FLASH! ~~~
A blinding light seared across Xerxez's vision, forcing him to shield his eyes. When he lowered his hand, his surroundings were no longer the familiar world he knew. It was as though he had been torn from one realm and hurled into another—this time louder, heavier, and violently alive. The brilliance dissolved into a storm of noise and chaos, sweeping him from the void of light into a nightmare made flesh.
"W-woah! What was that light!?" he gasped, his voice trembling. "What… is this place?"
Above him, jagged streaks of light crashed like divine hammers against the sky. A colossal, radiant shield stretched across the heavens, shimmering with an otherworldly glow, as though it were the final defense between existence and utter ruin. Yet something vast and merciless battered against it—an abomination armed with a mechanism of terrible power, trying to shatter the barrier as if it were mere glass.
Xerxez's breath caught. He was too young to comprehend the scale of what he was seeing, but the sky itself betrayed him. It tore open before his eyes, unraveling like a ripped cloak, revealing the endless abyss beyond.
"GRAWWWRR!!!"
The roar rattled his bones. Xerxez spun and froze—the land around him writhed with monstrosities. A billion forms, grotesque and restless, prowled across the ground. Their fangs gleamed in the stormlight, their claws gouged the broken earth. They were not born; they were summoned—dragged into this realm through burning Triangulum-shaped gates that carved holes in the fabric of space.
"Monsters… they're real!?" His voice cracked, heart hammering against his ribs.
One titanic beast slithered forward, its long tail thrashing, flames spilling from its jaws in torrents that scorched the battlefield. Amid the inferno, warriors clashed—figures wielding magic and weapons of impossible might, striking down horrors with valor that seemed carved from legend.
Xerxez's eyes locked onto one of them. A boy. No older than himself, yet burning with a ferocity that defied reason. For an instant, that boy fought like a hero from the oldest tales, defiant even as the darkness pressed in.
And then—just as suddenly as he appeared—he was gone.
"What… who was that boy?" Xerxez whispered, bewildered. Did I… really see him? Or was it only the light?
But the monsters remained. And the world still trembled.
Then it happened—
A thin vertical line tore across the sky, glowing like a wound in the heavens. The slit widened, unraveling into a vast, black void. An endless hollow space yawned above, devouring the light.
From its depths, they emerged.
The colossal tentacles, blacker than shadow, writhed downward as though an unfathomable beast reached through the tear. Each limb spread across the horizon, gripping the world itself, curling and twisting until they resembled talons trying to crush the earth into submission.
Then came the fire from its maw like embers the size of mountains fell like molten hail, crashing into the ground with apocalyptic force. The earth split, fractured by the rain of boulders. Cracks blazed with fiery veins until molten rivers gushed upward, spewing lava into the air like fountains of damnation.
"W-woah!" Xerxez cried out, his voice thin in the deafening chaos. "That's a… a face! A monster face!!!"
Through the gap in the sky, it revealed itself.
A visage formed—not flesh, but pure corruption. Its features were sculpted from thorny energy, jagged and cruel, crowned by a halo of seething, dark-purple radiance. The monster's eyes opened, burning galaxies swirling within them—yet those stars glimmered only with malice.
And it looked directly at him. A giant eye like a moon kissing the earth.
Xerxez's knees buckled. His lungs seized. Then, with terrifying swiftness, one of the enormous tentacles lashed down. It coiled around him like a constricting serpent, lifting him from the ground as easily as plucking a leaf. The boy screamed, thrashing against its crushing grip.
"No—no! I-I have nothing to do with this! The man in the wall—he just brought me here!" His voice broke, shrill with terror. His bladder threatened to betray him, his body quaking as the stench of burning earth and sulfur suffocated the air.
The tentacle tightened, bringing him closer to that monstrous face.
"Let me go!!! Please—no! Don't eat me!!!
It lunged — not with a casual swipe, but with an intent to consume him whole. The tentacle closed like a vice. Air was forced from Xerxez's lungs; his ribs protested with sickening pops. He was dragged, helpless, toward a mouth that was not a mouth but a maw of shadow and thorny light.
