This time there was no darkness, there was no warm embrace from the darkness that surrounded him. He wasn't even in the same dark sea he had been in.
To his chagrin, his feet were resting on stones, rocks he knew inside and out, as he hadn't forgotten them since he saw them long ago.
Arthur found himself again in the dream he had tried to forget, the workshop, the flowers, the stones that led up the hill as an indicator of where he had to go, but above all that, 『 Him 』 was still there, the suffocating presence of the moon had returned.
He prepared his mind, straightened his body and closed his eyes, he was mentally preparing himself for that wave of what was more like a mental attack than anything else.
But despite what he had expected, his body resisted, his blood did not freeze, his body did not begin to tremble, and his mind maintained the clarity he had obtained since the previous morning. He slowly opened his eyes, as if he couldn't believe that this time he had managed not to tremble like jelly before 『 Him. 』
"…Is it because of the ability?"
Despite having asked out loud, he didn't expect his question to be answered, and no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't understand the reason why that being had weakened from one moment to the next.
With fear, he raised his head towards the moon, its beauty was still as he remembered, the reflected light that apparently came from nowhere illuminated the ethereal dream, giving it an even stranger appearance than it already had. But still, among all the strangeness of the dream, the only thing that maintained a normality was the moon.
"Who would have thought, what makes this place strange is also the most normal."
He chuckled, at least now he didn't feel like he was going to die the moment he took a wrong step. Finally… He was calm, strangely calm.
Alone, in a ghostly dream, with nothing but his own thoughts.
He looked around, now that he was alone and without the need to hide from anyone, he could explore the dream a little more in detail, and above all, try to understand the reason why the flowers moved without the slightest breeze.
It was strange, even though he knew that dreams were not governed by logic, he had the desire to look more closely at the flowers, as if he were hypnotized by the beauty they possessed.
"I could look at them all day…" — He thought, and in the next moment he sat down in front of the whitish flowers, their apparent lack of life was what intrigued him the most, what had happened to them?
Maybe they had died like him, maybe they were also in a different world with no idea of what they were supposed to do.
"...?"
What was he doing speculating about the origin of the flowers? It was strange, no matter how hard he tried to remember the reason why he took a sudden interest in them, as if that fragment of his memory was very blurred.
He shook his head trying to clear his thoughts, his goal was clear, he had to get out of there somehow, but the question is how would he do it?
A wild idea ignited like a flame in his mind, perhaps this nightmare followed the rules of a conventional one, and if he was close to hurting himself, he could wake up.
He turned his head back, looking at the opaque fog that did not let him see through it, as if it were a cloak of secrecy towards what was underneath.
He decided, and confidently, he took a step forward, then another, and another until he finally found himself in front of the railing that kept him safe on solid ground, keeping him from a fatal fall.
The fog was still there, hiding the horizon and beyond, only letting the moonlight reign over the place, as if the entire dimension was dedicated to it.
Carefully he placed his hand on the railing, using it as support, he stepped his body over it and was face to face with that immense fog, if it weren't for his hand tightly gripping the metal, he would have fallen into what seemed like certain death.
Curiously, this time, there was wind, it came from the front, as if it were a warning to him, telling him to give up on whatever he was doing, that throwing himself into the fog was not an idea he would like to test. But still, Arthur remained in the same position, feeling the air crash against his body and rock him slowly, he could only smile.
"...I'm in a dream, I'm in a dream, I'm in a dream..."
And with those words, he let go of the railing that held him up. From one moment to the next, his body lost the support that kept him safe on the platform, causing him to plunge at a dizzying speed into nothingness itself.
Arthur had begun a direct fall towards the fog that looked more and more intimidating. What was beyond? What was it that was hiding so incessantly? Somehow, those questions stopped mattering as his mind went blank while his body approached the fog.
His body hit the fog, passing through it at an inhuman speed while it blinded his vision. However, he kept his eyes open as if he were longing to observe what was hidden beneath that cloak.
A second passed and he still saw fog.
Two seconds passed, and with each moment his uncertainty grew, what if he was falling indefinitely?
Three seconds passed, even with the speed he had accumulated since his fall, he was still crossing the grayish barrier.
Four seconds passed, and hell broke loose. In front of him, the fog abruptly ended, allowing him to see a landscape he never expected to see, hidden beneath the gas was a starry sky, full of what looked like fragments of stars floating around the area. His admiration was short-lived, because the next moment, a solitary fragment collided with his leg, embedding itself in it.
Painful.
He screamed, that star had pierced his flesh almost to the bone, he felt his nerves boiling with pain as the fragment twisted, widening the wound even more and with it, his pain.
And the next moment, another fragment embedded itself against his body, this time in his arm and with enough speed to sever a large part of his flesh, leaving the bone outside and a miserable piece of his being clinging to it. He screamed again as the pain flooded his weak mind, trying incessantly to flood his being with nothing but despair.
But he didn't even have time to get used to it, because not only did he suffer the same fate again, as he continued to descend towards the end of what seemed like the dream, more and more fragments came together forming large clouds of sharp pieces of stars.
