know that?
But how?”
“It’s normal,” Ronald’s mother intervened, her voice carrying a heavy, ancient weariness that seemed to age her far beyond her forty-two years.
She smoothed down her silky purple nightdress, though her hands were still trembling slightly.
“Normal?” Yuxuan repeated the word, his analytical mind immediately rejecting the premise.
There was absolutely nothing normal about a dream that accurately reconstructed a localized European-style steampunk city and twisted its inhabitants into cosmic horrors.
“Yes,” she whispered, looking toward the heavy, dark curtains sealing the room’s single window.
“It’s because of the Crimson Rain.”
“Crimson Rain?” Yuxuan’s mind cataloged the new term instantly, filed under the growing index of this world’s supernatural phenomena.
“What is it?”
Ronald’s mother took a slow, deliberate breath, preparing to unpack a piece of lore that seemed to govern the very survival of the city’s inhabitants.
“Ever since our city was bordered and cut off by that mysterious, suffocating fog, everything changed,” she explained, her voice echoing softly against the concrete walls.
“When the crimson moon vanished from the sky, that black hole appeared in its place.
And ever since that day, this rain falls precisely once every seven days.
The water that drops from the clouds is a deep, vivid crimson—but it isn’t blood.
It’s something far worse.”
She took a step closer to the bed, her eyes locking onto Yuxuan with absolute seriousness.
“While this rain occurs, a supernatural weight settles over the mind.
If anyone falls asleep while the water is falling outside, they are dragged into a nightmare.
An endless, looping nightmare.
If a person gets stuck within the architecture of that dream, they will remain trapped there forever.
Their consciousness will be entirely consumed by the nightmare’s reality, and they will sleep in the waking world until their body rots and they die.”
Yuxuan listened intently, his cold rationality breaking down her words into structural data.
A localized psychic phenomenon tied to weather patterns.
The dream felt entirely indistinguishable from reality because the rain itself simulates a perfect, hyper-realistic consciousness trap.
“Many people in the lower sectors have already died because they couldn’t break free from endless dreams exactly like the one you were just subjected to,” Ronald’s mother continued, her tone grim.
“The dreams mimic reality so perfectly that your brain cannot differentiate between the two.
You cannot guess that it’s a dream from the inside.
You are incredibly lucky that we were here to pull you out.”
“She’s right, Lie,” Ronald added, shifting his weight away from the bedpost.
“I came up to the second floor to call you down for dinner.
But when I knocked and you didn’t open the door, even after I called out your name dozens of times, I realized what had happened.
I knew you were slipping into the nightmare.
The rain is still falling heavily out there right now.”
To emphasize his point, Ronald reached across the study table and firmly pulled back the thick, light-blocking curtains.
The sudden removal of the fabric revealed the dark expanse outside.
Yuxuan quietly stood up from the bed, his boots making no sound against the floorboards as he approached the glass pane.
He unlatched the heavy frame, sliding the glass open just enough to let the freezing night air rush into the warm room.
He extended his right arm, placing his bare palm directly beneath the falling sky.
The scene outside was a masterful display of cosmic dread.
The sky was too horrible to look at directly for a normal human being.
Massive, bruised clouds of a deep red-purple hue churned violently around the colossal silhouette of the black hole.
The singularity’s event horizon seemed to pulse, its dark core casting a dim, sickly purple-blue light that reflected off the wet surfaces of the city below.
It was a terrifying, beautiful scenery of absolute isolation.
Plink.
Plink.
The cold water began to pool in the center of Yuxuan’s palm.
The liquid was thick, catching the electric light from the room and turning an unsettling, deep crimson.
It looked identical to fresh human blood, yet it lacked the metallic, iron-heavy scent.
It smelled only of cold, stagnant stone and old ash.
Yuxuan watched the liquid accumulate, analyzing its viscosity.
His expression remained a flawless mask of stone.
Slowly, he tilted his hand, spreading his fingers to let the crimson water drop down onto the wet cobblestones far below.
So the entire world didn’t rewrite itself, Yuxuan deduced silently, closing the glass window and drawing the curtain shut once more.
The trauma was contained within my own mind, triggered by a chemical or spiritual reaction to the rain.
But the astronaut statue…
why would a steampunk world dream of an astronaut?
“Okay!
Let’s go, boys,” Ronald’s mother said, her cheerful, maternal tone suddenly returning as if trying to forcibly shatter the dark atmosphere of the room.
“We need to finish our dinner before the food gets completely cold.
It’s already 11:00 PM.”
“Yes, let’s go, Lie,” Ronald agreed, gesturing toward the open doorway.
“You must be starving after fighting off whatever was in that head of yours.”
“Hmph.” Yuxuan nodded simply.
The three of them turned and walked out into the hallway, their footsteps creating a rhythmic cadence on the wooden stairs as they descended back down to the ground floor.
The lingering tension from the nightmare still hung in the back of Yuxuan’s mind, but his hyper-focused senses were already re-mapping the physical layout of the house, ensuring no variables had changed.
They entered the dining hall to the right of the staircase.
The long wooden table was completely intact—not a single crack or splinter marred its polished surface.
Surrounding the table were three sturdy wooden chairs, and within moments, all three were occupied.
Ronald sat to the left, his mother took the head of the table, and Yuxuan sat directly opposite Ronald.
Laid out across the table was a modest, cleanly prepared spread: a large bowl of steaming spaghetti, a pitcher of thick mango juice, and a fresh green salad.
Ronald’s mother smiled apologetically, gesturing toward the dishes with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
“Sorry, Lie, there’s really nothing much tonight.
Rations in the city have been tight since the boundary shrank again.”
Yuxuan picked up his fork, his dark eyes reflecting the warm glow of the dining room lamp.
The food was normal.
The people were normal.
For now, the simulation of safety had been restored.
“It’s okay,” Yuxuan replied, his voice calm and entirely unbothered as he began to eat.
“It’s a good dinner.”