📖 Chapter 4 — "The First Dream"
Night came like a whisper of silk, wrapping Sayuri's house in a silence deeper than usual. Rei didn't fall asleep right away. Ever since discovering the seal on his chest, his mind had been spinning like an out-of-control waterwheel. Questions without answers, blurred images, emotions that didn't entirely feel like his own.
But that night, the world changed.
First came the mist.
Dense, thick, white as spilled milk over a surface of obsidian. There was no ground, no sky, no horizon. Only mist. And the sound of something… alive. A heartbeat, slow and deep, like a ceremonial drum marking the rhythm of an existence that didn't belong to him—yet one he somehow recognized.
Rei floated. He wasn't walking, wasn't flying. He simply was, suspended in the void.
Then it appeared.
The Tree.
Colossal. With dark bark streaked with golden veins pulsing in time with his own chest. At its base, a lake reflected constellations that existed in no sky he had ever seen. The tree's roots stretched outward like fingers reaching for every corner of the invisible world surrounding it.
And at the foot of the tree… a door.
Not one of wood or iron, but an arch carved in white stone, etched with symbols identical to the seal on his chest. Rei approached. Each step echoed deeply in his mind.
A distant, feminine voice spoke:—You cannot enter yet. You still don't know who you are.
Rei stopped. Not because the voice commanded it, but because he felt that statement was… true.
—Who are you?
The voice didn't answer. Instead, other doors began to take form around him. One marked with dragon-like emblems, another shrouded in fire, another sealed with frozen petals trapped in crystal.
Dungeons.
He didn't know why, but that word crossed his mind with overwhelming certainty. Each of those doors led to a challenge, a world, a trial. And all of them were here, inside him.
The tree seemed to lean slightly, as if observing him. Its leaves rustled, and from the sky—if there was one—began to fall orbs of light that dissolved before touching the invisible ground.
And then, a vision.
A face. A woman with hair like blazing fire. Pakura. But not like in the memories from the anime he once knew—here, she was crying. In a field littered with bodies. Beside her, a young girl with the same red hair held her close. Rei didn't know if he was seeing the past, the future… or something else.
He tried to move closer, but the tree's heartbeat quickened.
DOOM. DOOM. DOOM.
Rei's body was wrapped in a swirl of energy that pushed him upward, as if the dream had completed its cycle.
Before vanishing completely, one last figure appeared in the lake's reflection: a boy with his same face… but eyes entirely black. He smiled.
And spoke a single word:—Soon.
Rei woke up gasping.
His hands were cold, his forehead damp with sweat. The sun was just beginning to creep through the windows of his room. At his side, the seal glowed faintly. For a second, he thought he saw one of those doors reflected in the surface of his tea on the breakfast tray.
He said nothing to anyone.
That morning, as Shuri explained the basics of elemental chakra, Rei couldn't help but feel that the world he was learning about… was only the surface.
Inside him, something had awakened.
Not a skill. Not a power.
But a certainty:This world is not my prison. It is the starting point.