The ICU room remained a tomb of cold glass and rhythmic mechanical sighs, but the border between reality and the abyss had begun to dissolve.
Bai Qi had fallen into the hollows of a deep, bone-weary sleep, his head resting against the mattress where Shu Yao lay.
In the waking world, his fingers were still interlaced with the boy's, a desperate physical anchor. But as his consciousness slipped away, he did not fall into the usual fire-lit corridors of his guilt-ridden nightmares.
This time, the Dreamland was different. It was a vast, silent expanse of obsidian velvet—a world of infinite ink.
Bai Qi opened his eyes within the dream. He stood in a darkness so absolute it felt heavy, like treading through water. He turned, his heart hammering against his ribs in a frantic, irregular cadence.
"Where... where am I?" he whispered.
His voice didn't echo. It was swallowed by the void. He began to walk, his footsteps making no sound on the invisible floor. He felt a visceral, primal fear—not of a monster, but of the emptiness. Then, he looked up.
High above the horizon of his mind, a white spark flickered. It wasn't the jagged lightning of a storm, but a soft, ethereal glow—a needle of gold and silver piercing the dark.
Bai Qi's heart lurched. A sudden, terrifying hope flooded his veins. His intuition, sharpened by months of agony, screamed a single truth: He is here.
"Shu Yao?" Bai Qi called out, his voice cracking. "Shu Yao, are you there.
He began to run. He discarded the dignity of a Rothenberg, his stride lengthening into a desperate sprint. He scanned the darkness, his eyes bloodshot even in the dream, searching for the one light he had spent five months trying to find.
"Shu Yao! Answer me!"
In a distant corner of that same obsidian labyrinth, Shu Yao was curled into a small, fragile crescent. He had lost track of time; here, seconds felt like centuries. He sat with his legs pulled tight against his heart, his chin resting on his knees.
He was a ghost waiting for the end of the world.
Suddenly, a ripple moved through the silence. A sound, faint and distorted, reached his ears.
Shu Yao...
He didn't move. He didn't even lift his head. He had heard the voices of his own imagination a thousand times. He expected this to be no different.
But then, the voice came again. It was raw. It was jagged with a suffering so profound it felt like a physical weight pressing against his soul.
Shu Yao!
Slowly, almost painfully, Shu Yao lifted his head. The spark of light above him began to expand, its luminosity washing over his pale, translucent skin.
"I... I know this voice," Shu Yao breathed.
His heartbeat, a forgotten rhythm, began to thud against his ribs. He felt a surge of warmth—the scent of red roses and expensive cedarwood. He tried to stand, his legs feeling like lead, and began to walk toward the sound, guided by the expanding light.
Bai Qi saw the light growing. It wasn't just a spark anymore; it was a vast, shimmering veil, spreading across the dark sky like a miracle.
"Shu Yao! Where are you? Talk to me!"
On the other side, Shu Yao stopped. The name—Shu Yao—acted like a key, unlocking the floodgates of his memory. He remembered the night of the glass of hot chocolate. He remembered the coldness in Bai Qi's eyes and the way the world had tilted into a kaleidoscope of pain.
His tears began to fall, hot and crystalline, hitting the dark floor and vanishing.
"Why is he calling me?" Shu Yao whispered, his voice trembling. "He... he hates me. Doesn't he?"
He looked at his hands. They felt thin, spectral. He felt the weight of the months he had missed, the gap in his life that felt like an uncrossable canyon.
"It's been too long," he thought, his spirit wavering.
The light above him began to dim. The vastness of the white spark started to shrink, retreating back into the needle-point of a dying star as Shu Yao's doubt took hold.
Bai Qi flinched as the luminosity began to fade. The panic he felt was more agonizing than the poison that had nearly killed the boy.
"No! No, don't go! Shu Yao, please! Talk to me!"
He didn't stop. He pushed his body further, his chest heaving as he sprinted toward the last remaining glow. And then, he saw it.
A silhouette. A small, familiar figured standing in the graying light.
Bai Qi's heart gave a violent, joyous beat. He didn't think; he simply lunged forward, his feet eating the distance between them. It was him. It was his Shu Yao.
Shu Yao wiped his tears, looking ahead with wide, hollow eyes. He gasped, taking a stumbling step back as the "Monarch" finally broke through the darkness.
Bai Qi stood there, his eyes wild and bloodshot, his heart thudding so loudly it could be heard in the silence of the void. He hovered his hand near Shu Yao's face, his fingers trembling with the fear that the boy would shatter if touched.
"Shu Yao..."
Shu Yao stood paralyzed. "I... I am sorry," he whispered, his voice breaking. "I'm sorry.
Bai Qi didn't let him finish. He didn't let another word of self-hatred escape those pale lips.
He lunged forward and pulled Shu Yao into a crushing, visceral embrace.
Shu Yao gasped, his breath hitching as he was enveloped by the heat of Bai Qi's body. It was a hold so tight it felt like Bai Qi was trying to merge their souls together.
"Finally," Bai Qi sobbed, his tears soaking into the shoulder of Shu Yao's spectral white shirt. "I finally found you. I'm never letting go. Never."
Shu Yao was speechless. His mind swirled, unable to reconcile this broken, weeping man with the cold sovereign he remembered. Slowly, hesitantly, he lifted his hands and placed them on Bai Qi's back.
"Why are you crying?" Shu Yao asked, his voice a soft, confused melody.
Bai Qi broke the embrace, though his hands remained firmly on Shu Yao's shoulders, as if anchoring him to the earth. He looked at Shu Yao with a reverence usually reserved for gods.
"Shu Yao, look at me," Bai Qi commanded softly.
