Chapter 75

Toren fell asleep once.

For the whole month he had been observing his own brother silently as a nonexistent entity, not even as a ghost, he never felt hunger, itch, pain, or drowsiness. However, at a certain nightfall which seemed quite mundane, he did not expect sleepiness to attack.

He did not even imagine it to happen.

Toren expected, at the very least, some invisible talons of a beast from the hells to raid his perceptions.

He anticipated the grim reaper's abrupt appearance along with its scythe and dark, flowing holes.

He did not even expect less of some demon to capture his soul.

But that night, his heavy lids fell and his consciousness drifted to the dream world – the place he never thought he could return to.

Since he had arrived there, a tempting inkling had botched his brain quite fervently. It spread throughout his thoughts rapidly like a virus, so he eventually gave in to it. Toren attempted to place himself at the otherworld and it fortunately worked.

To his surprise, though, he entered an empty landscape.

What once felt like a dreamy escapade now seemed like a dystopian space for evil witches and totalitarian monarchs. The flowerbeds were gone.

The chrysanthemums, roses, lilies, and daffodils...

Their petals he once adored so much were plucked from their roots and reduced into invisible ashes.

Even the heavy and dusty air was soiled with a pungent smell.

None of these felt the heavenly division from reality like how it was supposed to be.

The brown, muddy ground spun with a slow quicksand in the epicenter and the unfolded skies reflected it. There was a looming storm preparing to destroy some lands and hopes.

Toren stood there flabbergasted and devastated.

He was suddenly reminded of the familiar series of scenarios which appeared in his father's nightmares the night before he suddenly disowned him as his son.

Toren always knew about what happened there.

The sandcastles and the broken world which was once a beautiful one.

Airen was always here, but she was nowhere to be found now.

Looking back, she had been mysteriously missing from the picture all this time.

Muren had died after committing suicide during the war behind the concentration camp. Toren also died after having a brawl with his brother. Coen was released from the dungeon when the colonialism had weakened along with the great war.

But Airen... where is she now?

The tornado spun faster and stronger, almost pulling Toren in.

Somehow, his mind was only occupied with mysteriously strange thoughts – arbitrary ones and seemingly insignificant ones. Toren recalled the time when Muren dreamt of the same thing, but he was in the epicenter or the spinning red tornado made out of rose petals.

When he got inside that nightmare, he was screaming for his father's name then.

He was trying to rescue him and get him out of the disaster.

However, that time, only his odd and eerie doppelganger had remained plastered in his father's head.

Toren realized that he was finally together with loneliness.

He never felt such a thing for painting had been his companion.

The sly snake eating the apple, the twirling abstract that marked his directions, the deep blue rose from the young prince's tale, the emperor's portrait, and the family's portrait.

They were all too warm that Toren could not feel in his heart the frigid forlornness that the great war was supposed to inflict.

This time, he was truly all alone.