On one of the underground levels of the Academy hospital complex, there were series of a small rooms that were filled with the massive rectangle of the dream pod and various pieces of medical equipment.
Some of them were unoccupied. But Most were occupied by sleepers who's soul and mind had gone to the dream realm for the first time, their physical body lay within those pods sleeping peacefully.
Inside one such room, the eastern woman rested within the dream pod. Her porcelain skin radiated a ghostly luminance, unmarred and ethereal. The black strands of her hair, once flowing like ink across her pillow, suddenly shimmered and began to shift — the deep black fading to a pure, silken white, and the tips of her hair slowly bleeding into a rich velvety red, like the petals of a crimson lotus blossoming in moonlight.
With a sudden pulse of light, the pod's control panel flickered to life, its systems chiming softly in a symphony of awakening. Tubes hissed, releasing pressure. Monitors bleeped in quick succession. A soft golden glow descended from within the pod's interior.
Then, with a quiet hiss, her bewitching eyes fluttered open.
Yellow. Bright, golden, like twin suns dawning after a long winter. There was joy in them, radiant and warm — not just the relief of survival, but the rapture of a soul reborn. Her fingers twitched, brushing against the inner walls of her pod as she smiled, slow and sure. The eastern beauty blinked the dream from her eyes and knew, without a doubt, that she had returned.
***
Few kilometers away, at the heart of NQSC, on one of the underground levels of the House of Night's compound, in a reinforced room that was filled with the massive rectangle of the dream pod and various pieces of medical equipment, a tall man with unhealthy pale skin was sleeping beneath the transparent glass lid, his grim face surrounded by wisps of cold vapor. A gentle exhalation of cold fog passed over his face like a ghost's final kiss.
Suddenly, a series of lights ignited on the surface of the pod, and the medical machinery in the room came to life, producing various noises.
Without haste, his obsidian eyes opened.
Abyssal. Still. Like voids that had stared too long into the stars and remembered every loss. But they bore no pain, no regret, no confusion — only calm serenity, as if his mind had never left the battlefield, and had merely paused.
He sat up slowly, blinking once. The world awaited him. Again.
Elsewhere in the compound, in a nearby hall that housed the scions of the House of Night, the same reaction repeated. Pods began to glow. Mist curled. One by one, bodies stirred.
One young scion who had received a true name shuddered awake, his chest heaving with the first gasp of breath. His eyes brimmed with tears even as his lips curved into a trembling smile. His hands covered his face as sobs escaped his throat, not of grief, but of overwhelming gratitude.
Down the hallway, another scion snapped his eyes open and punched the side of the pod in a moment of raw emotion, a sharp cry bursting from his lips — a war cry, a scream of defiance at loss, or perhaps both.
Four more followed — each returning with different expressions. One awoke with laughter. Another with disbelief. One wept in silence. One simply lay still, tears streaming down the sides of their face, whispering a single name over and over again.
***
In a small apartment tucked within the NQSC's outer residential quarters, a giant man awoke in his old dream pod. It was a more primitive setup, not a fully modernized pod — but it served its purpose. As the digital signals shut down and the light from the indicators blinked off, Tessai stirred.
He breathed in deeply, the mist freezing over. Slowly he got out of the pod. He sat down on a chair nearby, his hand on the face. He whispered,
"…So it wasn't all in vain."
Back in the Academy, more pods glowed in the deep vaults of the complex. The survivors of the Crimson Spire siege — warriors, tacticians, killers, artisans — all began to stir.
Gunlaug was the first among them to rise. His pod hissed open and steam spilled out like dragon's breath. The towering man blinked rapidly, his scarred body trembling. He had known many battles — but this awakening felt unlike any other. His heart was beating wildly, as though it remembered the rhythm of war drums that still echoed in his veins.
Sevatar's eyes opened next. For a few seconds, he simply lay still, staring upward at the ceiling of the pod, his sharp jaw locked in tension. Then he smirked bitterly and sat up with a groan. His body hurt — phantom pain from dream realm borne injuries. He muttered under his breath and flexed his fingers.
"...Still alive. Tch. What a mess."
Harus was next. He jolted upright as if from a nightmare, his breath ragged. Sweat poured down his face, but his once murky eyes were clear — eyes that had seen too much and still bore the fire of purpose. He placed a hand over his heart, felt it beating, and whispered something in a language long forgotten.
"I know my purpose! I will follow my liege."
Across the city, even the world, in recovery wings, in secure rooms, in hospitals and sanctuaries, couple hundreds of other Forgotten Shore survivors began to wake.
Members of the Night Lord Legion stirred with various degrees of awareness. Some awoke with howls. Some in silence. Some with trembling hands clutching at chests that had been pierced in the dream. All of them were different now — touched, changed.
Sleepers from the siege — young and old — gasped awake with wide eyes. Many screamed. Others wept. Some did not react at all, but sat up in stunned silence, staring at nothing as memories and emotions flooded in like tidal waves.
The Forgotten Shore may have been just an unexplored part of dream realm, just another death zone in the dream realm.
But to those who had survived it, it had been more harrowing hell than anything else.
---
In the command tower of the Awakened's central monitoring station, one of the tech adepts stared in shock as a cascade of activation signals lit up the screen. Multiple sleeper modules were coming online, their neural patterns stabilizing, their vitals returning to pre-dream thresholds.
The operator blinked.
"They're… they're all waking up. Hundreds of them. This is the first something like this happened."
Behind him, his superior — a woman in military dress with glowing synthetic eyes — slowly turned from the console.
"…Inform the council, immediately. Send this message to everyone that should know of it." she said sharply.
"On it, ma'am."
***
Konrad looked around the small room, slowly realizing where he was.
…Night compound. He was back at the waking world, the House Night's compound.
He had returned to the real world.
"They must have moved me back here from the academy."
He looked around, noticing the medical equipment and the sleeping pod, all of which were currently ablaze with the light of alarms. The pod was still closed. He pressed the exit button and pushed the lid open.
Looking down, Konrad realized that he was naked. To avoid any awkward situations, he summoned the Inner garment of the [Mantle of Night].
Once the black fabric weaved itself out of black strings and covered his skin, he felt a lot better.
Since both Sleepers and Awakened traveled to the Dream Realm in spirit, his actual body was whole and pristine, without even a single scar.
However, the same could not be told about the [Mantle of Night].
After the thrashing he got from the First Sinner, even the inner layer of his armor was in a very bad state. Let's just say it has seen far better days. It was torn and soaked his own blood and dirty sea water, and mud here and there.
Though, the decision to cloth himself turned out to be the correct one. Just a few moments after he had made it, the door of the room opened, and a woman in a white coat rushed inside.
Noticing Konrad, she froze. Her eyes widened in horror, and she raised a hand to cover her mouth, as if suppressing a scream.
"What's wrong with you, woman?"
Konrad frowned, blinked a couple of times, then looked at his reflection in one of the medical machines.
"Is this something one needs to worry about?"
Looking at the doctor in confusion, Konrad forced out a smile and said in a raspy voice of someone who had not spoken in more than seven years:
"Can I maybe get some clothes?"
The woman stared at him for a few moments, then said in a trembling voice:
"Slee… Awakened Konrad? Sir, you are awake?"
"I sure hope so. I've been sleeping for seven years and two weeks, after all."
The doctor finally seemed to relax and looked at him with a relieved, joyous expression in her eyes.
A few moments later, she smiled slightly and said, her voice full of sincere admiration:
"Welcome back to the real world, sir!"
[A.N: I am not going to continue the story anymore. I am too busy IRL. I may or may not come back in the future and continue the story. It was a great experience.]
[Thank you for reading.]