There were two suns in the sky. One burned with a red hue, while the other shone with a dimmer yellow light.
Their rays overlapped, superimposing upon one another and casting an orange tint across the forest below. Rosacer could hear the fluttering of trees and the rush of fierce winds cutting through the woods. The climate was oppressive, each gust of hot air drawing moisture from the land as if it were being drained away.
He had not expected the Nightmare World to be so vivid.
'I should be able to subjugate certain nightmare creatures,' he thought. 'Perhaps that is why the God allowed me to enter his domain directly.'
As he took in the stark beauty of the Nightmare World, his thoughts drifted elsewhere. He wondered what the Mist City must have looked like when the Dream God was still alive. Had it always been shrouded in gloom, or had it once resembled this place, filled with vibrant forests and living skies?
Dreams, after all, were said to be sweet.
If that were true, then the world shaped by the Dream God must have been far more calming and soothing than this land of burning suns and restless winds.
Deeper within the forest, Rosacer encountered a creature unlike anything he had seen before. It possessed six black eyes and tendril-like appendages, its body sliding through the canopy with a fluid, almost slithering motion, as though it were made of living slime.
Suddenly, it noticed him.
Rosacer remained hidden behind a cluster of bushes, holding his breath. The creature reacted instantly. Its form rippled, darkening as it blended with the surroundings. In the span of a single heartbeat, it camouflaged itself completely.
The next second, every trace of its presence vanished.
Not a sound remained. Not even the disturbed leaves betrayed where it had gone.
"Teleportation?! No, it's camouflage but it masks the enemy's senses instead..."
With no way to locate him now, Rosacer hurled the macabre doll towards the tree it was previous moving through, hoping the creature would be unfortunate enough to end up within a 10-meter range.
"Stupid human, this isn't your place to wander!"
A scream echoed through the forest, its source impossible to pinpoint. Rosacer, confused, glanced around in all directions.
Just then, a voice rang out. "Oh human from another realm, why have you come here? This is no place for you. And why does the mist of dreams curl from you? It smells awful!" The voice was feminine and high-pitched.
Rosacer stopped moving his head and said aloud, "I am here for the subjugation promised to me, for the power of the creature I borrow from the lands requires me to..."
"Ohhhhh, a challenge from a mere human, hahaha! You might be wearing all that fancy armor, but it won't work in his realm—the Master of Terror, the feared God, the God of Nightmares, the one and only Soulless King!"
'Three titles... all the same... but why a soulless king?' Rosacer wondered.
"Why do you call your lord Soulless?" he asked, curious.
His hand lingered near his waist, where he'd stashed his gun, ready to draw it the moment the creature made any suspicious move.
But instead, a laugh echoed from the other side, dripping with mockery and scorn. Rosacer didn't react; he just stood there, listening to the creature's laughter. After a few moments, it finally stopped and spoke, "Look, human, let me tell you a tale. It seems you don't know anything."
With pride and a solemn voice, it began. "Long ago, the Nightmare God lost a battle against one of the heavenly creations and was sealed within the cold realm of the Ice Princess. But fate had other plans for the King of Souls. Over time, he managed to break through the seal and slowly returned to his kingdom. Yet something was amiss. During his absence, the Nightmare Realm had changed—and not for the better..."
There was a pause in between, as if the creature was selectively adjusting his speech, something having triggered him as he began the tale. "The Nightmare God brought a human—naive and weak at first. But soon, the human grew stronger, and after years of battle, he became the God of Nightmares himself."
"The Nightmare Realm thrived under his rule, but another battle loomed on the horizon."
"The dethroned former king, left defenseless, had been slain by the Dream God..."
A surge of anger was clear in the voice as it continued. "But the new lord didn't let his old friend die in vain—he took revenge on a god, the Dream God. The god was slain by his hands, and his blood seeped into his own land, turning into mist."
"The Dream Realm still teeters between existence and non-existence, where the blood of a god drips into the land of the living. Crescitlok, once called the City of Brewing, was a place where people worshipped the Dream God—a realm of dreams it was, a divine kingdom of a god on earth. But now the god is dead, and the people are doomed as well."
"That's why the new lord is called the Soulless King—for he doomed the very people he once was."
All this information was revealing for Rosacer, but a barrage of questions filled his mind, though one was more pressing than the rest.
He asked the creature in a hurried voice, "When was the Dream God slain?!"
The creature, unfazed by his urgency, replied, "Ten human years."
Rosacer's eyes widened. How could that be? The people of Mist City, once called Crescitlok, had been cut off in the 7th century, or thereabouts. How can the Dream God be slain in the same century?
Only explanation he could think of was that if the Dream God truly died ten years ago, then either the city had not been severed when history claimed it was, or time itself did not move the same within the Dream Realm.
'But why would he taint his own city in the 7th century?' Rosacer wondered. The second idea of different time dilation seemed more plausible, but he still needed more answers to confirm it.