[Dreamscape – Echoes of the Arena]
It began with silence.
Not the kind that soothes, but the kind that settles over scorched ground after something irreversible. The arena flickered into being around Arc, conjured from memory and blood. No noise. No audience. Just the cold gleam of steel walls and the ghostlight hum of still-active power veins laced through the architecture. The air crackled faintly, as if it remembered the violence.
Arc stood alone where it had ended.
The copper dagger—now clean, weightless, and somehow symbolic—hung in his fingers like a tether to a moment he couldn't take back. He glanced down at it, unsure whether it felt like a burden or a key.
That's when the static returned.
Soft at first—barely a whisper—but it coiled around him. Then, he felt it.
A presence.
Strom's spectral form phased into view across the arena, stepping from the far gate as if no time had passed at all. His body was outlined in faint green light, transparent but intact. His skin no longer bore the signs of torment or mutation. The patches of synthetic eel-skin shimmered like glass, and at the center of his chest, his augment core pulsed like a dying star—green, vibrant, but flickering.
He wasn't smiling, not exactly. But there was peace in his expression. Acceptance.
"Feels cleaner in here than it ever did out there," Strom said, voice smooth—almost too human. "Funny, how this place looks better in death."
Arc said nothing, but he watched closely. Strom wasn't hostile. Not sad, either. There was something in his eyes—relief, perhaps. Or… release.
"Don't get me wrong. I fought you with everything they pumped into me. Every jolt, every roar, every blind strike—none of it mine."He looked at his hands, curling his fingers into fists. "I was drowning in it, Arc. Screaming under it all. You were the first person to see me underneath the surge."
A pause.
"And the last."
The arena buzzed—low, like a sigh.
Arc exhaled, his voice gravelly, quiet. "You were strong. They made you a weapon."
Strom nodded slowly. "And you did what a real warrior does with weapons like me. You ended them."
The green core in his chest brightened slightly, pulsing in rhythm with Arc's own heartbeat. Their connection—the aftermath of the battle—was more than physical now. It had sunk deeper, carved into the metaphysical. Strom stepped closer, his voice steady.
"I'm not here for vengeance. Or forgiveness. Just… to pass it on."
He raised a hand, and the green glow in his chest extended outward in streaks of shimmering Uratsu. It floated like tendrils toward Arc, wrapping gently around his arm and chest—not invasive, but resonant.
The moment it touched him, Arc's body jerked.
His muscles twitched violently, electricity jolting down his spine like a reset. His fingers curled instinctively, the tendons in his arms straining as arcs of green lightning surged through them. His nervous system lit up like a circuit. He fell to one knee, panting, gritting his teeth as the Uratsu-charged augment activated for the first time.
Flashes of memory—Strom's fragmented thoughts—rushed through his mind:
The cuffs biting into skin.The hum of the restraints.The screaming in his head.The moment Arc struck him cleanly for the first time, when the rage cracked just enough for peace to leak through.
The dagger fell from Arc's hand, forgotten.
His veins glowed faintly, the burn of alkanite intermixing with this new surge. Sparks scattered from his fingertips, twitching with residual energy. His eyes flared—not just silver now, but layered: neon green bleeding into white, then cooling into a soft, almost holy cyan.
And just like that, he understood.
The twitching muscle reflex. The surge-charge. The ability to redirect and absorb through contact.
Strom's augment—a perfected, brutal electric control born of torture—was now his.
Strom stepped back, his body starting to fade. The green core dimmed with each second.
"You've got a lot of fights ahead, Arc," he said, voice thinning with the dream.
"Don't use it for mercy. Don't use it for justice. Use it because it's yours now. And don't waste it."
Arc rose slowly, the nausea from before returning faintly—but not as guilt this time. As understanding.
Strom gave him a final glance—not a brother's farewell, not a friend's blessing, but a silent nod of gratitude.
"Thanks for letting me die as myself."
Then the dream collapsed inward. The arena faded. The light dimmed.
Arc's body, still suspended in the recovery pod in the waking world, twitched again—his fingers crackling faintly with that same green lightning. The augment had fused. The core had been accepted.
And deep within the void of his soul, Strom's presence was gone.
But the power remained.