The colorless liquid began returning to the slit wide open in the sky, while the Dreamlands managed the tedious task of slowly recovering from the chaos and regaining its original form.
The split itself gradually closed in a peculiar manner, as if reality had been stitched back into existence, cosmic threads pulling the edges together in a desperate attempt to make them finally hold.
Meanwhile, I let out a sigh, equal parts relief and confusion, as every injury, both internal and external, induced by that mass of unknown origin, healed as though they had never existed at all.
It felt like someone had simply rewound time to just before the catastrophe, almost with a gentle touch.
Yet despite that, a warm sensation began dwelling in my chest as I descended to the ground, or rather, fell.
Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't painless.
[ Daemon Sultans have observed the process complete smoothly and without interference, and urges to leave the vicinity. ]
"Once again, you stand alone within the Dreamlands, don't you," I thought quietly to myself as the warm feeling inside my chest started heating up, transitioning into something far hotter.
It felt as though my bare chest had been pressed directly against flames with no distance between us at all.
[ The 'Inner Chaos' cannot yet be contained. ]
[ Inner Chaos system obtained ]
[ You cannot yet bear what sleeps in you. The Inner Chaos will bleed through in fragments… until you grow strong enough to survive the whole. ]
'As expected… well, better than not getting anything at all. Let's see what's this shit about once I get back. Wait? Why would I even go back? I do not exist for everyone at all.'
[ 'Voice of the Existing, Wisdom' listens to you everywhere, and every now and then. That is a privilege only a selected few are permitted to access. ]
As the voice wove itself through my ears, gentle, eerie, and unfailingly present, I couldn't help but let my thoughts slip out for those flute players to hear.
"Hey, as you know… since I'm unbound from my dreamer's dream and transcend them, naturally I lose the meaning of my existence along with it too, within my world. Could you do something about it? It kinda sucks to have no one to compete with, and I'm saying it from experience."
I whispered just loud enough for the words to vibrate through my bones, echoing inward.
A faint shift ran through my posture.
Was it embarrassment?
I didn't know… but yeah, it probably was.
[ Your existence no longer conforms to the boundaries of the Dreamer's script. Restoration of existential presence requires strength you have not yet accumulated. Yet, in rare humility, the Flute-Bearers have amended the fracture in your meaning. You will exist again for the observer within your world. ]
[ The Daemon Sultans have departed the vicinity out of encroaching boredom. Their decree is simple: you, too, are expected to leave. ]
The constant pressure, an oppressive cosmic weight I had unknowingly grown accustomed to, vanished in an instant.
It felt as if iron shackles around my very being had snapped, leaving me strangely weightless, almost too free for comfort.
But before I could process anything beyond that fleeting relief, something yanked at me. Not my body.
My mind.
My consciousness.
A pull so abrupt and so absolute it felt like my awareness was being threaded through the eye of a cosmic needle.
Landscapes, billions of them, flashed past in an impossible blur, each one lasting less than a heartbeat, yet somehow imprinting entire histories into the corners of my memory.
And then—
I opened my eyes.
A ceiling greeted me, smooth, pale, and polished like marble dipped in moonlight.
From its center hung a crystalline chandelier, its lights bending and refracting into fractal patterns that danced across the walls like shards of frozen auroras.
I tried to move myself.
I couldn't.
Looking down, I saw a thick rope wound around my torso in a tight circular loop, securing me to the chair beneath me.
The fibers dug into my skin, rough, unyielding, and very, very real.
A wave of frustration hit me. And beneath it, something worse, a dull throbbing ache spreading through my thoughts, reminding me that despite the healing and the power and the cosmic nonsense…
I was still very much in 'pain'.
The pain had no source, no visible wound, no obvious injury, yet it pulsed through me like a memory my body refused to forget.
I inhaled sharply.
Calm… steady…
I'd been through worse.
Much worse.
Compared to being skewered by conceptual talons, this was laughable.
I twisted my wrists within the thick rope looped around me, the coarse fibers immediately scraping skin raw as I pulled and wrenched against them.
Each movement stung sharply, but the pain grounded me, giving me something real to push against.
Bit by bit, the rope loosened until, with one final wrench, I slipped a hand free, only for the fibers to dig deep into my palm, carving a jagged line that bled instantly.
I hissed through my teeth but kept going, ripping at the remaining coils until they fell slack around me.
My hands throbbed, warm blood trailing down my fingers and pattering onto the floor, but after a final tug, the last loop gave way, and despite the raw burn in my skin, I could finally move properly.
I wiped the blood against my shirt out of instinct, though it only smeared the red instead of dulling the sting, then lifted my head and looked around.
White tiles, faint steam clinging to the air, a fogged mirror, a half-open cabinet, and the glossy curve of a bathtub beside me.
Of all places, I had been tied up in a bathroom.
The overhead light buzzed softly, reflecting off the wet floor as if someone had been here not long ago, someone close enough to drag me in, sit me on a chair, and bind me like some unstable test subject.
My gaze swept every inch of the cramped room, the shower curtain, the towel rack, the door with its paint chipped near the lock, and a cold realization crawled subtly over my skin.
"Who the hell tied me here?"