Vale found himself surrounded by boundless darkness once more, the darkness of rest.
Yet he could already feel it: he was already waking up yet again.
He moved his hand.
The sensation that met his skin wasn't the soft comfort of the hospital bed he remembered. No this felt different, Warm and Wet.
But not like water. The texture, the temperature, it carried a strange weight, thicker and heavier than it.
What unsettled him most was that only the front of his body felt submerged. The liquid clung to his skin as though he were lying in a shallow puddle of it.
'What… is this?' Vale wondered, his thoughts sluggish as he forced his eyes open. His eyelids resisted, trembling faintly under the effort, as if they too feared what he might see.
When his vision finally cleared, he saw red.
Not the dim, dark red of rust or light reflected through his eyelids, but it was vivid, wet crimson. The ground beneath him shimmered faintly, rippling as he moved.
He blinked once and then twice, then lifted his hand from the surface. The color dripped from his fingers but didn't cling, each drop slid back into the puddle as though drawn by some invisible pull.
A heavy, metallic scent filled his nose.
Vale's eyes widened slightly.
"Is this…?"
The realization came swiftly. That smell was thick and unmistakable. Iron.
The only liquid that carried such a scent was blood.
He was lying face-first in a vast pool of blood.
Despite the horror of the sight, Vale didn't panic. Instead, he exhaled slowly and pushed himself up, using both arms to lift his weary body. The blood continued to behave unnaturally, refusing to stain his skin or hair, sliding back into place each time it touched him, as if it belonged only to that puddle and nowhere else.
He took a deep breath, clearing his thoughts, forcing calm into his movements.
After a moment, he shifted onto his knees, the ripples spreading outward before settling again. Slowly, Vale raised his gaze, trying to see, trying to understand just where he had woken up this time.
Vale lifted his gaze and the higher he looked, the deeper his confusion grew.
The puddle beneath him wasn't just large; it wasn't a puddle at all. The blood stretched outward far beyond his sight, forming a vast expanse, an ocean rather than a pool. In the far distance, barely visible through a faint haze, jagged mountains of black obsidian rose from the crimson surface, their sharp peaks piercing the horizon.
They loomed impossibly tall, encircling the blood-red sea like walls meant to trap it, and him, within. Even from so far away, Vale could tell their scale was monstrous, each peak larger than any mountain he had ever imagined.
He tilted his head upward, his eyes drawn higher still.
The sky above was… wrong.
There were white clouds, no shades of blue or gray, no color at all. The heavens were an endless, pale white void, empty and silent.
Yet something hung there, something that made Vale's breath catch.
A sun.
But not one of light.
It was black, an all-consuming sphere of darkness that burned without flame, its presence devouring rather than illuminating the sky.
And beside it… a second one.
Vale's eyes widened. He rose slowly to his feet, the thick surface of the blood rippling faintly under his movement. He turned, scanning the horizon, and what he saw next froze him in place.
Three more black suns.
They hung in the sky like great eyes of shadow, identical to the first two. Together, all five formed a perfect circle, each positioned as though guarding something unseen at their center.
Massive celestial bodies of living darkness, surrounding the heart of an impossible sky.
Vale stood in astonishment, his eyes wide as he took in the haunting beauty of the landscape before him. The scene was both breathtaking and profoundly unsettling it was a world painted in crimson and shadow.
"I didn't think I'd dream like this when I first fell asleep,"
he murmured, a faint, eerie smile slowly curving across his lips.
Everything about him seemed identical to how he had been in the waking world. His metallic arm gleamed faintly under the pale, colorless sky, and his torn white pants stood out starkly against the vast sea of blood beneath him. Yet, despite the expanse of liquid below, the crimson surface refused to stain or touch him. It was as though the blood itself denied existence beyond the limits of its strange, confined ocean.
Vale's gaze swept across the endless red. As before, no shadow trailed him. There was no reflection in the surface, only an infinite expanse of blood that shimmered faintly under the pale light. The liquid looked fresh, disturbingly so.
A question surfaced in his mind, quiet but insistent.
'What could be the source?'
He knew it was a dream, he could feel it.... but the thought simply refused to leave him. Even dreams, he reasoned, had their own logic. For such an ocean of blood to exist, something must have created it.
He ran his pale fingers through his pitch-black hair, trying to tame the strands that fell across his eyes. His hair wasn't long, but it was just unruly enough to blur his vision when left unchecked.
