Kael was submerged in his prison of desire, a perfect world where every pain was absent and every hope realized.
Elara was there, her eyes shining with life and happiness. Aris prospered under his rule, a beacon of peace. Kael was the hero who had defeated the Ash, a peerless Keeper.
There was no rush, no threat, just an eternal, seductive quiet. His dream energy continued to be drained by his acceptance of this false perfection.
In the Hall of Breath, Master Elian and Lyra watched Kael with growing distress. The mist around his dream body was denser than ever, almost an impenetrable cocoon.
Anya, sitting a short distance away, was still enveloped in her own fog, her face immobile, her efforts concentrated on maintaining the deception in the real world. Her ability to intervene, to offer that spark of empathy that had awakened Kael in the past, was almost nonexistent.
"He is yielding," Lyra murmured, her voice sharp with worry. "He's too deep. His mind is completely trapped. Anya cannot reach him..." Her frustration was palpable. Kael's reliance on Anya's support had been a strength in previous Veils, but now it was a bitter weakness.
Elian closed his eyes, his brow furrowed. "The only hope is that he finds the strength within himself to choose. To choose the truth, however painful, over the perfect lie."
Deep within Kael's illusion, Master Elian's voice, however faint, had planted a seed: "True peace is not the absence of pain, but the acceptance and growth that comes from it!"
That sentence, coupled with the fleeting memory of the true pain for Elara, had created a microscopic crack.
But the distraction was too strong to be simply ignored or fought against.
It was then that Kael realized what was happening, and a flash of clarity pierced the illusory bliss: he could not "not think" about what his mind was creating.
The very attempt to ignore the illusion highlighted it, like a darker design on a clear canvas.
The solution was not denial, but the control of his own attention.
He had to impose his attention on something else, choose a "distraction" to focus on.
Kael opened his eyes within the dream, and the perfect visions flooded him again. But this time, instead of letting himself drown in them, his mind actively sought out the details that did not belong to that perfection.
He sought the signals of truth.
He focused on his Dream Garden, the real one. It appeared in a corner of his vision, not perfect and blooming, but a landscape under reconstruction, with scars of the Ash still visible, but also sprouts of new life. It was true.
Then, Elara's face. Not the smiling, living one in the dream, but the memory of her real face, with the pain, with the loss, but also with the deep love they had shared.
Kael clung to those details, not to fight the illusion, but to impose his attention on them.
It was like choosing to look at a small flower in an immense field. The field remained, but his attention was entirely on the flower.
Elian's voice that had "distracted" him from the distraction of desire, and the image of Anya, Lyra, and the Master himself waiting for him in the Hall of Breath, were no longer interferences.
They were his true focal point, his anchor. Kael began to breathe more slowly, more deeply, channeling his mental energy toward these real, painful yet true memories.
The illusion of perfection began to fade, like a watercolor painting slowly being washed away.
The Veil of Distraction had played its last trick, using salvation as an even deeper trap.
But Kael understood.
It was not about eliminating distractions, but about choosing what to give importance to.
It was about consciously choosing his own distraction, imposing his will on his mind.
The feeling of being a trapped spider diminished, replaced by a sense of control, an ability acquired in the very heart of chaos.
Quiet was not the absence of noise, but the ability to listen only to what one chooses.
As Kael emerged from the Veil, his dream body regained its vibrant luminosity. The surrounding mist dissolved, revealing the Hall of Breath. He was exhausted, but triumphant.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Dream Realm, the Ash perceived the "restoration" of Kael's resonance, now strong and clear again. It was the same resonance it had sensed in the past, the one that had prompted it to concentrate its attention and tighten its grip on Solara.
But there was a reason why the Ash had not yet fully understood that the source of everything was Kael himself, despite previous interactions in the Keeper's Veils.
The Ash, in its primordial nature, did not "think" in terms of complex human individuality.
It perceived resonances.
When Kael had faced the Keeper's Veils, he had indeed emitted powerful resonances of vitality and will, but he had done so in contexts that the Ash interpreted as isolated, localized dream phenomena.
To the Ash, those had been manifestations of resistance within its "territory"—like small flames lighting up and being extinguished. It had not connected those flames to a single, persistent individual in the real world, but rather to episodes of the Dream Realm's own reaction to its advance.
Moreover, Master Elian had acted cautiously. Every time Kael overcame a veil, Elian had performed subtle manipulations in the Dream Realm to conceal the magnitude of Kael's resonance, scattering or masking it to avoid overly concentrated attention. It was a delicate dance to keep the threat of the Ash vague and generalized, preventing it from focusing on Kael before he was ready.
Now, with the Silent Guardian creating a massive distraction and the Ash diverting its forces to suppress Solara, its "mind" was even more fragmented and incapable of deep analysis. Kael's resonance was strong, yes, but it lacked a unique, recognizable signature as "the Keeper Kael."
It was perceived as another wave of resistance, one of many that the Ash would, in due time, absorb.
This misjudgment on the part of the Ash could change the tide of the battle.
Provided Anya could hold out long enough...