It didn't last long, but it was painful, he felt every piece of his flesh and skin being cut by the edge of the stars, he felt his arm being dismembered and watched as it flew away from him. His face didn't escape without scratches, he could even taste the iron inside his mouth, and if that wasn't enough, also the sharpness of the fragment that was embedded between his teeth.
It was horrendous, it was painful, it was unbearable. But the end came, a particular jagged piece of star flew towards him, aiming skillfully towards his eye socket, destroying not only his eye but also his skull, reaching the soft tissue of his brain.
The pain stopped, but the scene continued, his body was mutilated and as if it were a divine joke, he didn't even touch the ground of that strange panorama.
Because beneath the clusters of star fragments, there was an impenetrable wall of stars.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
. . .
A familiar garden, a familiar workshop, a familiar landscape, everything reminded him of something that had already happened. The flowers continued to sway slowly in a non-existent wind, as if they were alien to him.
The stone he had already felt was beneath him, however, this time the sensation was more vivid, he was able to feel the details of the rock and even the earth that surrounded the spaces between one and the other.
He could see the moon, its beauty shone as always, however, something was missing, the overwhelming presence of that being was not felt anywhere, however, he did not have time to celebrate having gotten rid of that thing.
"...Ah..."
He was still processing what had happened, he could not believe that the pain had been real, that his body had gone through that hell of knives and that he had died. He looked at his hands, there it was, it was not hanging by a thread of flesh as he had seen before, it was completely healthy.
"...Ahh..."
He felt his mouth, there was no fragment trapped between his teeth and palate, nor did he feel the ferrous taste of his blood. It was as if that cavity of his body had never experienced a change.
He didn't know how to react, he was still processing what had just happened, his being had been torn apart, dismembered and cut, to suddenly being completely fine?
He couldn't take it anymore.
A painful scream came out like thunder from his throat, the pain, the sight, the taste, everything was still so fresh in his mind, contrary to his current state. But he still felt that if he didn't scream now, he would go crazy.
The pain he couldn't express before, did so now, his voice echoed throughout the dream, almost reaching the distant moon. But Arthur didn't care, he kept screaming, hugging his body as he helplessly fell to the ground.
He cursed the fog, he cursed the fragments, he cursed the Moon, nothing came out of his mouth but blasphemies and prayers that only expressed pain, but that anger only fueled his pain more.
❝I died, I died, I died, I died? I died, I died.❞
The words echoed in his mind over and over again as he squeezed his stomach tightly, he felt like he was going to vomit, he wanted to do it, he wanted to let out everything he could. But no matter how hard he pushed, nothing came out.
It was too real for a dream.
Arthur knew, from the first time he arrived at that damned place, it was not a dream, it was not a nightmare, much less a hallucination, everything that happened in that space forgotten by God was real.
And now he had experienced it by his own hand, he had lost his life in this hell personally made for him, and the worst of all was that he had suffered a pain that he never thought he would experience, it seemed like a lie, a nonsense, but it wasn't.
He tried to calm his breathing slowly, he was still shocked by his death, but the feeling that something was wrong seemed to help with the acceptance of the fact that he had lost his life a second time.
He inhaled, exhaled, and lay down on the ground for a moment. He repeated it again and closed his eyes, the scene of the glass piercing his skull was still fresh like a newly taken image, and no matter how hard he tried to distract himself, the memory kept finding a way to resurface.
Eventually, his condition improved enough for him to be able to get up from the ground without panicking again, however, the memory and the pain still remained torturing his mind.
"...I want to leave."
Without the ability to make another joke or laugh at his situation, he began to walk towards the workshop just as he had done the previous time, that was the only way out he knew after all, and opening the door with all his strength, he entered without any care or caution.
Inside, the black sphere that had appeared on the altar the previous time disappeared without a trace, giving the workshop an even more desolate appearance than it already had, as if the divine presence that previously embraced the place had withdrawn its blessing.
He looked around for the orb, but it was not on any of the work tables, nor inside any drawer, it was as if it had simply vanished, just like the sun in this infernal plane.
He shook his head, he was getting away from what was important, he had to get out of there, he didn't want to spend another moment in this nightmare, not after having suffered so much.
But no matter how much he searched, the exit didn't appear anywhere, neither inside the emaciated workshop, nor outside in the beautiful field of flowers, it was as if the way to escape had disappeared, permanently trapping him in the nightmare he was trying to escape from.
His anxiety grew, and with it, panic began to reappear, he searched again, there was nothing he hadn't checked more than 10 times, no stone left unturned but still, he didn't find a clue to the way out.
"I want to go! I want to get out of here! Let me escape!" — He screamed towards the moon in a fit of frustration, he knew that whatever was there was listening to him, and as a desperate measure, he threw away his fear and screamed at it.
But no one answered, silence simply covered the area again as if it were proof that no matter how hard he tried, neither the being on the moon nor this distorted reality would show signs of giving up.
"I'm tired, very tired of this, 『 I want to wake up! 』"
And from one moment to the next, he began to feel the lucidity of his mind fading in the same way that the orb had done.