The night his core matured—at thirteen, a full year later than the average—there had been no void in his memory.
He remembered the dream.
Perfectly clear as crystal, intact and unfractured.
And unlike the testimonies he had just read, it hadn't been terrifying. There was no suffocating pressure, no paralysis, no formless presence squatting on his chest.
And that absence felt far more unnatural than any nightmare.
There was another detail he could not dismiss.
He had seen that dream twice—once at six, and again at thirteen.
In the first instance, at six, he stood alone in an endless sea, having no shore or horizon. Water stretched in all directions, shallow enough to kiss his shins, yet vast enough to erase the concept of land. The sea was an impossible cyan, clear like melted glacier, catching sunlight that hung motionless in a flawless blue sky. The world felt curated—too clean, too deliberate—like a painting that had never known decay.
There were no waves. The water lay still, flat as polished glass. Only living things there was Dolphins, that arced through the air in scattered leaps, graceful and joyous, as though welcoming him into a sanctuary. They didn't splash or make noise. Their movements were elegant, almost ceremonial—yet beneath that beauty lingered something wrong.
He walked forward, the water parting without resistance, and turned slowly, searching the empty expanse.
That was when he saw it.
An ethereal ineffable blue castle rose from the sea, its silhouette piercing the sky itself. It did not sit upon the water—it reigned over it. An impossible structure, radiant and alien, beautiful beyond any language he possessed. Even now, memory failed to compress it into words.
There was no gate or barbican, only countless cathedral-height tracery windows—each the size of a floor-to-ceiling door—lining the structure like unblinking eyes. Strange symbols were carved across its surface, elegant and unreadable, as though meaning itself had been sealed behind a forgotten grammar. Four spire-like lofty pillars curved inward, bowing toward a massive central dome, not in support but in reverence.
The structure felt unfinished. Or... abandoned.
He decisively entered in it.
The castle was anomalously empty. There's no echoes, no footsteps, no presence—just serenity.
And then the dream ended—cleanly, abruptly—like a curtain falling before the audience could realize the play had already begun.
When the dream returned at thirteen, it had aged like a photograph left too long in the sun.
The sky was dimmer, its blue diluted. The sea had risen, now licking higher against his calves. The dolphins were gone. There's no welcome energy. Only silence stretching in all directions, heavy enough to press against the skin.
The castle still stood—but it had lost its radiance. Its once-luminous blue was dulled, filmed over with a faint ash-gray dust, as though time itself had settled on its surface. Hairline fractures traced the windows. The four bowing spires were missing. Neither broken nor fallen. Simply erased, as if they had never been allowed to exist in this version of the world.
Yohan approached without knowing why. The water resisted him now, dragging at each step, reluctant to let him move forward.
Rather than entering, he reached one of the massive windows and peeked inside.
What he saw froze the blood in his veins.
The castle was no longer empty.
At its center stood a statue—entirely black,
lightless, swallowing the space around it.
Its form was unmistakably humanoid, yet wrong in ways his mind refused to define. It was not grotesque. Not monstrous either. Just… incompatible. Like a word that did not belong in the sentence of reality.
The terror did not come from what it looked like—but from the certainty that it should not have been there. Not in that place, not in that castle.
The moment that certainty took root, he woke up with faint gasping.
His chest weighed down for a while, eyes snapping open. But Yohan's core had been blossomed.
Whatever the statue had been—its face, its posture, its meaning—slipped through his memory like water through clenched fingers. Only one truth remained, etched deeper than fear:
Something had entered the castle and it had not been meant to.
Now thinking about that dream, he felt a cold sweat ran down his spine, his vision blurring as his eyes inexplicably welled up.
That dream held a certain place in Yohan's memory. He had never been able to forget it but realizing that it carried meaning tied to the maturation of his Core astonished him far more than the dream itself.
"Whatever," he sighed."Nothing will come thinking about that now." He looked at the time, streching his back. Right on cue, his mother called from downstairs.
'Whew, it's dinner time, finally.'
A low ache had spread beneath his skin, not sharp yet, more like pressure sealed inside muscle, stiffness thickening, soreness blooming by the second. His arms felt heavy and disobedient.
Yohan kept his face still, refusing to let the aftermath of the day's merciless workout rise to the surface.
He stumbled at the kitchen doorway. His mother was arranging the dishes with practiced rhythm, while his sister's voice drifted from the adjacent room, low and absorbed in a call.
Ring! Ring!
Then the door bell rang.
"Your dad must be back, go check." His mother said without looking at him, the words automatic & practiced.
