Aleister woke up. And then promptly fell back to sleep. A cycle that occurred multiple times over the course of the night. Yet, he didn't wake up tired. No. The memories he drowned out started to return, the scars across his body he forgot about ached, his neck screamed, his heart—still.

In his unconscious nightmares, in which he held only the vaguest of notions of a motion—he woke up. Feeling more alive than ever. He had seen it. A place that might not even exist in reality and only in his mind. A place incomprehensible, yet its existence was vivid. Or maybe it wasn't even a place. Perhaps it was an entity. Or maybe it was an alternative reality in itself.

Aleister's entire being tremored as he sat up. He marked his bedside calendar. Holy hell, Trium's almost over.

"Someone is excited," Syn said, sitting next to him.

Aleister didn't answer. Instead, he closed his eyes and took in multiple deep breaths, practicing technique before he opened them back up. "I've seen it," he said, straightfaced.

"Seen—it?" Syn asked, not sure what he referred to.

He shook his head and said, "I can't."

"Why not?" she questioned further.

"What—it, is, I cannot tell you, because, even I don't know," Aleister said with a sardonic chuckle. How could he hope to explain a concept that he couldn't grasp himself? "However, I can tell you what I feel, and how the threads that bind us all only grow more opaque to me with each passing moment."

Syn tilted her reading glasses down and revealed her dilated pupils. "What did you say?"

Aleister found it clear that she asked not because she didn't hear him, but because she needed his affirmation that she heard correctly, which he gave.

"When did you first start to see them?"

"Uh," Aleister rubbed his neck, "I meant it in the metaphorical sense. I don't actually see threads connected to everything. That would annoy me to death."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"Doesn't matter if you do or not," Syn said. "Just answer my question."

"Two, maybe three months ago. Soon after I beat...damn, what was that guy's name?"

"The savage guy?"

"No, it wasn't the first guy, but the one after him."

Syn seemed to try her best to remember his match history, but she already clarified that she didn't care about such irrelevant fights. However, her memory was still exceptional. "Your second fight was with that halfling, right?"

Aleister painted his finger with a snap. "Yes! That was the annoying son of a hag who kept on jumping around me. What an annoying fight."

"I know that you learned from that fight, but what in particular would have caused such an effect?" Syn mused. "You didn't make any particular advancements at that time in martial skills or herblore and alchemy either."

"I haven't progressed recently either," Aleister said, less annoyed that he otherwise would have been.

Syn disagreed. "I would count today as very recent."

"True," Aleister said, in the middle of a yawn as he rubbed his eyes. "But, not what I meant."

"Did you feel anything else happen to you recently?" Syn continued to ask. "Did you have a sudden enlightenment, maybe a moment of clarity?"

"Last night in my sleep, during my partial nightmare of a dream, was probably it," he said.

"What else do you remember from it?" Syn asked.

"You say that like I remember anything at all," Aleister corrected. "I don't even remember what it was, because if I did, I wouldn't just be calling it—it. When I try to remember, nothing comes up. Just emptiness. And I can't even tell you exactly how I felt. All I can do is liken it to a prior experience. Also, why are you the one asking questions here? I should ask you!"

"I can't help you if I don't know all the details," she replied.

"You already don't help me enough!"

Syn ignored his comment and asked, "Would I even know of that previous experience?"

"You should know better than me," Aleister said with a slight chuckle, his head still pounding. "Remember when you offered me your contract? How time seemed to slow down, as if we didn't exist in the same space as everyone else?"

Syn nodded and said, "How could I forget?"

"It was similar to that, but even though I'm focused on remembering as much as I can, the memory and feeling still so fleeting," Aleister sighed. "Like a reverie in a summer's afternoon."

"Oddly poetic of you."

"That's because I stole that line from...somewhere," Aleister shook his head, and shrugged his shoulders, which only amplified the pain's effects, "Damn, I need to go back to bed. Maybe I'll experience some more of that dream."

"Likely not," Syn said. However, she didn't try to stop him, even though it would more than likely end up ruining his schedule for the next couple of days.

"I haven't had an actual rest day in so long," Aleister said. He just now realized that he didn't have a rest day in so many months. Ever since he arrived in Osetia, he was always either training in one way or another. He continued to ruminate until lost conciousness.