Lord of Mysteries: The Forgotten Dreamer

The air carried the scent of salt and decay. The sea of ruins stretched endlessly, its jagged remains half-sunken into the abyss, illuminated by the eerie glow of bioluminescent coral clinging to the remnants of civilization.

Yeaia took a deep breath. They weren't alone.

At least, they hoped so.

Their mind lingered on the fleeting dream—if it could even be called that. The two figures they had met, the strangely familiar man with gold-rimmed glasses and the relaxed mercenary named Anderson… Were they real? Were they figments of the night's illusions?

The thought made their chest tighten. But whether they were real or not, Yeaia felt a sense of comfort in their presence. Even if they disappeared like everything else, at least they had met someone.

That was enough.

For now.

Yeaia turned their attention to the ruins ahead. The shattered remains of towering structures jutted out of the dark waters, whispering of a lost age. Time had reduced them to nothing more than decayed husks, yet something about them felt… awake. As if they were still watching, still listening.

Their boots barely made a sound against the damp stone as they moved forward, their fingers brushing against the carved symbols on a half-buried wall. The language was foreign, unreadable, but something about it tugged at the edges of their mind.

A faint echo of something forgotten.

They continued deeper into the ruins, the silence pressing against them like a heavy weight. Shadows flickered at the edges of their vision—shapeless, shifting, whispering things. Yeaia didn't look at them directly.

'I don't think exploring will be safe... especially with what happened inside the joined dream.'

They weren't sure if they wanted to see what was really there.

Finally deciding not to explore, Yeaia looked for any place to relax or at least sit down for the time being. Maybe because of his beyonder powers but he didn't feel hungry at all, it's like the concept of being hungry wasn't even acknowledge by his body.

'I don't know if I should be glad or something...'

A few hours later.

A distant chime rang through the empty streets. A soundless bell. A call from something unseen.

The night was coming.

---

The world shifted.

Darkness pooled at the edges of reality, pulling Yeaia into the depths of sleep once more. They were once inside the hall where the murals were—where they met the two figures.

'Anderson...why is he alone?'

Anderson stood a few steps away, hands tucked into his pockets, his expression the same lazy indifference as before. But this time, the man with the gold-rimmed glasses was gone.

Yeaia frowned. "Where is the other one?"

Anderson tilted his head slightly. "Other one?"

"The man with glasses. He was here before."

The mercenary hummed, tapping his chin. "Oh, him? Don't know. He was already gone before I got here."

Yeaia studied him carefully. Was Anderson also part of the dream? Or was he something more? They couldn't tell.

"You seem oddly calm about all this," Yeaia muttered.

Anderson chuckled. "You'd be surprised what I've seen in my line of work. Dreams, illusions, weird entities—just another day."

Yeaia hesitated. "...This is more than just a dream, isn't it?"

Anderson's gaze flickered with something unreadable. But instead of answering, he simply grinned. "You tell me."

The conversation drifted into other topics—fragments of places they had seen, meaningless observations, half-joking remarks that didn't quite hide the undercurrent of something deeper.

But eventually, Yeaia felt the pull of something beyond the dream, urging them forward.

"I should go," they said at last.

Anderson raised an eyebrow. "Go where? You shouldn't explore this dream at all. It's dangerous, look at me, just looking at the mural and now I'm unlucky! You don't look that strong to defend yourself, you sure you wanna go?"

Once again, Yeaia felt provoked but they just shrugged it off.

'Maybe it's related to his beyonder powers? And I don't think this dream is that dangerous at all for me...for some reason, I can just feel it.'

Yeaia didn't answer. Instead, they turned, letting the shifting pathways of the ruins guide them into the unknown.

---

Yeaia didn't really know where to go but since he can still feel the strange pull from earlier, he just followed it.

Then, they saw him.

The man with gold-rimmed glasses. His presence was undeniable, standing at the heart of the dream, his eyes gleaming under the fractured moonlight.

He was fighting or what seems to be like it. It was dark where he was. It looked like he was in a room with someone....a mirror....and...

'That enemy...Saint of Darkness? Strange, why do I know that name?'

A figure wreathed in shadow loomed before him, its form barely human, shifting between solidity and emptiness. It was the embodiment of something ancient, something dark—something that should not be.

The Saint of Darkness.

The clash between them was surreal, barely bound by the rules of reality. Shadows writhed, distorting space itself, while flames erupted, searing through the void. Klein—though Yeaia still did not know his name—moved with precise, calculated strikes, wielding something unseen yet devastatingly powerful.

For a moment, Yeaia was frozen.Then, instinct took over, and they stepped forward—

But the dream shattered.

Morning had come.

---

Yeaia jolted awake.

Their breath was uneven, their mind struggling to grasp the remnants of what they had seen. The hall with murals. Anderson. The fight. The way the dream had ended so abruptly, just as they were about to act.

They sat in silence for a long moment, the echoes of the night still lingering at the edges of their thoughts.

What had they just witnessed?

And more importantly—

'Who was that man? That feeling of familiarity was still there...is he somehow related to me?'

'I hope he doesn't misunderstand that I didn't want to help him or that I'm an enemy....' Yeaia fiddled with his red highlights gently.

---

Klein's POV

The rhythmic creaking of wood. The faint scent of salt and ink. The distant crash of waves against a sturdy hull.

Klein opened his eyes.

The dream had ended, but its presence still clung to his mind like the lingering chill of the deep sea.

He was back aboard The Future, Cattleya's ship. The gentle rocking of the vessel assured him that he was, in fact, awake. But even here, in the waking world, the memory of what he had seen remained vivid.

Far from the ruins where Yeaia was at, Klein Moretti sat in his cabin in contemplation.

They were there again.

The strange figure, drifting between reality and the dream. Their presence had been fleeting, yet undeniable. They weren't just an illusion—he was sure of it now.

He exhaled slowly, rubbing his temple.

Who were they?

And why did it feel like they had met before?

Somewhere, in the vast and tangled web of fate, an answer waited.

He just had to find it.

'Of course I have to find mermaids first... these events makes me want to advance to sequence 5 even more'