Chapter 2726: In the Flesh

Shadow Slave

Racked by pain and utterly blind, Cassie slammed into something soft and tumbled to the floor. Laying there, dazed, she tried to shake off her disorientation.

‘The spatial charm. Right.’

The darkness was full of familiar scents... she was in her childhood bedroom.

The thing she had slammed into was her bed. The surface underneath her was the beautifully embroidered rug her dad had bought her a long time ago, after she finished middle school.

The soft rug was swiftly absorbing her blood now. Cleaning it was not going to be easy... come to think of it, her pink bedcover had to be smeared in blood now, too.

Cassie felt a pang of panic at showing up home in such a state. Her mom was not going to have a heart attack...

No, this was not the time to think about these things.

Her call for help would be responded soon, but there was no telling how dire an ambush Asterion had prepared. What if his thralls somehow followed her here? Then, she would have put her parents in danger. ‘Ineed to move!

She had to take them away, to Bastion, before anything else could happen. Her dad would still be at work right now, but her mom had to be home.

Cassie examined her own memories, starting with the moment she received the meeting location from Wake of Ruin.

She meticulously compared each to the previous one, looking for the signs of tampering. And there, indeed... although Asterion had not been able to mess with her head significantly, some of her thoughts and emotions seemed to have been pushed in unnatural directions.

Her unwillingness to harm the thralls despite the risk to her own life had been strengthened. Her fear of using the spatial charm had been made stronger. There were a few more subtle manipulations, as well... Cassie let out a quiet growl.

The eeriest part of it all was that even knowing that those emotions had been forced upon her, she still genuinely felt them. She still believed that her choices had been natural and correct.

Groaning, Cassie erased her own memories and replaced them with identical copies that had the tampered thoughts and emotions removed. The vile traces of Asterion's manipulations disappeared from her mind, but the knowledge of what had happened remained.

All of it took no more than a few seconds. Ignoring the pain in her battered body, she forced herself to stand up.

As a whirlwind of ethereal sparks exploded out of her body, Cassie staggered to the door. There was nobody here to share their vision with her, but she knew the layout of her home by heart — so, she could walk swiftly even without being able to see anything.

It took her just a few seconds to reach the stairs and stumble to the first floor. Her mom was in the living room, reading a book — Cassie hesitated for a split second, then activated the mark she had placed on her, and finally saw herself.

‘Oh... I did not look good:

Her clothes were torn, bloodied, and smeared in soot. Her hair was disheveled, and her blue eyes shone feverishly on her pale face.

Her mom looked up and froze, the book falling to the floor.

“C—cassie? Baby, what happened?!"

Before Cassie could even respond, her mom jumped off the sofa and ran to her, reaching to support her weight. It had the opposite effect, though, because Cassie stumbled and fell to her knees.

"I'm... alright, mom. It looks worse than it feels. But we'll deal with it later... right now, we need to leave."

She could only see her own face, not her mother's. Still, she knew that it was painted with worry and confusion now.

“What do you mean, deal with it later?! Cassia! You're bleeding!"

Cassie suppressed a groan and grasped her mom's hands.

“I'm a Saint, mom. A little bleeding won't kill me. But. We must leave. Now!"

There was a brief moment of stunned silence. Her mom had to be dazed, since it was the first time Cassie spoke in that tone to her.

“Leave? Why?"

At least she seemed to have understood how serious the situation was. Cassie let out a stifled sigh.

“I've... encountered a bit of a problem. So, just to be safe, we'll need to get you to Bastion for a while. I'll send someone to retrieve dad soon, too. Just... think about it as a vacation, mom. Please?"

She was already thinking about the logistics of relocating her parents to the Dream Realm. Their way of life would be disturbed, but Bastion was not a wild frontier city anymore. It was quite developed, albeit not yet on the level of NQSC. There was even electricity there now, so... hopefully, the shock would not be too great.

“Cassie, don't be silly. Why would we leave our home?"

Her mom's gentle tone was not at all fitting for how terrible Cassie felt on the inside. It was the same tone she had used to explain elementary things to her daughter as a child, and later as a moody teenager throwing a tantrum.

“Tl buy us a new home, mom! But we need to go now!"

