The summer sun beat down relentlessly, a heavy, golden weight on the shoulders of thirty people as Dack's class set off for their grand school excursion. The objective was simple on paper: an immersive exploration of the local flora and fauna.
The expedition consisted of twenty-five students, five teachers, and ten security guards, their boots crunching in unison on the dry earth. For Dack and his four inseparable friends, this wasn't just a school trip; it was the adventure of the year, a temporary escape from the grey walls of their daily lives.
Once settled at the campsite, the excitement was electric, a buzzing energy that made it hard for anyone to sleep. But by the following morning, the atmosphere shifted. The instructions came down—cold, formal, and strict. The students were divided into groups of eight—comprising five students, one teacher, and two armed guards.
"Listen carefully," one of the agents explained, his hand resting casually but firmly on his belt, his gaze hardening as he scanned the young faces. "Exactly two kilometers from here lies Zone Beta. It is a high-risk restricted area decreed by the government. Do not, under any circumstances, cross the perimeter. Stick to the 1.5-kilometer limit."
Whispers began to circulate like wildfire among the students. Rumor had it that eight years ago, the military had discovered something... dead there. A strange creature, unknown to any biology textbook.
The agents tried to pacify the children, claiming nothing had happened there since and that the fences were merely a matter of protocol. But the words "Top Secret" hung in the humid air like a silent, invisible warning, vibrating with a tension that Dack could almost feel in his teeth.
Dack, surrounded by his loyal crew, ventured deep into the woods. For three hours, they trekked, fascinated by the lush, overgrown greenery that seemed to swallow the sunlight. Eventually, they reached the banks of a sparkling, crystalline river. The water moved with a hypnotic grace, bubbling over smooth stones.
The two security agents consulted their digital maps, their brows furrowing in unison; they had slightly overstepped the 1.5-kilometer limit. While the group used the river to refill their canteens, laughing and splashing each other before turning back, they failed to notice the profound change taking place within Dack.
Suddenly, the air around the boy seemed to thicken, growing heavy and dense as if the oxygen had turned to lead. Dack felt an indescribable sensation: invisible waves, weighted and electric, began to ripple through his entire body. It wasn't pain, but a terrifying fullness. It was as if the river itself were whispering to him in a language made of pure vibration, a frequency only his DNA could understand.
His legs buckled, turning to water. The world tilted and spun, the green of the trees blurring into the blue of the sky. Dack collapsed heavily onto the riverbank, the sound of his own name fading as he blacked out to the frantic, distant screams of his classmates.
The return to the main camp was an agonizing ordeal. Once he regained consciousness—weak, pale, but stable—Dack had to face a different kind of cruelty. Djin and his gang, never ones to miss an opening, didn't waste a single second.
"Look at the little coward!" Djin sneered, standing in the center of the camp, his voice dripping with calculated malice. "He probably wet himself because he was too scared of the big, bad forest! Is the little baby going to cry for his mommy?"
Acidic laughter erupted from the crowd, stinging like salt on a fresh wound. Drez and Ig-nard immediately rushed forward, their faces red with anger as they interposed themselves, shielding Dack from the mockery. But the damage was done; the echoes of the laughter followed Dack all the way to the transport.
Yet, in Dack's mind, Djin's taunts felt distant, almost hollow. What he had experienced by the river was far more real, more ancient, than any schoolyard bullying. As he returned home that evening, he didn't yet know that his father, Mir, was about to see something in him that no one else—not even the teachers—had noticed.
The Flux had finally awakened, and it was radiating from him like heat from a desert stone.
When Mir crossed the threshold of their home that evening, his seasoned technician's gaze didn't linger on his son's physical fatigue or the dirt on his clothes. Instead, he saw something invisible to the eyes of ordinary men—a shimmer in the air, a distortion of the light around the boy.
At only seven years old, Dack was radiating an energetic pulse—a Flux—that Mir recognized with a chilling familiarity.
"Where exactly did your school excursion take you today, Dack?" Mir asked, his voice dropping to a low, cautious register, his eyes fixed on his son.
"Not far from Zone Beta," Dack replied, his face still ghost-white, his voice trembling slightly.
Mir remained silent for a long moment, but his eyes betrayed a flash of immediate, heavy understanding. He knew exactly what the proximity of that restricted zone had awakened within his son. The stories weren't just stories anymore.
From that night onward, Dack's sleep became a battlefield. His dreams, once hazy and fleeting, sharpened into terrifying clarity. He no longer saw confused images, but a vibrant, parallel dimension—the very world from the "bedtime stories" his father had whispered for years.
In the crystalline silence of his visions, he found himself standing before a glowing, pressurized stone submerged at the bottom of a pool of pure, dark water. It emitted an energy so colossal, so rhythmic, that Dack felt physically tethered to it. It was as if an invisible, silver thread connected his beating heart to the heart of the crystal. Each pulse of the stone sent a wave of heat through his limbs.
The next morning, a memory struck him like a physical blow: he had seen this stone before. It was sketched in meticulous, technical detail within one of the secret journals in his father's study.
Driven by a feverish curiosity that burned in his chest, Dack crept back toward the office, hoping to leaf through the notebook once more. But this time, the drawer was locked tight. The wood was cold and unyielding. Mir had resumed his precautions.
Frustrated and burning with questions he couldn't contain, Dack decided to confront his father directly during breakfast.
"In my sleep, I see a crystal stone at the bottom of a lake... it breathes with a massive force, Dad," the boy said, his small hands clenched on the table, his eyes searching his father's face for a crack in the mask. "I saw it in your journal. The exact same one. Why is it in my head?"
The silence that followed was suffocating, thick enough to choke on. Mir froze, his spoon hovering in mid-air. His mind was visibly racing to find the right words before he finally pulled on a mask of protective calm.
"I do have such a journal, Dack," Mir admitted slowly, choosing each word as if walking through a minefield. "But it's merely for writing a story. A hobby, nothing more. If you're having these dreams, it's because your subconscious is working overtime. I've told you far too many tales of that kind; that's why they haunt your nights. It's just your imagination, son."
Dack listened, but the explanation tasted like ash. The seed of doubt had blossomed into a silent, unshakable certainty. His father was lying to protect him, but the truth was already inside him.
Not long after, Mir announced news that shattered the boy's heart. The electric vehicle corporation was sending him on a business trip. A long-term mission. Even Laine was caught off guard, pointing out that such assignments weren't usually given to technicians of his rank. But Mir insisted; it was a direct order from the highest levels of the company, one he couldn't refuse.
On the day of his departure, Dack's sadness was a physical weight in his chest. His father had never been away from him for this long, and the house already felt emptier.
"I'm going to miss you," the child whispered, clinging to his father's heavy coat, smelling the familiar scent of oil and home.
"I'm going to miss you even more," Mir replied, ruffling Dack's hair one last time. His expression was unreadable—a mix of sorrow and a strange, hidden pride. "And always remember this, son: It is those who believe in and follow their dreams who find the happiness they seek. No matter how strange those dreams may be."
Mir stepped through the door and into the waiting car, leaving behind a worried family and a son whose dreams were no longer just figments of imagination, but a beckoning, dangerous reality.