Lys's world went dark.
One moment, he was standing tall in the battlefield, surrounded by the chaos and ruins of war. The next, the very ground beneath him vanished. The sky seemed to collapse, and all sound was muffled, as though the universe had been sealed away. There was no time, no place—only an all-encompassing darkness.
Lys tried to move, tried to call out, but his body wouldn't respond. His mind screamed for action, for movement, but it was as if the very fabric of reality had frozen him in place. Every instinct told him to fight, to push against whatever force had bound him—but there was no enemy to face. There was only a void, a presence watching him.
Then, a voice. The Architect's voice, cold and ancient, slithered through his thoughts like an insidious whisper, wrapping around him like a tightening noose.
"You are nothing but a fleeting anomaly, Lys. A mistake in the grand design. A piece that doesn't belong."
Lys's breath caught in his throat. He wanted to scream, to fight back, but his body was trapped. The Architect had ensnared him in a trance—a state where reality and dreams blurred into one, where his fears and insecurities became tangible.
The darkness around him began to shift, moving like an ocean of black smoke, swirling and twisting until it formed the shape of something… familiar.
Lys's heart clenched as a vision of his past appeared before him. He saw himself—younger, full of hope, standing on the edges of a battlefield, watching as his comrades fell one by one. His mind flashed back to those moments, the brutal memories of his failures, of lives lost that he couldn't save.
The faces of his fallen friends—those who had fought beside him—swam in front of him, their expressions twisted in anguish. Elda, Valerius, the countless others who had fallen in the battle… the faces blurred and melted into a dark haze, but the pain remained.
"You couldn't save them," a voice echoed, a voice that didn't sound like the Architect but one that was all too familiar. It was his own voice, filled with shame, filled with the weight of guilt.
"You failed them, Lys. And you'll fail again. You always do."
The world of shadows morphed again, shifting into a nightmarish landscape. Lys found himself standing on a cliff, looking down into an abyss. The wind howled, biting into his skin, but it wasn't the cold that made him tremble. It was the darkness below, the chasm that seemed to stretch on forever. It was an emptiness that threatened to swallow him whole.
"This is your fate," the voice whispered again. "To fall, endlessly. To fail. To never be enough."
Lys's knees buckled, his hands shaking. He could feel his breath quickening, his chest tightening, the weight of his failures pressing in on him from all sides. His greatest fear had always been the same—that no matter how hard he fought, no matter how much he pushed, he would always fail those he loved. He would fail again, and again, until there was nothing left.
His mind raced, his heart thundering in his chest. The faces of his comrades, of those who had believed in him, flashed before his eyes. Valerius's dying breath, Elda's last smile, the innocents caught in the crossfire, the lives he couldn't protect. It was all too much. The guilt, the grief, the endless weight of responsibility crushed down on him like a thousand stone boulders.
The darkness around him began to pulse with a new energy—a cold, malevolent power. Lys could feel it creeping into his mind, a force that sought to consume him from the inside out. He could feel himself slipping, the weight of his own thoughts and fears pulling him deeper into the abyss.
"You are nothing, Lys." The Architect's voice echoed, but this time, there was something else in it—something dark and mocking. "You are just a pawn in a game you don't understand. A failure who will never break free of the chains you've forged for yourself."
Lys's vision blurred. His body shook, but still, he fought. He clenched his fists, pushing against the suffocating weight of his own mind. He refused to give in to this nightmare.
But just as the darkness began to overtake him, something else stirred—a faint pulse, a surge of energy, like the hum of lightning in the distance.
Lys's heart raced. His mind was still trapped, still ensnared by the Architect's curse, but deep within, there was a flicker—a glimmer of something else.
"Lys," a voice called, calm and powerful, like the rumble of a distant thunderstorm.
Lys's eyes snapped open, and for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he saw a figure emerge from the darkness. It was a massive, ethereal creature, one he recognized instinctively.
The Shin Dragon.
It appeared before him like a storm made of crackling energy and lightning, a being of immense power and ancient strength. Its scales shimmered like liquid silver, and its eyes glowed with an otherworldly light, reflecting a depth of wisdom and power that surpassed even the highest gods. Its form was a perfect blend of fire and ice, of creation and destruction, and its presence burned into Lys's very soul.
The Shin Dragon moved toward him, its long tail swaying behind it with a graceful fury, like a force of nature itself. "Lys," the dragon spoke again, this time telepathically, its voice reverberating through his very bones. "I have been with you all along. You are not alone. Together, we will break free of this trance."
Lys felt the energy surge within him, his heart beating faster as the Shin Dragon's presence flooded his senses. The dragon's energy merged with his own, an impossible yet undeniable connection—like a force of nature colliding with a storm of his own making. The two powers combined, unlocking something deep within Lys's soul.
The Shin Dragon's essence surged through him, filling every corner of his mind and body with an energy unlike anything he had ever known. It was as if the weight of his fears, his failures, his guilt were being burned away by a fire so pure and intense that it left nothing but strength in its wake.
For the first time, Lys felt the familiar energy of gravity within him not as a burden, but as a force of empowerment, something that could bend the very laws of reality to his will. And with that realization, the darkness around him began to dissipate, retreating before the radiant power of the Shin Dragon's spirit.
Lys felt his power expand, his body transforming, his soul merging with the Shin Dragon's eternal essence. His eyes glowed with a fierce determination as he stood taller, more resolute than ever before.
"I am not alone," Lys whispered to himself, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "I am not just a failure."
He could feel the Shin Dragon's power within him—its strength, its wisdom. They were one now. And the darkness, the trance, the fear, all of it was fading. The Architect's grip on him was loosening, and Lys stood taller in that darkness, no longer a pawn in a game of fate.