Shura slept without falling.
Shura dreamed.
He ran.
There was no ground beneath him.
No sky above him.
Only motion.
Only fear.
Only the desperate need to keep moving.
"Shura…"
Her voice echoed somewhere ahead of him.
Always ahead.
He saw her through the shifting dark—a faint silhouette with unstable edges that broke apart like dust scattered through the wind.
"Mother—!"
He forced himself forward faster.
Harder.
His legs burned violently beneath him, yet somehow never slowed.
Around him, the world twisted without reason.
Walls formed beside him from black stone—
then melted into liquid—
then vanished completely.
Paths stretched endlessly forward before folding into themselves and collapsing into nothingness.
Still, he kept running.
He couldn't stop.
Because she was there.
Always just beyond his reach.
"Wait—!"
His voice shattered the moment it left him.
The space did not carry sound.
It consumed it.
Then—
something changed.
He felt it before he saw it.
A stillness.
Wrong.
Impossible.
His steps slowed instinctively.
And there, far beyond the distortion, stood a mountain.
It did not move.
Did not bend beneath the crushing weight of the Void surrounding it.
Kilometers of endless stone rose upward like the foundation of the world itself.
pressed down from the dark.
A silent, crushing gravity.
Most spires in the Kingdoms looked like they were begging the sky not to fall.
But this mountain—
it didn't plead.
It held the dark up. Sharp. Silent. Real.
Its peak had been cut cleanly away.
Not worn down by time.
Not broken by shifting earth.
Severed.
Everything around it continued to distort endlessly—collapsing, reforming, changing shape without meaning.
But the mountain remained untouched.
Unchallenged.
Shura's breath caught in his throat.
"…Why…?"
His steps slowed further.
For the first time since the dream began, he was no longer chasing her.
He was staring at the mountain instead.
"Shura."
The voice came from close behind him now.
Too close.
He turned sharply.
She stood directly in front of him.
Not far ahead anymore.
Right there.
But something was wrong.
Her face was cracked.
Lines spreading across her skin like fractures in glass.
Pieces slipping—
but not falling.
Erasing.
"Why did you fa...?"
Her voice echoed strangely—not through the empty space around him, but from somewhere deep inside him.
The mountain stood silently behind her, towering over the distortion like something older than the dream itself.
Shura instinctively stepped backward.
Not away from her.
Away from it.
"I've seen that…"
His voice trembled.
"…before."
A brief silence followed.
Then her expression softened.
For a single moment, the cracks vanished and she looked whole again.
Real.
"Then remember."
A sharp crack split across her face immediately afterward.
Worse than before.
"You're running the wrong way."
The mountain pulsed.
Once.
Everything broke.
—
Shura woke.
A sharp inhale tore through him.
Air flooded his lungs.
Cold. Heavy. Real.
His body refused to respond as if the heavy silence of the room had physically pinned him to the mattress, leaving his arms and legs as cold, immovable anchors of bone that ignored every desperate command from his mind.
Only his eyes remained free, darting with a wide, panicked intensity that traced the crushing weight of the shadows above, searching for a single spark of Viora in a frame that felt less like a person and more like a hollow, pressurized shell.
Am I—
dead?
No.
Pain answered immediately.
"…Alive…"
Barely.
His chest rose slowly in uneven rhythm, each breath dragging painfully through him as though the air itself resisted entering his lungs.
Then—
he felt something inside him.
Warmth.
Faint.
Scattered.
Unstable.
"…What… is this…?"
It moved through him without control, flowing unevenly like something trying to force itself through broken pathways his body could no longer handle.
His muscles refused to respond properly.
"…I can't move…"
A soft knock interrupted the silence.
Controlled.
Measured.
The door opened quietly, and a maid stepped into the room with the same calm balance that seemed natural to everyone in this place.
A tray rested steadily in her hands while thin strands of steam curled upward into the warm light.
She paused after noticing his eyes already open.
"…Awake already."
Her voice was soft but measured.
She walked further inside and placed the tray carefully onto the table with precise, practiced movements.
The smell reached Shura almost immediately.
Warm.
Grounding.
He shifted his gaze toward it.
A bowl of thick stew rested on the tray, its muted gold and gray-orange colors blending into something plain yet heavy with substance.
"…What is that?"
She blinked.
Then smiled.
Small. Knowing.
"Food."
A pause.
"…How is it made?"
Her smile shifted slightly.
Amused now.
"Manager told me."
A small breath.
"You'd ask even the simplest things."
