As their vehicle hummed through the toxic wasteland toward another temporary shelter, Tian found himself sinking deeper into the familiar rhythm of their journey when something unprecedented began to penetrate the edges of his consciousness. A voice, faint and distorted, seemed to whisper directly into his mind—not the internal dialogue he had grown accustomed to across countless cycles, but something external, urgent, and desperately trying to reach him.
"Master Tian," the voice called, crackling with interference as if transmitted across vast distances through hostile territory. "Its me, Amisra. Whatever you are going through now is not real."
The words struck him like physical blows, causing his enhanced perception to flicker and waver. The interior of their vehicle seemed to shimmer around the edges, details becoming less distinct as if viewed through water or heat distortion.
"You have to get out of it," the voice continued, growing more urgent despite the static that threatened to drown it out completely. "It's not real—" The transmission cut to painful silence before resuming with desperate intensity. "It's a Greater Hasura's doing. It's a spell. You are under it."
Each word sent shockwaves through Tian's consciousness, causing the entire reality around him to blur and shake like a film projection with a damaged lens. His teammates' faces became indistinct, their voices muffled and hollow, as if he were observing them from underwater or through thick glass.
"It's weaving a fabricated story using your memories," Amisra's voice fought through increasing interference, each syllable accompanied by what felt like electrical shocks racing through Tian's nervous system. "It's trying to find your secrets. Don't—" Static overwhelmed the transmission before it resumed with desperate urgency. "Don't let it dig any deeper."
The revelation crashed over him with the force of a tsunami, washing away the comfortable certainty of his perceived reality. Everything he had experienced—the endless cycles, the progressive power development, the relationships he had built with the sanctuary's inhabitants—all of it began to feel hollow and artificial, like memories viewed through a distorting mirror.
"Master Tian, this is all I can do," Amisra's voice came through one final time, weakening with each word as if the connection was being forcibly severed from the other end. "You have to get out of it. Hurry."
The transmission died completely, leaving behind only an echoing silence that seemed to mock his confusion. But the damage to his fabricated reality was irreversible. Now that he knew to look for them, Tian began noticing the subtle inconsistencies that his mind had previously glossed over—the way conversations repeated with mechanical precision, how emotional reactions followed predictable patterns, the strange sense that crucial details were always just slightly out of focus.
"Tian?" Elena's voice seemed to come from very far away, though she sat directly beside him in the vehicle. "What happened? Are you feeling unwell?"
Her concern felt scripted now, hollow and artificial compared to the desperate authenticity of Amisra's warning. Tian stared at his teammate's face, searching for signs of genuine humanity behind what now appeared to be an elaborate mask designed to deceive him.
The anger that rose within him was unlike anything he had experienced during his supposed cycles of temporal imprisonment what he experience a while ago . This was the fury of someone who had discovered that he had been living a lie — no, well a kind of dream, that all the struggles and growth and relationships had all been nothing more than an elaborate deception designed to extract information from his minds.
When they reached the next temporary base—another small shelter carved into the toxic landscape—Tian found himself studying his companions with new eyes. Every gesture, every expression, every word seemed calculated now, part of some grand performance designed to maintain the illusion of reality while something monstrous rifled through his memories like files in a cabinet.
As the group settled in for their rest period, Tian made his decision. If this was all fabricated, if his teammates were nothing more than constructs designed to manipulate him, then he would test the boundaries of this false reality in the most direct way possible.
Without warning or explanation, he lunged toward Dr. Sarah Chen, his enhanced strength allowing him to seize her throat and slam her against the rocky debris that lined their shelter's walls. His action was so sudden and unexpected that for a moment, his other teammates could only stare in shock.
"Are you out of your mind?" Marcus shouted, scrambling to his feet. "Why are you attacking Dr. Sarah?"
"Release her this instant!" Elena demanded, her medical training making her acutely aware of the danger Chen was in. "Tian, what's wrong with you?"
But Tian ignored their protests completely, focusing instead on the figure struggling in his grip. He began chanting in the ancient language, words of power that should have been impossible for him to know in this fabricated reality. The energy that flowed through him felt different now—but something raw and primal that had been hidden beneath layers of deception.
"Please, Tian," the Sarah-thing gasped, its voice perfectly mimicking her terror and confusion. "You're hurting me. I can't breathe."
The others rushed forward to intervene, their movements carrying the desperate urgency of people trying to save a friend from a mental breakdown. Someone fired a weapon at him—he felt the impact but ignored it completely, maintaining his grip and continuing his chant with increasing intensity.
"You're not in the right state of mind!" Kai shouted, his analytical nature struggling to process what appeared to be a complete psychological collapse. "Tian, please, you're going to kill her!"
