Chapter 278: When The Night... Falls (7)

As Liliana and the others left for Dream Land, Melvin, who had left Loreua hours earlier, finally turned his attention that way as well.

Before, he had intended to visit Akasha once he finished his mission, but he didn’t go there directly.

He returned first to Kalpa—or, more accurately now, to the World of Potential.

The world that waited for him was no longer the five-continent garden of colored grass and seven suns.

From one horizon to the other, it was endless tundra—white and pale blue, oceans frozen in quiet potential, the mark of Lucid Winter Peak etched across every former continent.

Apart from a few scattered structures, the world stood empty.

A few rare places still held life, like the Academy of Dreams, but beyond that, the world was nothing more than a beautiful, locked door.

Melvin stood in the skies over the Eastern Continent and looked down on what had been the Kingdom of Blackwood.

The place was exactly as he had left it.

Long before the rest of the world shifted, he had cast these lands into an unending winter, and the ice had remained untouched ever since.

Roofs lay hidden beneath thick blankets of white, streets swallowed up to the knee in snow.

The palace that once bore his family’s name was now just a darker shadow beneath the frost, its banners lonely, its courtyards hushed.

He had been here for hours, arriving only with the intention of paying his respects to those who had suffered.

Everyone the Loria had taken from the old Blackwood regime rested beneath that ice in one way or another.

His family was there too, frozen with the rest.

The chill against his skin didn’t touch his eyes, but they told the real story.

For just an instant, they quivered, as if time itself had finally found a weak spot and was pressing hard to break through.

"I promise, big sister," he murmured, eyes drifting shut.

His voice was soft, almost swallowed by the thin air around them.

"I’ll take the Blackwood further than greatness... and you’ll all be there to see it happen."

When he opened his eyes again, the tremor had vanished, replaced by a chill colder than the winter he’d created.

[Reality Cut]

[Idea-Body Harmony]

HUMMMM!!!!!

In that moment, divinity rose through him from physique and bloodline together.

His Cosmic Power flared to life as his racial trait released, weaving seamlessly into his form until they felt like one.

The transformation began with his arm, where flesh melted into a gleaming white-and-blue blade, its flawless edge so sharp it seemed to swallow the very light around it.

Without a flicker of doubt, he lifted the weapon that had once been part of him and swept it outward in a single, fluid motion, the strike cutting across the expanse of the kingdom below.

SHKKKKK!!!!!

In that moment, nothing seemed to happen at all.

There were no flashes of sword light, no sweeping arcs, not even the faintest sign that he had launched an attack.

Everything remained still, almost disappointingly so—until...

"Cut,"

Melvin said, and in that instant, reality itself shifted.

The Kingdom of Blackwood just disappeared, fading from existence as if it had never been there in the first place.

It didn’t crumble, and it didn’t burn—it was simply erased, as though it had never been allowed to exist at all.

The ice, the stone, the centuries of history were gone in an instant, leaving behind nothing but a clean, vast expanse of snow and ice.

"Once... I find that Emperor," Melvin said as a faint smile touched his face, "I will create an Empire in honor of all those lost... the Empire of Blackwood."

He summoned a purple-and-white Dream Land token, crushed it in his palm, and stepped through the portal that appeared.

----

As Melvin ventured into Dream Land, somewhere else in the sprawling treehouse, tucked away in one of its many private rooms, Milan sat quietly, still inhabiting Amber’s body.

The room felt open and modern, a sharp contrast to the rustic wood beyond its walls.

A king-size bed dominated the space, a flat-screen neatly embedded into the wall, and sleek black rugs were spread over a spotless floor.

She sat cross-legged on the mattress, eyes closed, perfectly still.

She had been here for exactly five months, and just as she had planned, nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

I mean, she couldn’t even remember who she truly was, so it would be hard for anyone else to figure it out either, but still...

She’d caught Luna giving her a few curious glances more than once, though those had only been mild mental probes that ended up revealing nothing.

Other than that, to Milan, everything about this place felt perfectly normal, just as it always should have been.

However, that was until this very moment.

HUMMM!!!!

Five months—it wasn’t just time slipping by, it was the countdown to the moment her protective mechanism would fail.

Then, without warning, her aura shattered in a raw, unshielded wave.

Amber’s face was still there, and so was her hair.

But what came back was Milan—every secret name, every plot, every memory of the Empire of Loria, and the laboratory—flooding in all at once.

Though it was not only that... The shock hit so hard she had to clutch the sheets with both hands just to steady herself.

"This... place," she murmured between breaths, "is a damn gold mine."

Five months in Dream Land clung to her like a surreal—well, dream.

The Domain had surpassed every expectation she’d carried from the outside, but what struck her most was the pervasive, almost unreal ambient divinity—so dense it felt fabricated.

Growth that should have demanded decades had unfolded in a span of time she could still count on her fingers.

"Wait," she murmured, pausing as she replayed her recent experiences in her mind.

"Why... haven’t I ever seen her little boyfriend?" she wondered. In all those months, she realized, not once had she caught even a glimpse of the man in question.

She drew a deep breath, stood, and left the room to find a place to begin the next phase.

---

The living area was already bustling.

Luna claimed the center like the zafu had been hers from the start.

Jovian leaned comfortably against Selia, the picture of someone who saw no reason why waiting couldn’t be pleasant.

Harlan and the two Ancestors were deep in their own corner of discussion, while Jack, Melissa, and the rest of Jovian’s group filled the air with lively chatter, blissfully unaware it was on the verge of ending.

Milan stepped through the doorway, draped in Amber’s skin.

But the instant she did...

HUMMMMM!

The entire room erupted with a surge of divinity.

Two cocoons materialized inside the treehouse, their surfaces swirling with shades of purple and gray, each so dense and brimming with presence that the air seemed to lean toward them, as if drawn by an unseen pull.

In that instant, the conversation cut off mid-word, leaving the air heavy with silence.

Every head turned, eyes wide and fixed on the sudden, unbelievable sight before them.

"What’s... going on?" Milain muttered shakily, her face draining of all color.

The presence that filled the air was unlike anything she had ever experienced in her long life, and in that instant, she forgot all about the carefully maintained facade she’d kept for so long.

"Hmm?" Luna murmured, her gaze drifting from the strange cocoons to Milain, tilting her head curiously.

At the doorway, Liliana and Melvin, who had just arrived moments before, stood frozen in place.

Liliana stood now in a black dress that made no effort to hide her appearance.

Her long, dark hair framed a face where blood seemed to pool in her eyes, faint fangs peeking past her lips, and pointed ears set against skin as pale as moonlight.

There was a haunting, otherworldly sharpness to her that the Red Lady disguise had only ever hinted at.

The strange pull of the cocoons caught her first, holding her in place. Then her gaze fell on Amber—on Milan cloaked in Amber’s form—and for some unknown reason to her, she felt an even great sense of loss than before on Loreua.

HUMMMM!!!!

Melvin saw the features of the Ancestors, and in them, Amber’s face. The name Loria appeared twice in the same room, an omen that struck deep. Without warning, his aura burst forth, winter slamming into the treehouse air in a blast of white, deadly cold.

"Shit..."

Milan’s panic hit before any explanation could form.

She clamped down hard on something she’d been hiding between her teeth for years.

HUMMM!!!

Behind her, the air split open—just a thin slash of darkness at first—then it widened fast, growing into a gaping portal... that only grew in size.