This was no simple swallowing. He felt the monstrous thing trying to unmake him — to crush him into atoms, to peel his thoughts from his skull and fold them into its own black hunger. Heat and cold collided against his skin as if every element in the world had been bent to obliterate him. His consciousness scraped along the edge of oblivion, a raw keening sound that stretched into forever. He could taste iron, feel bone splinter into a thousand terrible beads. A scream bloomed inside him and should have drowned the world. The boy closed his eyes as he screamed as if he was dissolved into gas.
Then — impossibly — he found himself standing after he opened his eyes. Heart still thumping like a trapped bird. Around him the vision fractured, like cracked glass catching light: jagged images of the rift, a galaxy-eye shutting, tentacles uncoiling. The projection collapsed inward and spilled away, leaving a hollow hush. As he opened his eyes to the same cold, empty void he'd been in before. The wall was still there, silent and unblinking as ever.
For a breathless second he simply stared. "I thought I was eaten," he said to himself, bewildered. "I thought I was—" He swallowed, the taste of ash and terror still vivid in his mouth. "—Eaten. How is this not real?"
A shadow moved against the wall, and a voice — the same voice that had brought him here — the boy realized: If this is what you call life and death, then, this is not funny.
When the silence returned, Martheuw spoke, voice low and cold. "The things you saw—call them vision, call them dream—may yet be waiting in the folds of tomorrow. Or they may never come. Either way… carry them. And go home."
Xerxez's fists clenched, his nails biting into his palms. His jaw ached as he ground his teeth. "I don't want to go back yet," he said, the words small but stubborn. "Please—just tell me."
His voice rose, cracking under the weight of questions. "Explain to me what those things were! Why would they destroy the earth? Why are they fighting?"
Martheuw only drew a long, heavy breath, the kind that seemed to drag years behind it. The silence that followed pressed heavier than any answer. breath as if the question pressed him.
"You said you were not afraid of monsters."
"I—" Xerxez's voice cracked. He looked away, heat crawling up his neck like fire ants. "I was brave about the lizards, yes. Not— not this. This wasn't a lizard. This was—" His throat tightened, words snagging on the memory. He clenched his fists, hunting for a name big enough to contain what he had felt, but all he found was emptiness. "It gripped me. It… it hurt. You can't just drop me there and expect me to be fine. That's trauma!" He spun back to the wall, cheeks blotched red, eyes stinging. "Hah. Now I can believe it—you're a monster too."
The wall rippled, laughter spilling out like stones rumbling down a mountain. "Hahahha!" Martheuw Cereun's mirth was deep and unrestrained, cutting against the boy's trembling fury. "Really? Humans are human. You cling to what you perceived, reality, to what cuts your skin and shakes your bones. You think feelings belong only to flesh that human have?"
Xerxez's chest heaved. "How could a monster possibly understand a human?" he snapped. "You don't feel. You don't—" His voice faltered, anger thinning into something rawer, smaller. He lowered his eyes, the fight draining. "You don't understand what it is to be small and terrified."
For a moment, silence. Then Martheuw's laughter quieted into a low, rumbling echo, neither mocking nor kind. "Small and terrified…" he repeated, as though tasting the words. "Do you believe monsters are born full-grown, without fear, without pain? You think we rise from the void already cruel, already vast? No, boy. Every being knows smallness. Every being knows terror. The difference is—some are broken by it. Others are carved into something sharp."
Xerxez's head lifted, startled by the shift in tone. The wall shimmered with a light that seemed to breathe, alive with secrets too heavy for his shoulders.
"So tell me, chosen one," Martheuw said softly, the amusement replaced by something heavier, almost solemn. "When fear takes you by the throat again, will you break… or will you sharpen?"
There was a long pause. When the voice replied, it was quieter, with an almost-offhand apology. "Okay. I'm sorry. It was a semi-real projection. Not truly flesh, only a carving in your mind, it alter your perception into something more like realistic, you feel it but not exactly hit you to the bone. It's your brain."
