My first sensation was comfort. The rough-spun but familiar fabric of the blanket. The solid support of the mattress beneath me. The soft, grey light of morning filtering through the single window of my room in the Builder's headquarters. Everything was exactly as it should be.
I sat up slowly, expecting a symphony of pain. A searing agony from the gash on my chest. The deep, bone-bruising ache from being thrown across the fractured ground. The profound, soul-deep exhaustion from channeling a power that was never meant for me.
There was nothing.
I ran a hand over my chest. The fabric of my shirt was clean, untorn. Beneath it, my skin was smooth, unbroken. There was no scar, no wound, not even a lingering tenderness. I flexed my arms, my legs. There was no soreness, no fatigue. I felt… normal. Completely and utterly normal.
The memories were there, vivid and terrifyingly clear. The blinding flash of the spear of light. The perfect, horrifying hole where Silas's chest had been. The agony of the orb, the cold fire of vengeance, the world-shattering clash with the Founder, the arrival of the Builder…
It couldn't be real. It was too much. Too epic. Too tragic.
A dream. It had to have been a dream. A nightmare, brought on by the stress of the past few days.
My mind, desperate for a logical anchor, latched onto the last clear memory I had before sleep. The dinner table. My foolish pride over my new Gold card, and the subsequent, humbling reveal of their five White ones. The look on Silas's face—that damn, knowing smirk as he called my new rank "cute."
That's it, I thought, a wave of relieved understanding washing over me. Of course. It all made sense now. My subconscious, stung by the embarrassment and the casual way he'd humbled me, had concocted an elaborate, dramatic fantasy. A nightmare where he became this tragic, self-sacrificing hero, and I became this all-powerful avenger. It was a classic stress dream, my mind's way of processing my new place in their strange, powerful family.
A small, weary chuckle escaped my lips. "What a psycho," I muttered to myself, shaking my head at the sheer, over-the-top drama my own brain was capable of. A Fallen Founder? Me absorbing the orb? It was the kind of thing you'd read in a webnovel, not something that happened in real life. Or, whatever passed for real life here.
Feeling lighter than I had in days, I got up and dressed. The routine was a comfort, a further confirmation that everything was back to normal. The sun was up, which meant breakfast was ready. I could already smell the faint, comforting scent of baked bread wafting from the dining hall. I wondered what snarky comment Silas would have for me this morning. Maybe I'd finally get him to tell me what his scouting duties actually entailed.
I walked into the dining hall, a cheerful greeting already on my lips. It died before it could be spoken.
The atmosphere was wrong.
The usual quiet companionship of the morning meal was gone, replaced by a heavy, oppressive silence that felt as thick as stone. Fen was there, staring down at his plate, his food untouched. Valerius sat ramrod straight, his gaze fixed on the wall opposite him, his jaw set like granite. Elara had her eyes closed, but it didn't look like she was meditating; her brow was furrowed in a way that looked like profound, silent pain. Lyra stood by the table, her hands clasped before her, her usual serene expression now a fragile, brittle mask.
And the chair beside Fen, the one where Silas always sat, was empty.
The sight of that empty chair sent a sudden, jarring spike of unease through me, a cold dissonance that clashed with the comforting logic of my dream theory.
"Morning," I said, my voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence. I forced a casual tone, trying to break the heavy mood. "Wow, tough crowd today."
No one responded.
I took my seat, the silence pressing in on me. The dream… it had felt so real. The memory of Silas falling was so sharp, so clear. I shook my head, pushing the thought away. It was a dream. It had to be.
"So, where's Silas?" I asked, reaching for a piece of bread. "Out on a scouting run already? He's starting even earlier than usual. Did he get a special mission from the Builder?"
The silence that followed my question was absolute. Fen stopped breathing. Valerius's jaw tightened even further. A single, silent tear traced a path down Elara's pale cheek.
The cold spike of unease in my gut twisted into a knot of pure dread.
After a long, agonizing minute that stretched into an eternity, it was Lyra who finally broke the silence. She turned to me, and for the first time since I'd met her, the perfect mask of the attendant had cracked. Her amber eyes were filled with a deep, bottomless sorrow.
"Silas… is no longer here, Kael-sama," she said, her voice a soft, steady, and utterly devastating whisper. "He was deleted during the wasteland expedition."
The words didn't register. They were just sounds, meaningless vibrations in the air. They bounced off the protective wall of denial I had so carefully constructed.
"No," I said, a weak, confused laugh escaping my lips. "No, you guys are just… you're messing with me, right? Because of the ID card thing? This is revenge for me being an idiot, isn't it?" I looked around the table, searching for any sign, any flicker of amusement in their eyes. There was none. Only a shared, profound grief.
"It was just a dream," I insisted, my voice rising, desperate to make them understand, to make them snap out of this morbid joke. "I fell asleep thinking about how he made fun of my card, and I had this crazy nightmare where he died and I got all super-powered. It felt real, I'll give you that, but it was just a dream. So, seriously, where is he?"
No one answered. The empty chair seemed to grow larger, a black hole in the fabric of the room, swallowing all the light and sound.
My denial was my last defense, my only shield against a truth too monstrous to accept. "It was a dream," I repeated, my voice now a raw, pleading whisper. "It has to be…"
CRACK.
Pain, sharp and blinding, exploded across my jaw. My head snapped to the side, and the world tilted crazily. I was on the floor before I even realized what had happened, the hard stone cold against my cheek, the coppery taste of blood filling my mouth.
Valerius stood over me, his fist still clenched. His face was a mask of cold, hard fury, but his eyes… his eyes were filled with a raw, agonizing pain that mirrored my own.
He knelt down, grabbing the front of my shirt and hauling me up so our faces were inches apart. His voice was a low, shaking growl, each word a hammer blow against my crumbling wall of denial.
"This is not a dream," he snarled, his grip like iron. "This pain you feel? It is real."
He shook me, a single, violent motion.
"The emptiness in this room? It is real. He is gone, Kael. Silas is gone."
He shoved me back, and I collapsed against the leg of the table.
"That is the reality," he finished, his voice finally breaking with a raw, guttural grief. "And you need to accept it."
I lay there on the cold floor, the sharp, throbbing pain in my jaw the only thing I could feel. It was real. The ache was real. The taste of blood was real.
The dream was over.
And the nightmare was just beginning.