Kyoya found himself somewhere vaguely familiar.

His vision was cloudy, but it was just subtle enough to only make him think this was the case. He was in a two-bed bedroom dwelling, fashioned of waxed wood, with several bookcases and dressers lining the walls around him.

He checked the ceiling, lighting being provided by torches and candles lit throughout. Though, the boy was forced to muffle a gasp when his eyes fell upon a form long adrift through the currents of time.

On the bed parallel to his, Sera sat cross-legged in a shimmering indigo nightgown, brushing cascading navy-blue hair.

Kyoya finally began remembering.

This was his parents' old home, where he and his sister shared a room.

Judging by the calendar hanging above his nightstand, this was seven years ago. November fourteenth; a red circle was placed on the seventeenth, which he immediately knew to be his birthday, as well as the day that Sera left to further her skill in combat under the training of higher ranking instructors.

He'd intended to commit more thought to the idea, but was stopped once his long-lost spoke.

"Why're you so quiet all of a sudden?" Sera stopped brushing, tilting her head to him.

All he could do was stare back.

She was just as he'd remembered: sharing his deep azure eyes and her trademark sunlit skin. Her features were a million times sharper than his, yet still retaining the charm that earned her a reputation among Teleo's combat corps.

Of course, Kyoya's only intention was to provide whatever he could to stay caught up in terms of skill. That much at least meant something to his hope of keeping himself on a similar level to hers.

The girl's hair was long, reaching down to her lower waist, which required extensive brushing after battles or a few days. He remembered those brushing sessions as the best time to chat, as he was the only one she'd let stick around for more than an hour or so outside of schooling or training.

After all, she was, even then, what he'd aspired to be since taking up combat as a way of life.

It almost made him jump when she talked again. "Hello? You okay?"

"Y-yeah! All good over here! Just, uh..." He had to take a hard pause, the notoriously high-pitched voice of his younger years coming back to haunt him. "Just a little extra downtime before you go... y'know?"

She sighed and slid off her bed, then climbed onto his, hugging her knees to her chest.

"I hate how mushy you can be, dude." Sera pouted. A light shove met his shoulder, and he fell over without much trouble. Her strength was something else he'd forgotten.

"It's not my fault I've got the biggest rep ever to live up to. Give a kid some slack, huh?" Kyoya sat back up to his knees and folded his arms, showing as little of his intent as possible.

"Oh, come on... You know as well as I do you can't have me watching your butt forever. This is gonna be better for everybody; and when I come back, we'll see what time's done for the both of us."

In any other situation, he'd have erupted into a challenging cheer and started counting down seconds, even if it would have taken years. Though, it wasn't until she'd said that, that he truly grasped what was happening.

She'd said, 'when.'

This finally kicked his awareness back into the real side of the situation, his vision becoming completely clear, and now seeing this dream as vividly as if it were in the waking world.

"Yeah... I guess that's not a bad point. I'll pull my own weight, so don't worry about me!" Kyoya flashed a grin and thumbs up, seeing his objective in full clarity.

"But, there's one thing that's been bugging me..." Sera started.

She looked almost tense, now, and something he failed to notice before seemed to blink into being: an unmistakable feeling that despite nothing being inherently wrong here, there was danger afoot. "...I've been thinking about just staying, instead."

Following this, Kyoya subtly narrowed his eyes.

He was sure of it, by this point.

This was designed for him, specifically, and if he were to complete his task, to find whatever light Guran had specified, he had to resist the urge to give anything in this illusion leeway.

"No, I think you had it right, sis. There's a whole great big world out there that needs tough guns, and nobody better to do it than you." After that, the slightest feeling of remorse began to creep in; that sting of the wrong decision, picking away at him. But, again, he knew his mind was influenced here. Otherwise, there would be no emotion to conquer.

"I know, and I see what you mean, but it's cold outside Teleo, unforgiving, and you never know what could go wrong... What if something happens, and I never get to see you again?" She prodded.

