CHAPTER 60: DREAMS THAT BLEED REALITY

Crow crying sounds echoed as Kai entered through the narrow path, and just a second after he straightened himself and began tilting around, searching for the black bird he was following, a crashing sound erupted behind him, and when he turned, he saw the path he passed through replaced with a wall with the name Kai Fenlore written in red liquid that kept on dripping and slamming on the slightly dried earth like a hammer.

The smell alone made him push himself forward, as it smelled of iron and freshly torn human skin, though he saw no sign of torn skin.

His physical body that lay on the wet bed kept on sweating profusely as if he had been watched in sleep.

Back in the dream, he covered his mouth and nose with his left elbow and began moving forward to the dark road that still popped smoke. After taking three steps, he noticed the ground turning slippery, and when he placed the fourth step, his boots landed in a stream of water that pulled him in instantly.

He struggled so hard as he drowned in the dream, and at the last minute of dying in the dream as his eyes began closing, the black bird he’d been following throughout his recent dreams echoed around him, and surprisingly pulled him from the stream of water and transported him into a land where birds with huge feathers soared high above the clouds.

Kai’s chest heaved, both in the dream and real life, as if whatever happened to him in the dream happened to him in the real world also. After ten minutes of standing still and calming his chest down, he spotted the birds standing on a black banner with inscriptions turned upside down. And when he turned his head to see the words, the words read: Welcome to the city of Babel.

At the sight of the name ’Babel’, something clicked in his mind, yet it wasn’t fully valuable to him, as he shook his head and began moving forward following the direction of the birds, which were now moving just two feet away from him.

He moved past buildings that seemed to be abandoned by humans, if that’s what they were to be referred to, as he saw two human-like bones, but with two sharp metallic objects fixed on their foreheads like horns.

Since it didn’t mean anything, and the bird didn’t stop at the sight of it, Kai just brushed it off and continued, stepping into countless wonders of the land he walked on; from hanging collapsed buildings to upside-down streets that seemed to straighten when he stepped on them, as if he was recreating the land itself.

Finally, the birds flew further, stopping and circling around a black sword that stood at the edge of a slightly raised stone that looked perfectly like an egg-shaped rock. And when he moved toward the black sword and began scanning it as he moved, circling it, a loud rumble came from the sword itself and began pulling him toward it with a strange and unbreaking relentless unearthly force.

...

Kinji, who happened to be opening the entrance door of the large building serving as the dormitory, heard screams coming from afar, and in that instant, he ran, forgetting to even close the door.

Reaching two doors that seemed to be carrying the screams, he moved to the first door, placed his ear on it, and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds coming from it. Shockingly, he heard screams, but the screams he was hearing weren’t those that had forced him to run and check; instead, they were exotic screams—ones that only come when a lady is moaning in pleasure.

A smile tore on Kinji’s lips as he pulled his head from the side of the door and moved toward the second, and surprisingly, the second was that of a man snoring. But when he moved from the second and tried to move to the third, he began hearing voices around him.

"He’s dying, save him."

The voices came in like a chorus of groups of people—men, women, adults, children, and the aged—yet when he turned around in a three-sixty angle, he found no one; only the dark sky and the corners welcomed him.

’What’s happening to me?’ he thought, squeezing his eyes and raising a hand to his chin. And in that instant, the scream that brought him there vanished.

’Is that because of the lady I saw and got really attached to without any reason? Because I heard a similar voice when the lady vanished into the crowded people. Just that that voice sounded different,’ his thoughts kept on reeling, and at the verge of thinking he’d found the reason for the strange voices, the screams came again; this time they came in double folds.

He heard both the voice he’d heard and the scream, all screaming at him, and forcefully he surged into the last room, only to see Kai standing and panting heavily, his eyes glowing almost at their peak as if a light generator had been placed inside his eye sockets.

"KAI!" Kinji closed his eyes and shouted the boy’s name, and surprisingly, the bright light pulsing in Kai’s eyes began dimming, and finally dimmed. Kinji tore his eyes open and ran toward Kai, catching him at the last minute before falling.

Kinji helped position Kai in the chair and constantly kept slapping him, hoping to forcefully wake him from his dream. After thirty minutes of consistent slaps, Kai’s body twitched and slowly, his eyes began to crack open.

Kinji closed his eyes and placed his left elbow over his eyes, hoping to protect them from becoming blind when the light he saw came again. But when Kai opened his eyes finally, Kinji saw the sclera turned white while the iris had only the dimmed blue and red colors, as if now wanting to turn to one color completely.

Sweat began to bead on Kinji’s face as he hadn’t seen Kai’s eyes turn like that before, and it made him swallow hard. In the dark quietness of the room, the sound of swallowing alone made Kai blink twice.

He stared at Kinji for two minutes before finally blinking on the third, then stood up and hugged Kinji.

The reaction Kai made alone caused Kinji’s eyes to widen, yet he had no idea and also wrapped his arms calmly around the boy and began smiling. After five minutes of a long hug, Kinji broke the hug and sat on the bed, still staring at Kai as if it was the first time seeing him.

After thirty minutes of not saying a word and just staring, memories of him being in a queue of a hundred men reeled in, and among the hundred men, he saw the boy now standing in front of him standing beside him in the queue.

Tiny drops of tears began snaking down from Kai’s eyes, and when Kinji saw it, he moved toward Kai, hugged him again, and cleaned the tears, stopping them from falling.

And at the moment Kinji unwrapped himself from Kai, Kai spoke a name.

"Kinji."

Kinji stood there for a couple of minutes trying to remember what the nurse, Lieutenant Gray, and Lieutenant Wang said after that catastrophic incident occurred. And when he did, he became extremely excited for Kai to remember him.