Her mother sighed.

“No, I just mean... there is no reason to leave."

She patted Cassie on the head and leaned forward to hug her, saying gently:

“Lord Asterion only means well"

Cassie froze.

‘N—no..."

The fear she had felt in the lounge club suddenly felt like nothing at all, compared to the horror that suddenly flooded her heart.

It paralyzed her thoughts completely, making her feel like a clueless child again. “W—what?"

Her mother patted her on the back.

“I know you have strong opinions, but he is a wonderful man. Won't it be great if we could all get along? That is what Lord Asterion wants, too.”

Her embrace was gentle, but firm. In fact, it felt more like a hold than an embrace now.

Cassie was not sure that she could escape it without breaking her arms.

She raised a shaking hand and traced her mother's face. A soft, familiar smile was playing on the familiar lips, no different from the countless smiles she had seen and felt before.

Still smiling, her mother thrust her fingers into Cassie's bleeding wounds, ripping them open.

"Shhh, baby... shhhhh. It's for your own good, sweetheart. Just bear with it a little. It will all be over soon..."

Her mother was smiling, as if genuinely believing that she was doing her best to help her daughter. Her tone was gentle and kind, no different from how she had soothed Cassie decades ago, when she was a little child.

"M—mom..."

Cassie's voice trembled. She was still frozen, not knowing what to do. She did not even feel the pain, her thoughts scattered and encased in ice.

‘When... when did it start? How much of her memories will I have to erase to cleanse her of the Dreamspawn's influence? Can... can I cleanse them?’

Cassie was still motionless when the door opened, and she heard the sound of soft footsteps approaching them across the carpet.

Her mother looked up, her smile widening. “Lord Asterion? Oh, thank the gods! Please, hurry! We need help!"

Cassie shuddered.

A tall man had entered her childhood home with a slight, friendly smile illuminating his captivating face.

He had to be in his late forties by now, but he did not look older than thirty. His tan skin was smooth and flawless, and his disheveled black hair fell to his shoulders, as if having absorbed the heat of the sun.

His eyes were of a stunning amber shade, almost golden... or maybe they were golden, after all, glistening strikingly while reflecting the light.

Cassie did not care about how the man looked, however.

All she could think about was the overpowering presence that enveloped the world when he appeared, pressing her into the ground.

It was as if the world had become a thin film floating on the surface of an endless, infinitely hungry abyss.

"You..."

He was Asterion, the Dreamspawn.

The eldest Sovereign of humanity... and perhaps the most harrowing.

Asterion was in her home, in the flesh. ‘H-how?'

How was he here? Why?

As Cassie struggled to come to terms with reality, Asterion reached them and patted her mother on the shoulder. His friendly smile was a little humorous, and a little warm.

"Why, naturally. I am here, so of course I should help.’

He gently pushed the woman away and crouched near Cassie, looking at her with a wry expression.

His voice was calm.

“I think we've yet to finish our conversation, young lady. Haven't we? Ah, where

were we...

Cassie did not move, painfully aware of the fact that she would not be able to fight a Supreme. Much more importantly, she would not be able to protect her mother if they were to fight.

She licked her suddenly dry lips and opened her mouth to speak. But before she could even ask her question, Asterion already answered it, having read it in her mind. "What do I want? Well, that should be obvious."

He chuckled and placed his hands on her shoulders.

As her mother watched them with a relieved expression, the Dreamspawn spoke in a kind tone:

“I want to eliminate a little problem before it becomes too tedious. I want to cut Ariadne's string. We can't have people escaping the Labyrinth before its unfortunate occupant ate his fill, can we?"

Cassie filled her mind with every song she could think of, drowning her thoughts in a torrent of disjointed lyrics.

Asterion grinned.

"Cute."

With that, he raised his hand and brought it to Cassie's face. She felt his fingers brushing across her cheek, almost tenderly...

And then, an impossible, devastating pain exploded in her head, making her struggle desperately in his iron, inescapable grip. Cassie screamed.

Something wet and hot spilled down her face, and as her mother let out an amazed gasp, Asterion dug out her left eye from its socket with his bare fingers.