Instinct carried him to the main door. He opened it with a sliver of caution.
"What's going on," his father said, voice heavy yet gentle, fatigue clinging to it. A tired smile tugged at his face as he stepped inside, scraping his shoes against each other before slipping them off. He passed his tote bag to Yohan.
"Nothing, Mama just cooked dinner, I guess," Yohan said, taking the bag—it felt lighter than usual.
His father was already moving, headed straight for the bathroom beside the entrance, unconcerned with the answer, habit guiding him more than thought.
Yohan carried the bag into the kitchen.
"What's in it?" his mother asked, rinsing her hands under the tap.
"Dunno. It's lightweight today." he said, dropping it onto the middle of the table as he moved to sit.
"Put it over there." She nodded toward the space beside the fridge. He did as instructed followed by soft hissing steam from the stove, filling the kitchen with the low, familiar breath of cooking.
Soon after, all four of them gathered around the dinner table. An unusual silence was reverberating through the house which made Yohan a little anxious, nudging him to finish quickly and retreat.
But the rising rich scrumptious scent of the hot cooked meat made him falter.
They ate as though seated in a ceremonial hall mid-banquet rather than a home, formal and watchful. Only the faint sounds of slurping and the soft clink of metal against porcelain disturbed the stillness.
Tink...!
Noyul tapped her spoon against the table, the small sound cutting cleanly through the hush.
"How's the shop been lately?"
A pause followed—too long. Then Yohan's father answered, his voice flat and heavy, halting his munching — sitting in front of Yohan and Noyul.
"... Can't you tell? There's no progress."
"Ha..." She sighed with sobering realization,"How will the things work out like this? Siyun isn't responsible for this household alone."
His father's brows drew together. A tight sneer crept onto his face, his eyes flaring with something undefined. "What you want me to do? Robbery? Burglary?" He scoffed. "I'm doing what I can. It's all about luck."
"But...for how long? I mean..." A clear hesitation could be felt in Noyul's voice — concerned and pressed.
He paused and raised the metal glass to his mouth.
Clink!
Tapping the metal glass back on the table, he heaved. "Yohan's not a kid anymore. It's time he shares the load." A pause, then the verdict. "I've decided, he'll start working this month."
Something inside Yohan snagged—like a nail dragged across his chest. His eyes widened in his head. He froze refusing to even breath for a second.
"I don't see a problem with it. He's too free after school anyway and he has to learn how to stand on his own sooner or later," Siyun said, quick as always, seated at the far end of the table beside their parents, delivering her judgment with the quiet certainty of someone used to being right.
Yohan only answered with silence.
Their mother, however, disagreed. Arguing that this was the time for him to study properly, not get distracted by work. And it didn't fit well to sacrifice future fortune that could come through a good education for immediate mere sum of pennys.
The argument dragged on, circling the same fears and compromises, until it finally culminated into an uneasy agreement with his mother. He would stay in school—for now. But if his grades slipped, he would leave and take up whatever work he was capable of. Yohan didn't make a voice throughout the debate.
After conclusion, he walked straight back to his room with darkened eyes and zoned out with lowered gaze.
He entered the room shutting the door behind, on the second thought he left it open half. And let himself drop onto the bed on his back. Relaxed hands covered his eyes. "Misery creates more miserable lives."
He let his hands slide away, revealing the ceiling in his sight. Then a wobbling smile appeared on his face with narrowed eyes.
"X," he murmured, voice barely there,"I wish someone would walk through that door just once and ask how I'm holding up. Just once."
He paused, swallowing. "I don't need answers. At least for once, I just want a hand reaching out, someone asking if I'm okay… what I want."
A thin breath escaped him. "I feel lonely, X. Now I think about it, I never loved isolation. I just tried to consolidate myself by convincing seclusion gives solace."
Yohan curled inward, folding into himself the way an infant sinks into a cradle, arms wrapping tight around his own ribs. "Please... hold me, X. I don't want to be alone. You won't leave me, right?"
I will never leave you. Even when the world turns its back, even when you doubt yourself. We have always stayed together and always will. You are not alone. I'm with you, forever, till the end of eternity.
"T-thank you… thank you, X."
His voice broke anyway—suppressed sobs trembling through gratitude. "I don't want anything or anyone, just stay with me. We'll disappear from this place, find somewhere far enough that the humanly chaos can't reach us, only us and our dreams."
Soon, comfort softened into sleep. Then—
A harsh knocking thundered from below, dragging his eyes wide open in an instant. Instinct dragged his gaze to the vintage clock facing the bed.
2:55 a.m.