But as the ancient words of power reached their crescendo, the thing wearing Sarah's face began to change. Its struggles became less human, more animalistic. The carefully maintained illusion started to crack and peel away like old paint, revealing something underneath that had never been remotely human.
Within seconds, what had appeared to be Dr. Sarah Chen transformed into a weasel-like creature with elongated limbs and a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth. Its eyes burned with malevolent intelligence as it snarled and laughed with a sound like breaking glass.
"Your story is amusing," the creature hissed, its voice carrying harmonics that hurt to hear. "The cycles, the training, the relationships—all quite creative fabrications drawn from your own memories and desires, Isn't it."
Remarkably, even as this transformation occurred before their eyes, Tian's other teammates continued to act as if nothing had changed. They still shouted at him to release Sarah, still fired their weapons at him, still pleaded for him to return to sanity. The illusion was so complete that even witnessing its breakdown couldn't break their scripted responses.
"Well, it doesn't matter," the weasel-thing continued, its grin widening to display more teeth than any natural creature should possess. "Your story will end soon enough, and I'll have everything I need from that fascinating mind of yours."
The creature's laugh was like nails on metal, a sound that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. "I will make sure of it. Hahaha!"
Tian's response was immediate and devastating. Drawing upon power that felt more real than anything he had experienced during his supposed cycles of development, he channeled raw energy into a destructive force that struck the creature like a focused explosion. The weasel-thing's laughter cut off abruptly as it was torn apart at the molecular level and burnt in immense fire, its form dissolving into smoking fragments that scattered like ash in a nonexistent wind.
The moment the creature was destroyed, reality itself began to collapse around him. The shelter, his teammates, the toxic landscape outside—all of it dissolved into swirling whiteness that hurt to perceive directly. Colors bled together and separated in patterns that followed no natural law, while sounds echoed from impossible directions.
In the center of this chaotic void, a massive presence made itself known. The creature that materialized was beyond description in conventional terms—part goat, part nightmare, part living shadow that existed in dimensions human eyes weren't designed to perceive. Most of its form appeared to be missing or damaged, as if it had recently survived some catastrophic battle, but its red eyes burned with ancient malevolence from pools of absolute darkness.
"I will find you," Tian roared, his voice carrying across the collapsing illusion with the force of divine wrath, "and tear you to pieces!"
The Greater Hasura's laughter was like the sound of civilizations dying, a noise that carried the weight of countless consumed souls. As its form began to dissolve into smoke and shadow, its voice echoed through the fragmenting reality with promises of future encounters and inevitable doom.
Then everything went white, silent, and still.
The world was silent—broken only by the slow hiss of decay. All around lay the remains of something colossal, its vast carcass dissolving into the earth. Towering slabs of rotting flesh formed a grotesque landscape, glistening with black ichor that seeped into the ground like spilled night. The air was thick with the stench of death and corruption, so potent it seemed to cling to the soul as much as to the skin.
At the heart of this ruin lay an old man, draped in robes so dark they seemed woven from shadow itself—black with the deep sheen of obsidian, glimmering faintly against the viscous pool beneath him. His body was motionless, his face pale and still, as though carved from ash.
Kneeling beside him was a woman, her hands stained and trembling as she wiped the dark fluid from his cheek. Her robes, once white, were now marred by soot, blood, and things unnameable. Strands of hair clung to her tear-streaked face as she leaned close, whispering with a voice hoarse from exhaustion and fear.
When awareness returned, Tian found himself lying on cold ground surrounded by the rotting remains of something vast and terrible.
Beside him knelt a woman he recognized —Amisra.
"Master Tian," Amisra whispered, her voice breaking with emotion, "are you feeling any pain?"
The old man's eyes opened slowly, focusing on her face with effort that spoke of recent trauma beyond imagining. She continued speaking through her tears, words tumbling over each other in her relief and anxiety.
"I did help you break the spell, didn't I? " she asked enthusiastically, desperate for confirmation that her desperate gamble had succeeded. "I was really worried you would leave me too."
As she spoke these words, the emotional strain finally overcame her, and she collapsed into unconsciousness beside him. Tian reached out with a trembling hand to pat her head gently, the gesture carrying the tenderness of someone who had seen too much death and treasured every remaining life.
Then he too closed his eyes, not in sleep but in the profound weariness of someone who had just experienced the shattering of an elaborate mental prison built from his own memories—memories that had been far more gruesome and terrible than even the fabricated reality had dared to show him.
The truth was always worse than the lie, and Tian had lived through horrors that would have broken lesser minds entirely. But he was free now, returned to a reality where battles were won through sacrifice, where relationships were forged in blood and loss rather than comfortable illusion.
The real war was far from over.