A middle-aged man and a woman in glasses were standing side by side, both dressed in pristine white lab gowns. Papers were spread out between them, and judging by their stiff expressions and hushed voices, they were discussing sothing important.
"...Subject Epsilon’s rejection rate is accelerating—"
"If that continues, we’ll have to restructure the entire mana conduit—"
Yeah. Definitely sothing about chira experints.
Epsilon.
That had to be one of the test subjects.
They sounded troubled—maybe even desperate—but the mont their conversation shifted deeper into dense technical jargon, I lost them completely.
Mana synaptic resonance?
Biological arcane backlash?
What?
Even if I strained my ears, it was pointless.
It wasn’t information I could use, and honestly, it slipped through my mind as soon as I heard it.
I wasn’t here to decode complicated research terms anyway.
I was here for one thing.
A key.
So, leaving the two researchers to their intense debate, I moved quietly along the edge of the room, searching every cabinet, every wall hook, every desk drawer—anywhere a key might logically be placed.
Minutes passed.
Then—
"...Found it."
On the far wall of what looked like a managent office, hanging neatly beside several ledger boards, was a single key.
A large one.
Old-fashioned but sturdy.
Exactly the size that would fit the heavy tal door I had encountered.
I stepped closer and examined it carefully.
Every curve of the handle.
Every notch of the tal teeth.
Even the faint scratches along the stem.
I burned its shape into my mory with absolute precision.
This should be it.
And if sohow it wasn’t—
Well, this was a mory after all.
I could always return and search again.
Ti to try it.
As I focused on the shape of the key in my mind, ready to withdraw from the mory and return to reality—
"...!"
A chill scraped down my spine.
Instinct—pure, primal instinct—forced my head to snap to the side.
And there, in the far corner of the mory...
In a place that should’ve been nothing but a recorded image of the past...
Two eyes were staring at .
Black.
Deep.
Unblinking.
They floated in the darkness like they didn’t belong to a person—just darkness itself given sight.
"...It’s looking at ?"
That made no sense.
This place wasn’t a dream.
It wasn’t a spirit world.
It was a mory—an unchangeable fragnt of the past.
Nothing here should have been able to see .
Nothing here should have been able to react to .
Then what was that thing?
The mont I questioned it, the darkness around those eyes began to swell—like thick ink spreading in water.
A viscous, suffocating black energy crept forward, almost slithering.
It moved with a slow, deliberate hunger, inching toward from the depths of the mory.
My whole body broke out in goosebumps.
Every nerve scread—run, hide, don’t touch that.
That darkness...
It wasn’t just eerie.
It was wrong.
So wrong my instincts recoiled from it.
And in the space of a single heartbeat—
It was right in front of .
"...!"
The instant that clinging black mass was about to reach , I severed my magic connection with the mory.
Everything shattered into darkness.
...
...
...
"Huh—!"
Air rushed back into my lungs as I jerked upright in reality.
My heart hamred violently, beating against my ribs like it wanted to escape.
My breathing ca out in harsh, uneven gasps.
What the hell was that?
Those eyes.
That suffocating black energy, coiling like a snake preparing to strike.
Even now, the sensation lingered—cold, crawling, invasive—like the mory had followed back into the real world.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead with a trembling hand.
"I’ve... never felt anything like that."
An emotion I hadn’t felt even when standing before opponents far stronger than myself washed over —slowly at first, then all at once.
I didn’t know what to call it.
It wasn’t panic.
It wasn’t shock.
It wasn’t even the instinctive dread of facing soone dangerous.
No, this was sothing different—deeper.
Older.
If I had to describe it, even vaguely...
’Fear.’
A heavy, suffocating fear—
The kind born not from danger, but from standing before sothing so vast, so incomprehensible, that the human mind simply refuses to process it.
That presence...
That black gaze I had glimpsed earlier...
It wasn’t just strong.
It existed on a level beyond anything I could asure—an existence humans weren’t ant to look at directly.
Facing it made feel like a speck of dust drifting in an endless void, crushing with the realization of how small I truly was.
I exhaled slowly, forcing my pulse to settle.
I tightened my grip around the key crafted from the Dream Orb.
Its familiar weight grounded , kept my thoughts from spiraling.
Was it really the right decision to open this door?
What if sothing like that... sothing beyond reason, beyond this world... was waiting inside?
My hand trembled.
But only for a mont.
"...No."
I shook my head.
That thing I had seen—the owner of those pitch-black eyes—it wasn’t related to this place. I could feel it.
It was sothing that dwelled far deeper, far lower than anything here—sothing not of this world or the dream world, but a place far beneath both.
Ever since I obtained the Dream Orb, my senses had sharpened in ways I couldn’t fully explain. Lines between dreams and reality blurred, and sohow, because of that, I could distinguish between them more clearly than ever.
And right now, those sharpened senses were telling one truth:
What I saw earlier had nothing to do with what lay beyond this door.
The fear lingering in my chest...
It wasn’t a warning.
Just a mory.
Even just now—
If this had been the old , I would’ve been swallowed by that darkness without ever understanding how or why.
But I felt it.
That split second of killing intent—so sharp, so thin, it could’ve been mistaken for a passing breeze.
My senses caught it, yanked back, and I returned to reality before it could consu .
These senses...
They’ve grown sharper than I ever realized.
And now they’re telling sothing very clearly:
Those unidentified eyes—the ones that watched from the darkness—
They aren’t connected to this place.
Not these halls.
Not the ladder.
Not the hidden passage.
If anything...
"They’re related to the Dream Orb itself," I murmured.
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