♦ ♦ ♦ HEKTOR  ♦ ♦ ♦

I had a dream.

In my dream, I was standing in a strange place, in the center of a large square.

Huge buildings – made of white, marble-like stones – rose into the sky around me.

These structures were so large that they towered above the purple clouds, making it impossible to capture their true height. They were also round in their basic shape, becoming more pointed with each successive floor.

I turned away from the strange buildings and returned my gaze to the ground.

Crowds of people hurriedly walked past me, seeming to go about their normal daily lives.

Except that they weren't people.

At first glance, they could easily be mistaken for such – for humans. They walked on two legs, had two arms and a head with eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

However, upon closer inspection, one quickly realized that they differed from humans in several key characteristics.

Their skin was slightly bluish and their hair snow-white. In addition, their ears were pointed – like that of an elf. This was true for every one of them, without exception.

This fact, along with the unusually shaped buildings, was clear evidence that I was not on earth.

For a few moments, I watched as the blue people walked past me. Some walked alone, some walked in groups and talked to each other. Some were laughing and some were pushing strollers with little blue people around.

Everything seemed normal.

»…«

But the sight evoked no joy in me, no enthusiasm, no desire. I felt nothing beautiful from the image of a peaceful society before my eyes. However, I also had no negative feelings such as envy, anger, or indignation.

In fact, I felt nothing at all.

I wondered why I thought that…

Then I blinked and the scenery in front of me changed.

♦

I was still standing in the same place, but now the surroundings had turned into a sea of flames. The tall buildings that once reached up to the sky were now demolished as rubble and ash covered the burning streets around me.

I moved my head and looked down.

In front of my feet, I saw a blue face – and above it some white hair, now stained with red blood.

»…«

I wouldn't say I was shocked. It was more a sense of surprise. I have never met a species that did not possess red blood – egardless of skin color. I wondered, why that was.

For a few moments, I looked into the lifeless eyes of the young man on whose chest my feet were firmly standing.

Then I slowly let my gaze wander further ahead. 

More blue people and more red blood.

I realized that I was standing on a mountain of corpses – consisting of those living beings who moments before had been walking peacefully through the streets.

Now they were dead. Young, old, male, female – it didn't matter. They were dead.

A scream resounded from the distance and my gaze followed its source. There, I saw a horde of wolf-like monsters chasing a small group of fleeing blue people.

The chase didn't last long. The monsters were the victors.

Mercilessly they pounced on their prey and soon the screaming died down.

With emotionless eyes, I looked at the remains of the hunt. A man whose face was mangled by claws. A woman whose legs had been separated from her body and for which her attackers were now fighting. And a child who was still in the woman's arms.

At that moment, a deep voice resounded from behind me.

»My lord. The city has been taken. The purge has been completed.«

I nodded my head. Shortly after, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps moving away.

For a few more seconds, I looked at the child, who seemed to be sleeping deeply in his mother's arms, undisturbed by the events around him.

Then I closed my eyes, to the sound of a burning city.

♦

The first thing I saw after I woke up was a white ceiling.

The first thing I felt after I woke up was a breath-taking, hellish pain that numbed my entire body.

»Argh…!«

I couldn't suppress a groan and my body convulsed. My arms, my legs, and my entire torso felt like they were on fire. But worst of all was the stabbing pain in my head, like someone was trying to scrape out my brain with a spoon. And the longer I was awake, the more intense it got.

I didn't know what was going on. I didn't care, either. I just wanted the pain to subside.

Unfortunately, it didn't.

I pulled my hair, kicked wildly around me, and…

»Aaaahhhhh!«

…screamed with all my might to somehow distract myself from the nerve-wracking agony.

I paid no attention to the many tubes and cables hanging from me, nor to the gibs covering my arms and legs.

At that moment, I heard a door being yanked open and the sound of hurriedly approaching footsteps.

»Hurry… …woke up… …but why…« said a woman.

»Don’t know… …need to... Morphine... …hold him..." a male voice resounded.

Because of my pain and screaming, I could not understand the voices clearly, but they seemed to want to help me. And indeed, a few seconds later, a warm feeling washed over me. The pain subsided and I no longer had the urge to lash out at everything around me. Fatigue and lack of strength overcame me and I closed my eyes.

»Synchronization at 14 percent.«

But before I fell asleep, I thought I heard another voice.

♦

Slowly, I opened my eyes.

'The same white ceiling.'

I was lying on the same bed as the last time I woke up.

It took my eyes a few moments to adjust to the glare of the ceiling lights.

Before, I was not in the right state of mind to think about it, but apparently, I was in a very familiar place.

I couldn't help but sigh. Because once again, I managed to get my ass into a hospital.

I tried to straighten my upper body.

»Huh?«

But my body wouldn't move. Or... it couldn't move.

Because when I turned my gaze downward, I saw that my arms were bound to the metal bed frame with some leather straps. There was also a strange strap tying my torso to the bed.

I frowned.

»Haaa... Fuuu... Haaa... Fuuu…«

At that moment, I noticed the sound of soft inhalation and exhalation to my right.

Slowly, I turned my head. 

Immediately, I became startled.

»Mia?«

Sitting on a chair in the corner of the room was a teenager with long, brown hair. Her head slumped down slightly and a thread of drool pulled from her half-open mouth, landing on her blue school uniform. In her hands, she held a thick book labeled Monster Anatomy 10, threatening to fall off at any moment.

'My cell phone!'

Instinctively, I wanted to reach into my pants pocket to pull out my cell phone. After all, the opportunity to catch my usually stern and cautious little sister drooling didn't come along every day and had to be immortalized.