She straightened.
Answered anyway.
"Cracked wheat."
"Not flour."
"Rough."
"Three parts water."
"Boiled."
"A bit of salt-crystal."
She gestured lightly.
"Cooked slowly."
"Stirred constantly."
A beat.
"Over a Viora vent."
Shura frowned.
She nodded.
She stepped back.
"Eat before it cools."
She turned.
"…Thank you," Shura said.
She paused near the doorway and looked at him properly for the first time since entering the room.
Not with caution.
Not curiosity.
Just quiet acknowledgment.
Then she gave a small nod before turning away and leaving.
The door closed softly behind her.
Soft.
Shura stared quietly at the bowl while thin strands of steam continued rising into the still air.
He tried to move again.
Nothing.
Frustration tightened inside him immediately.
"…Why…?"
His breathing faltered.
Then the warmth inside him shifted again.
Too fast.
Too uneven.
Like something moving through him without direction.
"…It's not… listening…"
Or maybe—
he wasn't listening to it.
Shura closed his eyes slightly.
And then that voice returned.
Clear.
Steady.
"Don't fight the air."
He inhaled slowly.
Carefully.
Then exhaled just as slowly.
The warmth inside him steadied a little.
Not completely.
But enough.
It spread through him less violently now, no longer crashing against his body like broken currents.
His fingers twitched.
Barely.
But real.
Shura's eyes widened slightly.
"…I can move…"
Not strength.
Not yet.
Control.
The beginning of it.
He focused again.
Slow breathing.
Even rhythm.
Another twitch answered him.
Then stillness returned.
Not failure.
Just his limit.
For now.
Quietly, his gaze drifted upward toward the ceiling.
"…That dream…"
The words left him quietly.
A pause followed as his brows slowly tightened.
"…Why that…?"
Fragments still lingered in his mind with unnatural clarity.
The running.
Her voice calling to him.
The sound of everything breaking apart.
And above all—
that mountain.
Still.
Sharp.
Wrong in a way he couldn't explain.
"…Was that just a dream…?"
Silence answered.
He swallowed.
"…No…"
It hadn't felt like a dream at all.
Dreams faded after waking.
This didn't.
It remained in his mind with impossible clarity, fixed and unmoving, as though it existed somewhere beyond him rather than inside his sleep.
His eyes shifted slightly toward the dim ceiling above.
"…I saw something like that…"
His voice lowered.
"…outside the walls…"
A faint memory surfaced slowly through the haze.
Blurred.
Distant.
But still there.
When they had first entered the city… when he looked beyond the walls…
Far past the endless gray—
he had seen something.
A distant shape rising against the horizon.
Tall.
Unmoving.
At the time, he hadn't focused on it.
Hadn't understood what he was seeing.
But now—
the memory aligned perfectly with the mountain from the dream.
"…It's the same…"
His breath slowed.
Thinking.
"…Why would I see it there…"
A pause.
"…and in a dream?"
His fingers twitched again.
Stronger this time.
"…Is it real…?"
No answer came.
Only the quiet hum beneath the room continued filling the silence.
Shura exhaled slowly.
Long.
"…If it's real…"
A brief pause followed.
"…then it didn't change."
Unlike everything else he had seen.
Unlike the shifting dream.
Unlike even this city.
The mountain remained untouched.
Unaffected.
A fixed point in a world that refused to stay still.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"…Then it means something."
Not coincidence.
Not imagination.
Something else.
Something waiting.
Slowly, his gaze shifted toward the door.
"…And they didn't tell me."
Zenkyou.
Orin.
Ren.
They understood this land far better than he did.
Its structures.
Its systems.
Its boundaries.
If something like that mountain truly existed beyond the walls, they should have known about it.
Unless—
they didn't.
Or worse—
they chose to ignore it.
Shura's jaw tightened slightly at the thought.
"…I need to see it again."
Not now. Not like this. But soon.
The warmth in his chest flickered.
Quieter now. Listening.
Responding.
"…First…"
His eyes returned to the bowl.
"…I need to eat."
His fingers curled slowly against the blanket.
This time, they held.
The strength was small.
Fragile.
But real.
Shura released a quiet breath through his nose.
Not relief.
Not yet.
But something close to it.
Outside the room, the Beacon continued its steady glow across Ossuarium—unchanging, constant, unquestioned by the people living beneath it.
But for the first time since arriving in the Deep, Shura was no longer thinking about the light.
He was thinking about what stood beyond it.