Xerxez let out a shaky laugh that was half relief and half outrage. "Semi-real," he repeated. "Wonderful. So I was nearly pulverized and it's just… a demo." He shook his head. "You should've warned me."
"The world you live are full of surprises, that is reality, you should aware of that." The wall flickered slowly.
He looked back at the void, at the place where the seam in the sky had yawned open moments before. For a moment the boy could still feel the coil of the tentacle, could still see the galaxy-ignited eyes. Prophecy or simulation, it had burned itself under his skin. It would not wash away simply because someone called it a trick.
"Fine," he muttered.
The wall remained silent, but beneath its stillness something like understanding — or indifference dressed as patience — hummed through the air. Xerxez swallowed, the memory of the salvo of embers and lava still hot in his throat. Destiny, he thought, has a way of feeling like truth even when it is forged from visions.
"Why did you do that? I— I'm almost traumatized!" Xerxez snapped, though the edge of his anger was paper-thin. The memory of the maw—the galaxy-eyes, the tentacle's coil—still echoed in his bones. He found himself standing before the wall as if it were a mirror and, on a stupid impulse, studied his own reflection: tousled hair, ash-smudged cheeks, pupils still too wide.
He felt a strange tickle in his stomach. "Wait a minute," he mumbled, hand rubbing his belly. "I don't feel like I was eaten by a cosmic horror. I… actually feel a little hungry. You know, monster-horror-sized breakfast."
"You're hungry?" The wall's voice folded around him like a dry book closing. It sounded faintly amused. Xerxez nodded, suddenly sheepish. Hunger made anything easier to joke about. "Ah. My mistake— I shouldn't have let that scene replay over your innocent, naive life. About the cruel truth." The voice sighed, almost apologetic. "What would you like me to serve?"
"Really?" Xerxez blinked, incredulous. "Well… I'm hungry. Maybe eggs. But not poached. Scrambled. Yeah—scrambled would be good. Less chance of triggering terrifying memory-anchors."
As if on cue, a square of light flashed on the wall and slid outward, hovering between them. Xerxez watched it float like a small, obedient moon. When it reached him, the square unfurled and, with a soft chiming sound, opened to reveal a spotless white porcelain plate, a spoon and fork, and—the thing that made Xerxez's heart give a little hop—golden, steaming scrambled eggs. Two vertical slabs of light rose from the ground and folded themselves into a table and chair beneath him.
He sat, hesitated for a heartbeat, then leaned forward and whispered to his reflection, half-grin, half-shiver, "I have to admit…that monster had good taste. Hehehe. Feels like I'm a delicious kid."
"You're eating?" the wall said.
"Mmmmm… it's delicious. Did you… cook this?" Xerxez asked with the reverence of someone who had just tasted a small miracle. The flavor was unlike anything on Thallerion—sweet with a mineral tang, warm and oddly floral, as if the sun itself had been folded into the eggs. It felt divine.
"That's a crane egg," the voice said plainly. "The Crane's eggs you wished to get."
"Are you serious!?" The fork clattered against the plate as joy flooded him. "I can't believe you can get their eggs!" Tears—tiny and ridiculous—pricked his eyes. "I like your food, Mr. Martheuw… this is my new favorite!"
For a few blessed bites the room was nothing but heat and butter and the careful, ecstatic chewing of a child. The terror ebbed just enough for him to laugh—sharp, unbelieving, relief pouring out of him in giggles.
Then the wall shifted. The square of light expanded and smeared until it became a screen; the chair under him hummed and the air grew still. On the glass-plain, images blinked into being: the Lacerta clan—green-scaled lizards—paused in their patrol, claws scratching at basalt and eyes flicking like cold coins. The scene stilled into a tableau.
"Hey… why am I still there?" Xerxez asked, fork frozen mid-air. On the screen, the version of him he had just seen—smaller, braver, younger—stood alone among the lizards, hands trembling but chin lifted. He watched his other self confront the group, parry a snapping jaw, back away with a clumsy, heroic thrust.