Unfortunately, I found that my hands were still tied to the bed. In addition, I did not even have pants on. Only a light blue shirt, which just reached down to my knees, covered my naked body.

And as I fretted over my missed opportunity...

»Brother!«

...a voice yelled at me from my right.

»Ahhhh!« which made me scream in shock.

»Ahhhh!« which in turn startled my sister.

Breathing heavily and wide-eyed, we stared at each other for a few seconds without exchanging a word.

Eventually, I couldn't take the stifling silence anymore.

»Uh, how was school?«

The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I had messed up.

Because my sister's face contorted first into an expression of shock, then disbelief, before finally turning into one of pure anger.

She quickly stood up and walked towards me with long strides and clenched fists.

»M–Mia?«

Seeing her suddenly extend her arm, I instinctively flinched. I closed my eyes, tensed my facial muscles, and waited for the slap.

But it never came.

»Eh?«

Instead, Mia had wrapped both her arms around my neck and embraced me for a hug.

»…«

Though she made no sound, from the way her body kept wincing, I could tell that she must have been sobbing and stifling herself from crying.

This could have been a touching moment of sibling love, were it not for the fact that I could not hug her back because my arms were still tied to the bed – making the whole situation rather embarrassing.

At the same time, I was confused. This wasn't the first time Mia had visited me in the hospital. I would always say that I had an accident at work. She would look at me suspiciously and tell me to find another job.

But that would have been it.

Never once did she have a reaction remotely as strong as this.

It's not that I wasn't aware of the current situation.

Since I didn't even remember how I passed out, it must have hit me pretty bad this time.

But… that bad?

At that moment, my sister pushed away from me and stood up.

Without looking at me, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and walked towards the door.

She was probably going to get a nurse, now that I had woken up.

»Mia.«

With her back facing me, she stopped abruptly as I called her.

»What?«

Her cold tone, which didn't match her actions from a second ago, surprised me a bit, but I continued anyway.

»We need to talk. I will explain.«

When she didn't answer, I continued, a little embarrassed...

»At work, there was–«

»Yes, we need to talk.«

She didn't let me finish and interrupted me in the same cold voice.

»But first, the doctors need to know you're awake.«

And without waiting for my answer, she left the room.

I blinked a few times and stared at the door my sister had just walked out of.

As I thought. Something just didn't seem right. Mia would never react like that under normal circumstances, even when she was angry.

'Are my injuries really that bad?'

After all, I felt pretty normal right now. Other than the fact that I felt a little weak, I wasn't in any pain either.

I could still remember being in hellish agony when I first woke up, but even that memory was slowly fading. Like a dream.

'Wait… dream?'

At that moment, an unpleasant feeling came over me, as if I have forgotten something – something important.

»Dream… dream… dream…« I kept muttering.

»Synchronization complete.«

At that moment, I heard a female – slightly robotic – voice.

»Class advancement successful.«

I turned my head back and forth to find the source of the voice, but of course, there was no other person in the room.

'Hmm? Why does that seem so familiar…'

»Title updated.«

However, it didn't seem like a person was talking to me either. Besides the strangely machine-like sound of the voice, it felt like the voice was being directly transmitted into my head. One could compare it to the sound coming from headphones.

Just as I was wondering why this mysterious voice did not surprise me and where I had heard it before, a dark area suddenly covered my vision.

This time I flinched violently and squeezed my eyes shut.

Since I was still lying with my back on the bed, I thought something large had fallen and would land on my face.

However, when the impact didn't come even after a few seconds, I slowly opened my eyes again.

»Ah!«

Immediately, I was shocked.

Because hovering above me, in mid-air, was... a dark surface.

To be more precise, it was a black, slightly transparent rectangle in the shape of a giant tablet. On it, something was written in a clear, white font.

⎣Welcome, Candidate.⎤

I had no idea what that meant.

»What…?«

But the shock was not to end here. Because when I moved my head up slightly to see if the strange plate was attached to the ceiling in some way, it moved with me.

No kidding. The dark surface just moved along until it was hovering centrally over my face again.

I couldn't believe what was happening.

To test it, I turned my head slightly to the left and to the right, and sure enough... without delay, the thing followed me.

It wasn't long before I began to shake and rotate my head wildly like a maniac until I felt dizzy. When the floating object still followed me perfectly even after performing some head acrobatics, I lay back down on the center of my pillow again and stared upwards.

The giant tablet was still in front of my face, as expected.

'Can it be…?'

This time, without moving my head, I raised both legs in the air until my thighs touched my chest. My feet naturally hung in the air as a result.

And as I had already guessed, my legs simply floated through the black surface. No physical contact or resistance could be felt as if nothing was there at all.

Since I had already suspected it, it didn't shock me much. Because as far as I could see, the thing had no depth. It was like a paper-thin retina display floating in the air.

At least I was now sure that what I was seeing was not an object with mass. Some kind of magic seemed to responsible for it.

But why? And why above my head?

I didn’t know, but I also had no more time to think about it further. Because at that moment, the door on the opposite side of the room opened.

A woman with short blond hair and cherry-red lips, dressed in a light-blue T-shirt and white pants, walked into the room.

But after she took a step in, she stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened, her face turning to the color of her lips.

»Ah!«

Only then did I realize.

Because my arms and my torso were tied to the bed, I could only do my little experiment with my legs.

This resulted in my thighs still resting on my chest, my feet pointing toward the ceiling.

Mia appeared behind the nurse, wondering why the woman had suddenly stopped.

But when she saw me, she too froze in shock and her jaw dropped.

So we stared at each other for a few seconds.

I squinted my eyes. Because I had realized…

»Brother, what the hell are you doing?!«

...that an oversized T-shirt was all that covered my body.