Shu Yao looked. He saw the devastation in Bai Qi's face—the lines of grief, the shattered pride, the raw love that had been stripped of its armor. It sent a sting of sympathetic pain through Shu Yao's chest.
"You need to get out of this darkness," Bai Qi said, his thumb brushing a tear from Shu Yao's cheek. "I can't let you stay here. I will take you away from the dark. I promise. I'll build a world where the dark never sets on you."
Shu Yao shyly turned his head away, his voice small. "I... I am fine here. It's quiet. No one gets hurt in the dark."
Bai Qi's heart lurched. The sadness in that statement was a knife to his gut. Without a word, he moved with a sudden, fluid strength. He reached down and scooped Shu Yao up, lifting him in a protective, bridal carry.
Shu Yao gasped, his hands flying to Bai Qi's shoulders for balance. He looked at Bai Qi, his eyes wide with a burgeoning sense of wonder.
"I am going to get you out," Bai Qi vowed, his voice a steady, unbreakable promise. "Don't worry. I have you."
Shu Yao felt a sensation he had never truly known—a surge of absolute, terrifying happiness. He realized that this wasn't a nightmare. For the first time, he was being carried toward the light, not pushed away from it.
"You're so gentle," Shu Yao whispered, his eyes fluttering shut as he leaned his head against Bai Qi's chest.
The light above them began to spread again, no longer a needle-point but a blinding, beautiful sunrise. The obsidian void began to crack, the darkness peeling away like old paint.
Bai Qi felt the world around them begin to glow, his chest expanding with a breath that felt like the first one he had taken in five months.
"We're going home," Bai Qi whispered. "We're finally going home."
The darkness of the abyss did not merely break; it surrendered.
Inside the shifting tapestry of the Dreamland, the obsidian void began to dissolve under the weight of a sudden, miraculous beauty. As Shu Yao leaned his head against Bai Qi's chest and closed his eyes, the world around them underwent a botanical rebirth.
From beneath Bai Qi's feet, a carpet of verdant, emerald grass surged forward, racing across the lightless floor like a living tide. In its wake, thousands of red roses—petals as deep as wine and as soft as velvet—erupted from the earth, blooming in a frantic, beautiful symphony of color.
The air, once stagnant and cold, was suddenly filled with the intoxicating aroma of a thousand springs. Bai Qi stood mesmerized, his breath hitching as he looked down at the boy in his arms.
"I am sorry, Shu Yao," Bai Qi whispered, his voice trembling with the resonance of a thousand unspoken apologies. "I hurt you... I broke the very thing I was supposed to cherish."
Shu Yao slowly opened his eyes. The hollow, spectral gray was gone, replaced by a luminous, liquid gold that seemed to drink in the light of the roses. As he looked at Bai Qi, the color began to return to his soul. He reached up, his small, pale hand coming to rest against Bai Qi's stubbled cheek—a touch that felt like lightning and silk.
"Don't cry," Shu Yao murmured, his voice no longer a ghost but a melody. "Please... don't cry."
But Bai Qi was beyond the reach of composure. He leaned forward, his forehead pressing against Shu Yao's with a desperate, reverent heat. He closed his eyes, feeling the steady, phantom thrum of Shu Yao's heart against his own.
"I love you, Shu Yao," Bai Qi breathed, the words finally finding their home after years of being locked in a cage of pride. "I love you more than my own life."
The effect was instantaneous. Shu Yao's eyes widened, turning glassy as a fresh wave of tears began to spill. A deep, incandescent blush—a vibrant tint of crimson—crept across his cheeks, the first bloom of blood in a desert of pale skin. He looked at Bai Qi with a mixture of shock and a joy so profound it was almost violent.
The Dreamland began to shimmer, the roses and the grass glowing with a blinding, white-gold intensity. The bridge was complete.
In the waking world of the ICU, the silence was suddenly perforated by a change in the atmosphere.
Bai Qi's grip on Shu Yao's hand tightened, his knuckles white, his muscles coiled with a sudden, subconscious surge of energy. He bolted upright, his eyes snapping open. The sterile light of the hospital room felt sharp and abrasive, but he didn't blink.
He looked at Shu Yao.
The boy's face was still a mask of marble, save for one thing. A single, crystalline tear had escaped the corner of his eye, tracking a slow, shimmering path down the slope of his cheek. It was a liquid bridge between the dream they had just shared and the reality they were forced to inhabit.
Bai Qi's heart lurched, a visceral throb of hope that felt like a physical blow.
"Shu Yao?"
Then, the machines began their own frantic celebration.
The heart monitor, which had droned with the same rhythmic monotony for five months, suddenly surged. The beep-beep-beep grew faster, more urgent, more alive. On the auxiliary screens, the flatlines of the brain waves began to spark with erratic, jagged electricity.
Life was surfacing. It was clawing its way up from the depths of the five-month ocean, gasping for the light.
Bai Qi scrambled closer, his knees hitting the floor beside the bed. He took Shu Yao's hand—the hand that was no longer a dead weight, but was beginning to pulse with a faint, emergent heat—and pressed it firmly against his lips.
"Finally," Bai Qi sobbed, the tears he had shed in the dream now spilling into the real world. "You made it, Shu Yao. You're coming back to me."
He kissed the knuckles, the palm, the wrist. He was a man drowning in a sea of his own relief.
"Now please... I am begging you," Bai Qi whispered, his voice a jagged prayer against the boy's skin. "Open your eyes. I can't wait another second. I can't breathe in this room without you. Just one look, Shu Yao. Give me one look."
The oxygen in the room seemed to crackle. The medical staff, alerted by the monitors, were already running toward the door, their footsteps echoing like thunder in the hallway.