"Well... I guess that's just how it goes, y'know? Fate works weird... But, at the end of the day, I don't think we'll ever really lose each other, if that makes any sense."

Kyoya's nerves began to go on alert. The tension about them could be cut with so little as a fingernail, this entire setting beginning to feel as though it were being controlled.

"Strings," he thought.

Each facet, manipulated; every emotion, idea, all of it... but he couldn't quite come to any conclusion, let alone go so far as to confirm it.

"Kyoya... I'd been meaning to keep it close to me, but all I want is to know for myself that you'll always be safe. Even if that means giving away the fight, I'm willing to do that if it can-"

This was the point at which he wouldn't let a bait of any capacity keep him from seeing this through.

"I think that's about enough," Kyoya cut in. Sera turned and looked to him with such hurt in her eyes that he almost took it back, though knowing that she was no more than something to trick him here did well to suppress it.

"W-what?" Sera recoiled, some sort of phantasmic particles beginning to break away from her form.

"Bingo!" He sprung away from his bed, evading this encroaching darkness as the entire room began to shake off its hinges. As more of these particles drifted away from Sera, the walls seemed to fold in on themselves, splinter, and break apart, revealing a blank exterior only describable as a void made up of the same ghoulish energy.

He'd bested his emotions, pushed them away and swept them under whatever rug had been provided. Kyoya was certain he should have woken by this point, but his surroundings only became more estranged. Sera was now only partially human, the other half made up of a mass the now visibly corrupted, black and white matter replacing what parts of her had disappeared.

Kyoya jolted up from the second bed, feeling a massive force erupting from underfoot. He narrowly avoided an enormous tendril of that matter tearing through the bed, impaling what was once the form of Sera straight through its chest while he stumbled back on the floor.

The scene began shifting again, particles phasing and warping themselves to a ruined battlefield, a mile in all directions extending into mountains on all sides.

All of the blackened matter had disappeared, but a sight he'd hoped would always evade him presented itself: the very moment Sera had met her fate.

She was pierced and strung on a lance where the tendril had gone through, her hands limp on the spear to imply a pointless struggle to remove herself.

At the handle of that lance was none other than Oberon, looking to the girl with an identical frown to that of when he'd tried to kill Kyoya.

Sera's eyes and expression had completely faded to suggest her loss, and Kyoya now stood at the scene with faltering ability to fight off the amassing turmoil.

But, he was only given a few moments to view it.

Seconds afterward, the scene began breaking apart again. Both Sera and Oberon slowly became husks of whatever energy composed this realm. Soon, his entire surrounding was being replaced by that of the endless void.

Extending infinitely nowhere, an empty expanse of a world greeted his gaze. There was no light for him to find, nor to reach -- and there never had been.

Kyoya seemed to be standing in some sort of pitch-black reality, still shaking as though an earthquake were occurring in this ruined world. The quake grew so intense that it knocked him to a stumble, completely unable to stand at his full height, forced to try and maintain balance in a crouch.

Then, came the truth. It seemed that something else was to blame.

Coming from nowhere in particular, and yet everywhere at once, an eruption of speech assaulted him.

"LIGHT? HERE?"

It revolved around the boy, power from the sound alone dropping him to a kneel, having to cover his ears for fear of losing his hearing. The lack of any depth perception or sense of direction forced Kyoya to assume it to be close, and otherworldly large... Or, miles away -- and enormous.

"DAMN RIGHT, AND I'M NOT LEAVIN' WITHOUT IT!" Kyoya was cornered, but fear was something he'd learned to mitigate, snarling his challenge to no avail. He was completely ignored, as this twisted display continued.

"WHAT... AWAITS?" It bellowed further. "ONLY TIME... WILL TELL..."

Before he could shout any further retort, whatever ground beneath him seemed to finally fall prey to this realm's tremors.

Flickers of blue began shearing through the ground, his footing being lost first as splits and cracks soon left fissures all around his feet, with even those crumbling away quickly afterward.

Then, even they shattered, an ear-piercing crash preluding the last bits dissolving into nothingness, forcing him into a freefall.