CHAPTER 431: KEEP ON DREAMING-I

Cassius stood at the edge of the meadow, unmoved by its splendor.

Wildflowers flared in a riot of colors, their perfume cloying in the wind, but his gaze drifted past them, dull and glassy, fixed on nothing at all. A current stirred his black hair across his face, yet he made no move to brush it aside. His crimson eyes, heavy lidded wasn’t out of exhaustion, simply boredom as he scanned the horizon as though even sight itself had grown weary.

Thoughts refused to form inside his head and so all he could feel was an empty, weightless sort of imbalance in his head.

A man might have panicked at such a void, but Cassius felt only the hollow press deeper, sinking into his chest where a heart should have quickened. Nothing. No beat, no urgency. Only the stillness of flesh that moved while something vital remained absent.

"You don’t find them beautiful?"

The voice slipped in behind him— gentle and familiar. He turned.

A youthful woman with a flawless skin and lips so red as cherries. Long black hair curled at the ends. A smile that bent too close to a grin. Red eyes that mirrored his own. His mother.

She wore that same gown, the one that clung tight around her waist and flared like a mermaid’s tail. Time had not touched her here. Not the sickness, not the wasting pallor, not the way her beauty had rotted at the end. She had hated being seen like that. Perhaps even in death she had clawed herself back into perfection.

"Are they beautiful?" he asked. His voice sounded detached, almost curious— like one discussing a painting. "How strange... that I can speak with the dead."

"I suppose they are," she replied, settling onto the grass beside him, skirts whispering over the blooms. "You don’t seem to have many words for me."

Cassius hummed, a faint sound that betrayed nothing. It was the kind of hum that made others restless, wondering what storm, if any, gathered behind it.

"I don’t," he admitted at last. "I thought of asking how Hell feels. But it hardly matters now, does it? You’re gone. And besides..." His lips curved in the ghost of a smile, brittle and cold. "I don’t waste breath on illusions."

Her smile faltered. Withered. Then vanished altogether.

"How do you know?"

"I just felt it," Cassius said, his tone flat, though a shadow of curiosity lingered in his eyes. He leaned back until his shoulders pressed against the cool grass, arms sprawled loosely as though surrendering himself to the sky. "So then... tell me, why am I here? I can’t seem to recall anything. And yet"— his gaze drifted upward, watching the clouds wander lazily across the blue— "I don’t feel the urgency to run. I should, but I don’t. I should want to go home, but it doesn’t matter."

"You once did," the figure replied. Their voice was soft, calm, and yet laced with a strange knowing that unsettled the air. "Not long ago. Yesterday, in fact. And not only yesterday. More than once I had to scrape her from your head, scrub her clean from your thoughts, so you wouldn’t run mad and lose yourself to the ache she left behind."

"Her?" His crimson eyes cut to the figure, narrowing. "Of her?"

Instead of answering, they tilted their head and asked, "Don’t you have regrets, Cassius?"

His brows furrowed, lips curling faintly— not in humor, but in mockery of the question itself. "I don’t."

"Not even about the woman who bore you into this world?" Their hand lifted, fingers brushing across their own cheek as if pulling at a mask. For a flicker of a second, his mother’s face shone through— the same black hair, the same red eyes, the delicate mouth that had once kissed his forehead lovingly. The image seared itself into him, uninvited, and Cassius’s frown deepened.

"Don’t you regret not saving her? Not being there when the poison slipped into her veins, when her beauty was left to rot before your eyes? Don’t you wish you could have stopped them?"

The question hung heavy, weighted with accusation.

Cassius’s voice, when it came, was steady, measured, each word cold and final. "No. I tried to protect her and failed. That is the truth. And that is all there is to it."

"Not even for your sister then?" the figure pressed, their voice sharpening, prodding deeper, hungrier. "The girl who clung to you, waiting— hoping— while you came too late. She was then turned to a creature who you have to kill by your own hands. The very same who wished for peace until silence took her. Do you not regret that?"

Cassius exhaled, slow and sharp, turning his face away. For a long moment, he studied the meadow again, the wind pressing against his hair, the flowers trembling with each shift of the air. His jaw flexed, but his voice remained calm and under control as always, flawless to the point that it could even trick demons.

Finally, he turned back, crimson eyes locking onto the imposter with merciless focus alongside a grin.

"I don’t do regrets," he said. "If regret could undo the ruin, I’d regret a thousand times, every day, until the end of eternity. I’d drown myself in it. But it doesn’t. Regret is futile— it buys nothing, heals nothing. And so I do not spend it."

The figure’s expression faltered, the false mask of his mother twitching as though the words had struck too close. But Cassius didn’t flinch. He only held their gaze, unyielding, until silence pressed down like iron between them.

"But you sound like you have a lot of regrets," Cassius turned the question toward them, smiling, "Was it also the moment you lost someone that you regret it?"

"How odd, I’m sure that you do have regret," pointed the person again which made Cassius to furrow his eyebrows.

So this person will have him answer his questions but not when he ask?

"Perhaps the reason why I don’t feel regret is because of the memory of that ’her’ you mentioned which you have scrubbed clean from my head." Cassius didn’t know why, though he didn’t feel urgency earlier now after hearing the mention of ’her’ he does feel as though there’s a gaping hole in his chest.