The dream did not begin gently.
Ael did not fall asleep and drift into darkness; he plunged into it, as if the floor of his consciousness cracked open and swallowed him whole.
One breath he was lying in his bed at home, exhausted from training.
The next breath—
—he stood in a world burning.
Except he wasn't standing.
He wasn't moving at all.
He wasn't even himself.
Ael realized it with a jolt of terror: his body was not responding to him. His fingers moved, but not because he told them to. His breath came slow and calm, but not from his lungs. His heart pounded, but to a rhythm not his own.
He was locked inside someone else, a captive spectator inside a stranger's skin.
Or… not a stranger.
He felt it—somewhere deep, buried, impossible: a warmth, a familiarity, a grief he didn't understand.
But before he could question it, the world outside consumed his senses.
A battlefield stretched into infinity, carved out of white stone and bathed in light that didn't feel like sunlight—sharp, crystalline, shimmering as if woven from broken stars. And everywhere, spiraling war banners of pure luminosity fluttered violently in a wind that smelled of ozone and ash.
The air was thick with heat, screams, roars—
And demons.
Thousands. Tens of thousands.
Ael had seen demons before in the academy archives, but nothing like this.
These were something else.
Cobalt-skinned marauders with spines like scythes.
Towering beasts with molten runes carved into their flesh.
Winged horrors crying fire instead of sound.
Shadows with eyes that weren't eyes but bottomless holes.
And behind them…
Ael sensed it before he saw it.
The presence.
Heavy. Vast. Wrong.
The kind of power that twisted the air by existing.
A Demon King.
And behind that—resting like a mountain of wings and void—
A Demon Emperor.
It was too large to comprehend. Too large to fight. Too large to even see without shattering.
He only understood this terms vaguely, as if it was something familiar in the sync of the dreams between him and the person he was dreaming as, humans themselves have never seen these types of demons, nor could they ever hope to reach a power like the one these held.
Ael's mind screamed to move, to run, to do anything, but the body he was in simply lifted a hand, calm and unhurried.
That hand glowed.
Not with fire.
Not with lightning.
Not with wind or stone or any element he had seen an Awakened call forth.
This light was different.
It didn't burn.
It didn't blind.
It purified.
Soft, pale radiance — gentle yet infinitely deep, like moonlight folded into itself. It hummed with something that made Ael's breath catch: something familiar.
Ether.
But not like his.
This was Ether in its perfect form, the element the demon in the rift had shrieked about, terrified and enraged.
The Paragon.
Her.
Of course, he wasn't aware of what had happened on the rift yet, therefore this was just a spectacle for him, how nasty and feared demons also had a boogeyman.
Ael's chest tightened.
Was this…?
But he couldn't finish the thought.
The body he occupied stepped forward, gliding across the shattered battleground, stones breaking under the weight of her power. Around her, dozens—no, hundreds—of warriors moved with her.
Or he assumed they were warriors.
Their shapes flickered at the edges of his vision, silhouettes rather than faces, blurred as if the dream refused to reveal them. He could sense their presence, their strength, their desperation… but not their identities. Muffled, like voices underwater.
He tried to focus, to understand them, but all he heard was a distant hum, like an echo of an echo.
But the demons?
He heard them perfectly.
"The PARAGON approaches!"
"Kill her! Drown the girl in her own light!"
"No—fall back! FALL BACK! She is the one the Emperor fears!"
"Her Ether burns! It devours!"
Another demon shrieked, the sound splitting the sky:
"Protect the Emperor! She cannot be allowed to reach Him!"
The body he inhabited—the woman he inhabited—raised her other hand.
Ael felt a surge so vast it eclipsed everything he'd ever felt, even his own Ether awakening. It flowed through her veins like rivers of starlight, resonant and beautiful.
His own Ether was a candle flame.
Hers was the birth of a sun.
The demons charged.
The earth cracked.
A wall of bone and fire and shadow rushed at them in a tidal wave of hatred.
And she moved.
