Anesthesia?
Were they really going to drug him? Was he about to become some sort of experiment?
But if he remembered correctly, the term Anesthesia in this world… meant something else entirely.
""Mr. Hazu said it has similar effects to regular potions, except …" Ellaria swallowed nervously.
Kael already knew what she was trying to say.
This so-called Anesthesia wasn't like morphine or any numbing agent.
It didn't relax tense muscles or numb the nerves to block out pain.
In fact, it did the opposite.
"... your pain will be compressed into a short burst, while your body is forced into accelerated cell regeneration."
The trade-off? A full recovery.
Mr. Hazu, huh…
The name appeared often in The Heavenly Bond. One of the few Ashborns who was actually respected.
An inventor, a scholar, a healer.
If there was one word to describe him—genius.
But genius often danced dangerously close to madness.
It made sense that a man like him worked at an elite academy, with full freedom to develop new potions—potions he could even recommend to students.
Not just any student, of course.
But Ashborns were a different story. No one cared if he lived or died—not even his 'father'.
If it worked, Hazu would take all the credit.
If it didn't, well, people would forget about the failure in two days.
But what choice did Kael really have?
Whether now or later, pain was inevitable.
So why prolong it?
Better to face it now than suffer through weeks of slow, torturous recovery.
"I'll ... take it."
Ellaria stared. "Young Master?"
"I said... I'll take it."
"You're sure? It's going to hurt. A lot. What if it's too much and you—"
"Give it to me!" he snapped, forcing himself to shout.
The broken bones in his face screamed in protest, and the firestorm of pain that followed made him grimace in agony.
Ellaria winced at the sight, sighed, and walked to the vanity.
She picked up a small vial of thick, pitch-black liquid.
Even just looking at it made Kael's skin crawl.
Ellaria unscrewed the cap and hovered it near his lips, but once again hesitated. "A-Are you sure?"
"Do it."
Resigned, she let out a quiet breath and gently tilted the bottle to his mouth.
The potion took only seconds to take effect. And just before the pain came crashing down, Kael heard her whisper softly:
"...you have to promise me you'll come back. No matter what happens."
Then the pain hit.
And Kael screamed—like an animal in its final moments.
#
He didn't know when he stopped screaming.
Had he blacked out, or had his throat finally given up?
He was somewhere else—a surreal space without top or bottom.
No light. No shape. No color.
A perfect void.
That description reminded Kael of one specific event from the original Heavenly Bond storyline. The sensation that Samael experienced—when he first entered the Dream of Fate.
But how?
The Dream of Fate required a special device—one that placed someone between the conscious and subconscious mind.
Could the unbearable pain have triggered it… automatically?
But even if that were true, there was still something missing.
After all, entry into the Dream of Fate required approval from the Sky Authority—a divine entity never physically shown in the game.
Did that mean the Sky Authority had allowed this?
What he saw inside the Dream felt just as off.
Typically, it would show a person their Fated Ones.
It offered a space for communication, and a deep understanding—so that the Bonded Fate could form perfectly.
But for Ashborns—who were never meant to have a Partner—the dream only showed randomized visuals.
Like what Kael was seeing now.
"Mom?"
That wasn't Kael's mother.
Even in the original story, Kael's mother was never once mentioned.
No, that was his mother. That was Lucas's mom. Emma Gray.
And he saw himself—his old self.
Rough hands, a wrist marked with tattoos, a torn scar on his left shoulder.
This was his real body. This was Lucas Gray.
"Is everything okay?" Emma asked.
The shapeless world began to shift—morphing slowly into something more familiar.
A living room.
One he remembered well.
The place where he used to study with Emma.
And there she was again. Not the glamorous 50-year-old woman from the Pride Group.
But the tired, working mom she once was.
She asked again, softly, "Lucas, is everything okay?"
What was this? A cruel joke?
Lucas chuckled.
At first, just a dry laugh—but he couldn't stop. The absurdity made him grin.
On a whim, he imagined a cigarette. And sure enough, one appeared in his hand.
A lighter showed up on the nearby table.
He lit the cigarette and watched smoke drift between them as his mother's eyes widened.
"What ... are you doing?" Emma asked, her face etched with confusion and concern.
"Trying to have a conversation."
"You smoke?"
"Not much these days. Honestly, I never really saw the appeal."
"Then why?"
"Habit, maybe? Picked it up from my cellmate. Marc. He was French. Called himself a street artist. Came in on rape charges. I know, disgusting guy—but hey, his taste in music wasn't bad. We clicked pretty fast."
"Wait... cellmate? Rape?" Emma's face froze. "Lucas, what happened to you?"
What happened?
Lucas leaned his chin on one hand, cigarette between his fingers.
"Well... after everything, Dad started gambling, drinking, and hitting me. Not-so healthy habit, but yeah, that's how our days goes. Eventually, we ran out of money. Moved into a rat-hole apartment. A few guys started something with me, I gave them a lesson."
Lucas snorted. "Okay, maybe I went overboard.
Turns out the guy was some city councilman's son, and I ended up in prison—no trial, straight in."
"You—what?!"
"Fifteen-year sentence. But I was a model inmate, so the judge took pity. Disgusting old man, but generous.
I guess what the world needs is more of that—generosity."
Another drag.
"When I got out, I heard Dad had died. Fell in a toilet, hung himself, OD'ed—take your pick. Social services paid for the funeral, so I didn't have to go into debt the moment I was 'free."
Emma's voice cracked. "That … was awful. And even hearing that bad news from your relatives."
"Relatives? Nah. Got the news from my cell warden.
As for my relatives—yeah, maybe I had one. Not anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Aunt, uncle, cousins. They spat on me—well, tried to—every time I knocked on their door for a place to crash.
It was supposed to be temporary.
Not like I wasn't trying to get on my feet, but I didn't have any money and I just wanted a place to stay for the night."
Lucas looked down. The cigarette was gone.
He didn't remember finishing.
So he flicked the stub away, and finally managed a smile.
"So yeah, everything's okay, Mom."