Tearing it out, he peered into the mesmerizing blue depths of its iris and sighed wistfully.

“Such pretty eyes. Ah... what a shame..."

He crushed the bleeding eye in his fist, turned to Cassie, and smiled.

“It's a pity, really”

With that, he reached for her right eye, as well.

Before he could reap it out, however, there was a subtle shift in the air, and Asterion whipped around.

His hand shot forward, grabbing a flying rapier that had streaked across the room, aimed at the back of his neck.

“Huh?"

The slender blade trembled defiantly in his crushing grasp, straining to break free.

A moment later, it shattered with a modal ring, the shards exploding into a whirlwind of sparks.

As Cassie cried out, pushing the tall man away, the Spell whispered into her ear: [Your Echo has been destroyed.]

‘No!’

“You weren't really..."

Before Asterion could finish the sentence, a storm of glistening tendrils suddenly rushed at him like a tide. He frowned slightly, rising to his feet, and easily brushed them away. One of the tendrils wrapped itself around Cassie, though, while another wrapped itself around her mother.

As both of them were pulled away, a graceful figure in a flowing red dress revealed itself from the darkness, moving toward the Sovereign with an eerie and inhuman smoothness. Her narrow back obscured his menacing figure as Cassie embraced her mother and shielded her.

Then, her back met the wall of the house and shattered it. Both of them were thrown into the street, rolling across the pavement in a shower of debris. Cassie tried to protect her mother as best she could, but there was no saving her from minor wounds.

‘We need to run.

Her mother tried to resist weekly, but Cassie hoisted her up and rushed away, torrents of blood still streaming down her face. Even blinded by white-hot pain, she knew that the situation was desperate. No, actually, she was in shock, failing to truly comprehend the full extent of what had happened... of what had been done to her. But she knew that they did not have a lot of time left.

Cassie only managed to take a few steps when the Spell spoke to her again.

[You Echo has been destroyed.]

She staggered.

‘Torment...'

Behind her, Asterion walked out through the broken wall, holding a head that seemed to have been savagely ripped off the neck in his hand. He raised the red veil with a bloodied finger and looked underneath curiously, then shivered and threw the head away as it dissolved into a torrent of red sparks.

Cassie gritted her teeth and continued running.

The full force of his Will descended upon her, then, making it seem like she had to run for a full minute to move forward just a single meter.

Asterion, however, caught up with her without much trouble despite walking at a leisurely pace.

“That's quite enough, young lady.’

He pushed her lightly, and she fell to her knees.

Cassie took a deep breath, shielded her mom from him, and looked up.

One of her eyes was missing, and her deathly pale face was awash in blood.

However...

There was a vicious smile playing on her lips.

She spoke in a hoarse voice:

“Yes... indeed. That is quite enough. Looking down at her defiant smile from above, the Dreamspawn frowned.

Then, his expression changed subtly.

And at the same time, a cold wind blew across the empty street. Every shadow around them suddenly seemed infinitely darker, terrifying, and unfathomably deep. A chilling, ferocious killing intent washed over Asterion.

In a vast area around them, all the trees suddenly quaked, their leaves withering away and falling to the ground. The grass turned yellow, then rotted away as if stricken by blight.

The shadows moved.

Asterion sighed.

"Oh... it seems I wasn't quick enough”

He looked down and shook his head.

“It's this eerie world. I have almost forgotten how suffocating it was, fighting against its laws just to exist."

He shook his head again and offered Cassie one last smile.

“Ah, I'd love to continue... but it's not the right time just yet. It was nice meeting you, young Cassia. Until next time, then."

With that, he took a step back.

And then, a towering rift of a Dream Gate sliced the fabric of reality in the heart of NQSC, plummeting down to cut the road in half.

As the rift widened, the hungry abyss she had felt before was revealed in its depths in all its harrowing madness, and Cassie let out a quiet whine, trying to crawl away from it against her will.

As two soft hands reached for her from the shadows, the memory ended. Perhaps because she finally fainted, having lost too much blood.

..The being let go of the memory, still feeling the pain etched into it, and pushed it away.

It was reeling.

‘Cassia... Cassie.'

Song of the Fallen.

Yes... that was her name...