Not fast—no.
Speed was irrelevant.
She moved with inevitability.
The first demon, a colossal brute with obsidian tusks, swung a claw the size of a wagon. The Paragon simply lifted her hand, palm open.
Light touched the demon.
And it ceased.
Not disintegrated. Not burned.
It simply… became nothing.
Its body vanished without ash, without scream, without trace, like a nightmare waking out of existence.
Dozens followed, lunging from all sides.
Each time she moved a finger, a wrist, a breath—Ether curved outward, sculpting itself through space like fluid light, carving lines that stitched through demon flesh as though they weren't made of matter at all.
Ael had never imagined Ether could be shaped that way—soft, effortless, yet absolute.
This wasn't attack.
This was reality obeying her.
A shockwave hit the ground—a Demon King slamming its mace down like an avalanche. Stone warped. Warriors were thrown like leaves. The Paragon staggered, just barely, and for the first time Ael felt strain ripple through the body he occupied.
Her heartbeat quickened.
Her breath tightened.
But she did not fall.
The King roared, voice trembling the battlefield:
"Paragon! You stand alone! Even you cannot protect them all!"
Ael felt her lips curve into a faint, exhausted smile.
Not cruel.
Not arrogant.
Just… sad.
She lifted both hands now, Ether spiraling upward in a helix of white fire—no, not fire, something purer, raw and fundamental.
The Demon Emperor stirred.
Its wings unfurled—each longer than a city street.
Its six eyes opened—staring directly at her.
Ael felt an instinctive urge to collapse.
Just the Emperor's gaze felt like being judged by the end of the world.
"HER."
The Emperor's voice was not a sound but a verdict.
"The one who ruined the Abyss. The one who shatters Kings. The one who must not be allowed to live."
The Paragon whispered something—but Ael couldn't hear it. The words from her side of the battlefield were swallowed by distortion.
But he felt her emotion beneath them.
Resolve.
Sacrifice.
Love.
The Emperor raised a claw that could erase mountains.
The King lunged beside him.
The army roared.
And then—
She released it.
The spell.
Ether burst outward, not as a beam, not as a wave, but as a veil—a luminous, rippling sheet of white radiance that fell across the battlefield like dawn descending all at once.
The world went silent.
Then—
Everything broke.
The sky collapsed into fractal shards of light.
The ground lifted in weightless pieces.
Demons screamed as the veil touched them, melting not flesh but existence itself.
The Demon King reached her—only for its entire upper body to dissolve into ribbons of white.
The Emperor staggered.
Staggered.
A thing that should never stagger.
It let out a scream so vast Ael felt his soul tremble.
"PARAGON!"
The veil intensified.
The Emperor raised its wings.
Reality itself began to tear—
And Ael felt the body he was in falter.
Exhaustion.
Pain.
A collapse held back only by will.
Her vision blurred.
Light bled into shadows.
Everything began to fall away.
Ael wanted to shout—he didn't know what, didn't know why, but the instinct was overwhelming.
He wanted to reach her.
To help her.
To understand who she was.
But he couldn't move.
He couldn't speak.
He couldn't breathe through his own lungs.
He was a ghost locked inside her fading consciousness.
The last thing he saw was the demon army being erased under the white veil—the Emperor roaring defiantly, resisting the light—
And her silhouette standing beneath it all, alone and unwavering, one hand raised toward a sky breaking apart.
Then the world shattered like glass.
Ael gasped awake.
His body jerked upright, drenched in cold sweat, chest heaving, breath trembling.
His hands—his real hands—were shaking uncontrollably.
He had no name for the dream.
No explanation.
No words for the woman whose memories he'd fallen into.
But the terror and awe lingered like a burn on his soul.
And somewhere deep inside him, something whispered—
A memory not his own.
A name he didn't know.
A power he didn't understand.
And a fear he couldn't place.
Ael looked at his trembling hands, the echo of Ether still humming faintly in his chest, and whispered into the darkness:
"…what was that?"