When he finished, he turned his gaze skyward once more, back toward the five black suns. His focus narrowed on the center of their formation, the singular space they all seemed to orbit.
A place of silence and gravity.
A place that called to him, though he could not yet understand why.
Vale slowly lowered his gaze toward the center of the circle formed by the dark suns. His eyes traced the empty sky downward, lower and lower, until they met the space directly before him. That was when he noticed it.
Something was there.
Something that wasn't right.
It wasn't hidden in shadow, nor was it obscured by the red haze of the blood lake. Instead, it felt as though it was hiding in plain sight, visible yet not seen by ordinary means.
"What the hell is that?"
Vale's voice broke the silence as he narrowed his eyes, stepping forward cautiously. With each step, the shape grew more distinct. The air around it seemed to shimmer faintly, as if reality itself was struggling to contain it.
A few paces closer, and he could make out fragments of rusted metal glinting in the pale light. Another step, and the shape began to form iron links, corroded and mighty, coiling through the air like chains.
'Chains?'
The thought surfaced in his mind before he could stop it.
"Maybe… imprisoning something?"
A faint smirk tugged at his lips.
"That would be a sight to see, huh?"
To be a prisoner here, in this eerie, endless dreamscape, surely meant whatever was bound had to be something extraordinary. Something powerful. Perhaps even something monstrous.
A short laugh escaped him.
"Heh… sounds about right."
He continued forward, the soft ripples of blood forming around his steps though never clinging to him. The closer he got, the clearer the scene became, chains crisscrossed in intricate patterns, anchored into the unseen ground. And then he saw it: a faint, translucent shimmer forming a dome-like barrier over the center.
Vale stopped before it, eyes narrowing in curiosity. He still couldn't see what the chains were holding, whatever lay within the barrier was obscured completely, hidden by some kind of illusion.
'Maybe you can't see it unless you enter?'
The thought was almost inviting.
With a slow, deliberate movement, Vale reached out. His metallic fingers brushed against the barrier's surface. It was warm, welcoming and it pulsed faintly beneath his touch, like a heartbeat.
Curiosity gleamed in his eyes as he leaned closer.
"What are you hiding?"
Vale stared at the strange dome for a long moment, curiosity flickering in his eyes. Then, gathering his resolve, he stepped forward and pressed his hand against it.
To his surprise, the barrier didn't resist him.
Instead, it parted softly, almost gently, as if welcoming an expected guest.
He closed his eyes as he crossed the threshold and opened them again once he felt the shift in air.
What he saw on the other side left him speechless.
Suspended above the vast ocean of crimson, there hung a man, a figure bound in chains that glimmered faintly in the pale light. Countless needle-like blades protruded from his body, twisting and merging into those chains, their ends vanishing into the void as though swallowed by the air itself.
The man bled freely. Dark red droplets fell from his hands and feet, feeding the endless sea below.
Vale's eyes widened as realization dawned.
'This man… he's the source of all this blood.'
"Is that… a human?"
The words escaped him softly, filled more with awe than fear. But before he could think further, the being stirred.
Slowly, the man lifted his head. Long strands of pitch-black hair cascaded down his face, swaying with the motion. Though his expression was hidden beneath an obsidian mask, Vale could feel the man's gaze upon him a heavy and knowing gaze.
Then, with a subtle motion, the man moved his arm.
A deep metallic crack echoed through the still air as the countless chains that bound him snapped all at once, shattering like brittle glass.
The air trembled.
The figure dropped to one knee, blood still dripping freely from the wounds that pierced his body. Despite his ghastly appearance, skin pale as bone, flesh torn and marked, there was strength in his presence, a weight that bent the air around him.
And then he spoke.
His voice was deep, resonant and commanding, filled with a tone that carried both power and sorrow. The language was unlike anything Vale had ever heard, every word rippling through the air as if it were alive.
"i aezgilpo for nkitag oyu wyaa from your enw feli so ealyr but i am adrfia ahtt wtha i ma abtou to od is cserseany ofr oyur lsvairvu."
Vale stood frozen, the strange syllables echoing in his mind. Though he could not understand the words, their echo pressed against his mind.
A cold shiver ran down his spine.
Whatever this being was, human or not, it had spoken to him with intent. And somewhere deep inside, Vale felt that this encounter was no dream.