A single crystalline road stretched on and on, eventually delving into a black, swirling rift. Gemini yawned twice as his mind began to make sense of his surroundings automatically, and before long, his sleepy self was once again able to think.

The Constellation looked around, yawning loudly at the same time. He had turned in for the night while hugging Lila tightly, but this was the first time he had a dream that wasn’t about him being bathed in the blood of innocents. Those dreams he had about massacring the innocents still haunted him once in a while, but they had grown more and more scarce in the recent months.

“They say that dreams are made up of jumbled memories,” Gemini muttered, “but I definitely never saw anything as otherworldly as this. It’s all crystal and shiny. Lila’s definitely going to like it, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen this before.”

He looked around the place, which looked familiar for some reason. Crystalline spires shot towards the sky, which was…something like a dome of rock. Gemini narrowed his eyes, and felt his heart skip a beat. He knew this place — or at least somewhere like it.

“Heritage Basestation,” Gemini spoke out loud. “I didn’t know that there’s this magical road in the sky, though. And I definitely didn’t know about this huge, ominous black hole thing.”

The world shook, and an incredible pulse of power shot outwards from the black rift. Gemini’s eyes widened for the briefest of instants, before the secondary shockwaves that came from that pulse slapped him backwards, blowing him away. His heart — apparently, this dream had replicated his body perfectly — pounded madly, a drumroll of an incredible tempo. For some reason, Gemini could sense an overwhelming malice and hatred directed at him, one so dense that it was physically weighing him down.

A mad, grieving will looked at him for a moment, and the restraints doubled. With his ample experience in dreams as realistic as this, Gemini knew that he could still use an imaginary version of qi and even his Unique Skills, but this was the first time he’d felt so restricted. The boundless qi he was used to calling upon was now a miserable scrap, only capable of projecting a thin blade and nothing else.

This is… divinity? This thing, this black rift, is a god of sorts? The Constellation winced as he stared deep into the black expanse. Being a bearer of divinity had many advantages; it conferred immunity to the same source and resistance to all other sources of divinity. And yet…could one really call this divinity?

Without warning, a flicker of light shot towards him. Gemini deflected the attack, but the sheer force behind it had forced him backwards by two or so metres. When he next looked up, a monster had stepped out of the rift.

‘Monster’, however, was a word too inadequate to describe it. The Constellation felt his heart palpitate even from merely laying eyes on that thing; it looked like a nightmare given form and power. The enemy before him had tens of individual eyeballs growing all over the body, and each of those eyeballs were differently coloured. The way those eyeballs spun around madly was already bad enough, but every so often, a small cluster of eyeballs would rupture, only to regrow elsewhere.

Gemini wanted to heave just by looking at those eyeballs alone. Their bodies weren’t helping either; they looked like they had been formed up by hundreds of intertwined tentacles. Smaller, finer ones twirled together to form five or so appendages that ended in sharp spikes.

Terror began to bubble in the pits of his stomach. Even if this was just a really bad dream, something deep inside him knew that this nightmare was not a product of his imagination.

Most importantly, he knew…that these things truly did exist. That doubt had grown into a seed of certainty within seconds, for some reason. Terror and confidence wrestled with each other inside, but Gemini was utterly certain that he could at least defeat this lone fellow.

His body flickered, and a second later, he’d already closed the distance to his target. The nightmare fixed every single eyeball on him, but Gemini had already dropped into a slide, narrowly dodging the fifty-odd black lines of energy that had erupted from every single eyeball. Tens of tentacles darted outwards from behind the nightmare’s back, stabbing towards Gemini as he continued his slide.

The sword of qi in his right hand glowed brilliantly as Gemini pumped whatever power he could into it, creating an impervious net of light. He frowned a moment later. Those tentacles didn’t just allow for devastating ranged attacks; they were very resistant to physical damage.

For Gemini, this meant that he had to finish things with as few blows as possible.

Gemini’s thoughts wandered for an instant, but that instant was enough of an opening. Two tentacles shot outwards, drilling into his left arm and his abdomen. Warm blood entered his mouth, but he didn’t really care about that. His right arm lashed outwards. There was some resistance to his strike, and his body continued to shudder as more and more tentacles stabbed into his body.

It hurt.

But that was all it was. Renewing his effort, the blade of energy broke through the nightmare’s skin and slowly sank down into its flesh. A black, oily liquid dribbled out, vanishing with a hiss as it landed on the crystalline road.

Strength, strength that Gemini never knew existed, coursed through his muscles from somewhere deep within him and drove his blade onwards. The nightmare hissed and spat, but that was all it could do.

With one final push, the Constellation forced the blade through the monster completely. Qi erupted from the blade, bisecting the body from inside out. It came apart a heartbeat later, turning into smoke as they collapsed onto the ground.

Gemini clutched his chest. The health bar in his vision was in the red, the lowest it had been for a long time. Fortunately, this was a dream, and even in the real world, so long as his health bar wasn’t depleted, Gemini would remain at full combat capability.

Theoretically, anyway. Whether he could still function normally was entirely up to whether his mind had the strength of will to do so. And it would seem that the him now didn’t have such a stern will.

Moments later, his dream came apart with the sound of shattered glass.