203 THE NIGHTMARE OF MOTHER
Three weeks later, Damen's meta-rank score had climbed to Rank A.
It was finally time to act.
The Nuralith family's clandestine network lay fully mapped before him—down to the narrowest alleyways. Damen intended to start small.
His first target would be the Nuralith family's lesser operatives: the ones handling illegal dealings and laundering dirty money.
He chose a lightly guarded warehouse tucked away in a quiet, remote district. According to surveillance, the Nuralith accounts department had been sending staff there frequently and discreetly.
There had to be something valuable inside.
"Do you think we'll face strong opposition?" Kail asked, his voice tense.
"The guards are intentionally minimal," Liorea replied calmly. "This place is off the books. They don't want attention. The real defense is how obscure the location is."
"Off the books… as in illegal?" Kail asked.
"Yes. You can call it that," Liorea said.
Damen nodded. "I'm not pretending otherwise. We're hitting Nuralith Corporation's illegal operations. But before we move, I want to be absolutely sure there's no serious opposition."
"I already checked," Kail said. "There are no high-rank signatures in the area."
"Good," Damen replied, double-checking anyway.
He kept a priority list—Nuralith's strongest executives and elite enforcers… they were flagged for instant detection by his tracking function.
If any of them were nearby, his tracking ability would alert him immediately.
After a final scan, he relaxed slightly. "We're clear."
Once the perimeter was secured, they moved.
Kail and Liorea stayed hidden in a delivery van a block away, overseeing the operation. Kail handled the feeds—security cameras looped seamlessly, guard dog patrols subtly redirected.
Damen melted into the darkness, his invisibility cloaking him as he slipped toward the warehouse entrance.
"All clear," Kail whispered through the comms. "You're good to go."
Liorea chuckled softly. "This is actually fun. I haven't felt this kind of thrill since the Order of the Cockerel."
Damen eased the door open and slipped inside uneventfully.
He moved like a phantom between stacked crates, heading straight for the aur bank at the rear office.
"This is a clean job," Damen muttered once he was done. "A real steal."
An hour later, a duffel bag sat heavy at his feet—filled with cards worth nearly half a billion aurs.
Then something felt wrong.
Damen froze, his senses flaring. "Is there another room here?" he whispered into the comms.
Kail pulled up the map. "Yes… we missed one. There's a hidden chamber behind the east wall. I'll try unlocking it remotely."
There was a pause.
"Wait…It's no good," Kail said. "It won't respond."
Liorea cut in. "It's manual. Old-style mechanical lock that is completely isolated from the system….you can't break that from here."
Kail swore under his breath. "You'll have to force it open, Big Brother…there is no backdoor this time."
Damen clenched his jaw.
"Well, time for manual labour."
He set the duffel aside, rolled his shoulders, and stepped toward the faint seam in the wall.
Whatever lay beyond could be a bonus.
Or a trap.
Either way, he was going in.
----
Damen cracked the heavy vault locks with little effort.
The mechanism was purely mechanical—there were no digital seals, and no system connection. That alone told him how secretive whatever was inside must be.
You can hack a network, but not a steel lock.
The door swung open with a low hiss.
Instead of the expected piles of aur cards or relics, the room was sterile with cold white lights, metal floors, the faint hum of machines.
"What the hell, it's a lab here? Damen whispered to the comms.
It was a secret laboratoryhidden beneath the warehouse.
"It's rather quiet in here like the place is abandoned", Damen said.
There were no scientists here nor guards…then he found it… a single cylindrical tank filled with viscous blue liquid, cables trailing like vines into the ceiling.
Damen froze immediately.
He knew this machine.
He'd seen it before… it was the Nightmare Engine, the same type used by Stacy Qiltera when she tried to break Kail's mind.
And Damen was even more shocked when floating inside the tank was a familiar face.
"Eryn…?" he whispered, disbelief turning to anger. "You were supposed to be in training. What the hell are you doing in here?"
There was no response...only the rhythmic pulse of the machine.
He clenched his jaw and scanned the system.
Two cores pulsed at the heart of the device—Core of Genesis and Core of Mind—the machine's essence. Damen's eyes flickered with energy as he assimilated both, severing the system's control protocols.
The lights dimmed, alarms flickered weakly, and the tank's pressure seals cracked. Luckily the machine wasn't connected to the warehouse system, so the breach wasn't reported.
The glass tank was shattered and blue fluid rushed across the floor as Eryn collapsed into his arms, limp and cold. Damen stripped a lab coat from a nearby rack and wrapped it around her shoulders.
Moments later, she stirred weakly, her eyes half-open. "Where… am I?"
Damen exhaled, still holding her steady. "I was about to ask you the same thing."
-----
They got Eryn back to the secret base.
After rounds of meds and warm blankets she began to come around and, finally, to tell them what had happened.
"Damen…how did you find me?" she asked, her voice small. "In the dream I kept calling your name. I waited and waited, but you never came."
"Don't worry about that," Damen said, cutting the sentiment short. "Tell me how you ended up in that nightmare machine."
Eryn closed her eyes and concentrated, memory surfacing in stuttering pieces. "My father sent me to the main family for a week of 'special training,' but instead they shipped me to the Nuralith corporation," Her voice broke and she began to cry.
"Your family sent you to the Nuralith? Why?" Damen demanded.
They remained silent for a while.
Then Liorea broke it.
"They're trying to appease the Nuralith after Carl Nuralith's death. Eryn was engaged to him before and was indirectly the reason that got Carl killed. They couldn't get vengeance from you," she said pointing to Damen before adding, "they sought payback from Eryn."
"And the Veyran just gave her up?" Kail asked.
Damen's hands clenched. "Those Nuraliths..and Veyran. I'll make them pay for this."
"Why did they use the nightmare machine on you?" he asked Eryn.
Eryn swallowed and told them. "I was brought to a secret lab. They ran experiments. They injected something into me….and my body started acting weirdly."
They listened with interest. "What kind of experiment are they running?" Damen asked.
"I don't know but my vitals were getting out of control. I heard them say I was a failure. Then they put me into the machine to sleep… and that was when the nightmares started," she explained.
"They must have realized you failed their project, but they couldn't dispose of you without raising the wrath of the Veyran… so they kept you in an obscure building where they were doing money laundering", Liorea explained.
"That was how we discovered you", Damen added.
Then Kail asked with interest, "You said something about Nightmares?"
"Yes…at first it was nightmares about things I fear…" she said, her expression was of shock.
Then she composed herself before explaining, "…but after a while there was something else in my nightmare…I was… somewhere else. The desert of Anu. Andthere…. I saw my mother."
"The nightmare machine generates from your experiences… those nightmares are manufactured there is nothing to them…you don't have to worry too much", Kail tried to console her.
"No…", Eryn insisted before adding, "there is something with those nightmares…they are so….real."
"Zalira has powerful psychic ability. Perhaps she is there helping her", Damen said.
Damen remembered his own experience. Many suspected that his mother left a guardian angel to help him…and they still do.
"Eryn's mother has passed away. Are you saying a ghost is helping her in the nightmare machine", Kail asked.
"Did your mother say anything in particular?" Liorea asked.
Eryn nodded, trembling. "She kept saying I needed Damen's blood to cure me. Over and over… like it looped forever."