Chapter 56: Aetherion - Second Realm

The morning had fully passed by the time Elena finished helping him. She gathered her cleaning supplies, gave the apartment one last satisfied look, and left with a short wave. Rael stood alone in the now-clean living room and felt a quiet pride. The plastic wraps were gone, the floors shone, and the place finally felt like it belonged to someone living rather than temporary. He took a long shower, changed into fresh clothes, and only then checked his phone.

A single message waited from the Awakener Association.

They had located the address he requested.

When he registered he had left his number at the information desk and asked for any record of a girl named Lila who had entered the First Realm from Bloomingdale and never returned. An employee had taken the request higher; permission had been granted. The message contained a full name and a residential address.

Lila Green.

He had never learned her family name while she was alive. Knowing it only after her death left a strange, hollow feeling in his chest. He read the address twice, memorized it, and put the phone away. Her last request still needed to be kept.

Rael locked the apartment and stepped into the hallway. Elena was just outside, dropping a small bag of trash into the chute. She glanced over.

"You’re going to the Dream Realm now, right?"

"Yes, master."

The title had started as a joke while they cleaned; she had answered by calling him disciple. Both of them had kept using the words since. Elena smiled at the sound of it.

"All right. Good luck out there."

"Thank you. I’ll be back soon."

She nodded and disappeared into her own apartment. Rael still found it hard to believe how quickly the easy familiarity had formed between them. Two days earlier she had been a stranger. Now the hallway felt less empty because of her.

He took the lift down and gone towards the parking he searched for his bike, he sat on it and rode toward the address the Association had provided. He drove for few 20 minutes. The neighborhood was only a few kilometers away—there were alot of similar looking building in rows of modest single-story houses with small front gardens. He slowed when the numbers matched, parked, and walked up the short path.

No one answered the door or the bell.

Rael had already written a letter explaining who he was, how he had known Lila, and why he carried the necklace. He folded it carefully, placed the necklace on top of the paper, and slipped both into the postbox. His fingers lingered on the metal lid for a moment.

"Goodbye, Lila," he said quietly. "I won’t forget you."

He returned to the bike and pulled away. A short distance down the street a girl carrying grocery bags slowed when she saw a young man leaving her house. By the time she reached the gate he was already gone. She opened the postbox, found the letter and the necklace, and began to read. Halfway through the page her hands started to shake. Tears followed, heavy and unrestrained.

Rael rode with the same sadness sitting quietly behind his ribs. For the last few days work and new surroundings had kept the memories at a distance. Delivering the necklace brought everything back. The cave, the missing eyes and legs, the final smile, the words she had spoken while dying. He had clawed his way out of the First Realm in agony. Now he was deliberately riding toward the Second.

The Official Dimensional Gate came into view as a wide, luminous circle set into the middle of a reinforced plaza. Multiple guards in Association armor stood at fixed posts. The air near the rift felt slightly thinner, charged with residual mana. Rael stored the bike, approached the administration desk, and waited for the officer to look up.

"I want to enter."

"Identification."

Rael handed over the new card. The officer scanned it, then asked, "First time in the Second Realm?"

"Yes."

"Entry fee is ten thousand credits for a yearly subscription."

Rael transferred the amount without comment. The officer inserted the ID into a verification slot; a moment later the card returned with a new clearance mark. "Scan at the final checkpoint and go through. Next."

Rael nodded and walked toward the gate itself. The structure was not a door in any ordinary sense. It had begun as a raw dimensional rift—an open wound between worlds that monsters could pour through. When awakeners pushed the beasts back and held the threshold long enough, the edges stabilized, rounded, and became a permanent, controlled passage. What stood before him now was the mature form of that process: a glowing circular boundary humming with restrained power.

He scanned his card at the last guard post. The man on duty glanced at him.

"First time?"

"Yes."

"Your head’s going to spin. Don’t fight it."

Rael stepped through.

The world folded.

Colors separated into distinct ribbons and began to rotate around him in slow, nauseating spirals. Up and down lost meaning. His stomach clenched hard, as if he had swallowed something spoiled. A white aperture appeared ahead and pulled him forward with irresistible force. Then everything went black.

When his eyes opened again the image was blurry. It sharpened slowly. He was standing on a stone street. Behind him two guards flanked the Aetherion side of the same gate. The air was noticeably warmer. High above, two suns hung in a clear sky, one slightly larger and whiter than the other.

Rael managed three steps before the nausea won. He bent over beside the nearest building and emptied everything he had eaten that morning onto the clean stone. The guards watched with the mild amusement of people who had seen the same reaction hundreds of times.

"First-timers," one of them said, not unkindly.

Rael wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened. The street ahead opened into a busy town square filled with people dressed in an elegant, slightly archaic style—layered coats, high collars, polished boots, and practical armor mixed without contradiction. Shops lined the sides of the road. Conversations, footsteps, and the distant ring of a blacksmith’s hammer blended into a living noise.

He had arrived in Aetherion.

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