Sleep didn't come to Raiden so much as pull him under.
One moment he was lying on the small cot inside the Adventurers' Hub, the lelectric light dimming into soft shadows. The wooden walls around him felt warm from the heat of the hearth outside his door. Even the muffled sounds of other adventurers settling in for the night faded, replaced by a low humming emptiness.
Raiden didn't resist.
He never dreamed—not like normal people—but exhaustion had finally won its argument.
Darkness drifted over him like a tide swallowing the shore.
---
At first, there was nothing.
A void. Weightless and still.
Raiden couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't even think clearly. It was the strange, distant silence of a world that had forgotten the concept of sound.
Then—
A spark.
A tiny ember ignited somewhere in the endless dark, small as the flame on a dying matchstick. It flickered once, twice, then grew, spilling a soft orange glow that chased the shadows back as though peeling away a shroud.
When Raiden reached toward it, the ember shattered—
—into flashes.
Shards of imagery.
Light turning into stone.
Fire bending into memory.
The void reshaped itself around him, twisting into a place he had seen before, but only after time had ravaged it.
The Ancient Ruins.
But not how they were now.
Not dead.
Not silent.
They glowed with a life so powerful it thrummed through his bones.
Columns stood whole and unbroken, each carved with runes that pulsed like veins filled with molten gold. The walls flickered with moving shadows, though nothing cast them. Floating embers drifted past his face, warm but harmless, as if the air itself was made of firelight.
A soft tremor rippled beneath his feet—
ba-dum
like the heartbeat of something ancient slumbering deep beneath the stone.
Raiden stepped forward, his senses sharpened, tingling. He realized quickly that he wasn't seeing the ruins as they existed now. This was older. A memory of an age long gone. The air was thick with power—dense enough that each breath tasted metallic, scorching, alive.
Then the tremor came again.
Ba-dum.
The stones responded, runes flaring brighter. Lines of golden fire threaded across the circular platform beneath him, forming an intricate pattern—one he had noticed faintly during his real visit, cracked and nearly erased by time.
Now it burned brilliantly, forming a radiant sigil that radiated heat in waves.
Something was waking.
Raiden's body stiffened instinctively. He shifted into a defensive stance—yet he could not draw his daggers nor summon energy.
A dream had its own rules.
Its own chains.
The ground quaked with a deeper rhythm, and Raiden looked up.
A silhouette emerged from the glaring flames at the center of the platform.
A Phoenix.
But unlike the vibrant, divine creature described in myths, this one seemed heavy—its posture strained, wings trembling as if burdened by invisible chains. Feathers of molten gold and crimson fell from it like dying embers drifting through still air.
Its flames were unstable, flickering from radiant brilliance to suffocating darkness.
This creature was wounded.
Wounded so deeply the world around it felt its pain.
Raiden felt it too—an immense sadness pressing against him. Something ancient had broken here. Something powerful enough to scar time itself.
The Phoenix's head rose slowly.
And then it looked at him.
Not at his surroundings.
Not through him.
Into him.
The kind of gaze that peeled back skin, memory, truth—searching deeper for something Raiden didn't even know he carried.
The Phoenix blinked once, and a single feather ignited, brighter than the sun. The ruins trembled violently, runes spasming with light. The air split with a soundless cry—a call Raiden felt echo inside his chest, as if answering something dormant within him.
Then the platform cracked beneath the Phoenix's talons.
A blinding eruption of white surged outward—
—and detonated the world.
---
Raiden woke with a violent, gasping breath.
He shot upright in the Adventurers' Hub cot, hand instinctively reaching for a weapon that wasn't there. His chest heaved, lungs scrambling for air. Sweat clung to his skin in cold rivulets. Every muscle felt stiff, as if he'd been frozen and thawed too quickly.
"Raiden—Raiden!"
Alya's voice cut through his spinning thoughts. She rushed to his bedside, grabbing his shoulder firmly. "I've been calling you for minutes! Are you okay?"
Her eyes were wide—pure worry.
Raiden tried to answer, but his heartbeat was deafening.
Ba-dum.
The same rhythm from the ruins.
He wiped his forehead, hand trembling just enough for Alya to notice.
"You look stressed," she murmured, voice softening. "And you're drenched in sweat… What happened? Did you—see something?"
The question hit harder than he expected.
But the truth?
He didn't know what he saw.
A memory? A warning? A hallucination the ruins forced into him?
He forced himself to breathe slowly, pushing tension from his shoulders. He buried the nightmare—vision—whatever it was—deep inside.
"Just a dream," he said eventually, voice low and clipped. "Too real, maybe. Nothing to worry about."
Alya didn't believe him.
But she respected his walls.
She exhaled slowly. "I thought something was seriously wrong. You wouldn't wake up no matter what I tried."
Raiden swung his legs over the side of the cot, rubbing the stiffness from his face. The world still felt… off. He could almost hear the Phoenix's heartbeat echoing faintly in his skull.
His fingers twitched. Instinct urged him to analyze it, break it apart logically. But there was no logic to what he'd seen.
Only confusion.
Only fire.
Only a creature looking at him like it knew him.
He stood slowly, stretching sore muscles. "Give me ninety minutes," he muttered. "To get ready. We move after."
Alya hesitated, then nodded, packing her gear while watching him carefully.
But Raiden barely noticed.
He stared at his hands—half expecting to see ashes, embers, runes burned into his skin.
Nothing.
No power gained.
No answers found.
Only questions spiraling endlessly.
As early morning light filtered through the Hub's window shutters, Raiden finally whispered:
"What ha
ppened in those ruins… and why did it want me to see it?"
The wind didn't answer.
But somewhere deep inside him, the echo of ancient fire still smoldered.