He walks.
Each room Kaelis crosses reveals a new emotional nightmare.
Men and women stripped of sanity, laughing until their lips tear and teeth shatter.
Others kneel before statues that cry blood, murmuring vows of love or regret with broken voices.
Some writhe in pleasure, embracing illusions, letting them devour their faces with sticky kisses.
Elders begging forgiveness from no one.
On this floor, emotions are substances. They are fever, they are flesh, they are blades.
At the center of the final hall, on a raised stage made of arched ribs, rests the Crystal Altar — a translucent structure that pulses like an exposed heart. Within it, scenes of life float. But not from the Dream Realm.
They are his.
Kaelis's.
Memories of him in the outside world.
And before he could react, the hall darkened and swallowed Kaelis in darkness.
When he opened his eyes again—
Kaelis was…
Walking down the hallway of the little school he attended as a child, before his brother Michael was born and when Zoe was still more childish.
The laughter in the background is like blades slicing Kael's skin.
He felt a shove. Heard the laughter. Felt blood on his lips.
Before he knew it, he was alone in his room in the dark, dealing with rejection from his classmates and the bullying they subjected him to.
Kael wished it were some other boy in his place. He didn't want to be mocked for being poor, didn't want the other children to laugh at his father and mother as if they were jokes.
He felt hatred. Deep hatred. His emotions were as strong as they were meant to be, nearly driving him insane.
Suddenly, his emotions changed, because he was already somewhere else — he was at the dining table. His mother placing a plate down, smiling despite her exhaustion.
Then he was on the sidewalk, his knee scraped and bleeding from a fall. His father was cleaning the wound.
The silence and depressive tension in the dining room before he left for the First Nightmare.
He felt the sadness, the pain, and the crying of his parents and siblings.
Kael felt the weight of emotions as if they were tangible.
The weight of smiling, crying, and hating.
He felt emotions like an angel who could sense the thoughts and feelings of the humans around him.
Kaelis finally opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor before the altar of flesh and crystal.
He was dirty with the blood of the ground, feeling the pulsating flesh nearly swallowing him.
Kaelis felt something in his chest, something growing in his soul — an emotion comparable to madness.
A small smile appeared on his face and, just like the other humans in this cursed floor…
Kaelis began to scream.
He screamed.
Laughed.
Cried.
Cried blood, almost bursting the veins in his eyes from the insane hatred he felt.
And with all his hatred… Kaelis stood up, grabbed the dagger from the ground, and without hesitation, stabbed madly at the joints and muscles that connected the crystal to the altar of flesh.
Blood splattered everywhere, covering his face, hands, and body, until the crystal crashed onto the flesh-covered floor and shattered.
And like a whisper of wind… all the screaming on the floor stopped. Everything was dead, the flesh was dead, and the people of that place were too.
Quickly, the flesh turned dark, losing its life completely.
When Kaelis finally regained consciousness from the insane emotions, he rose and walked toward the door at the back of the room.
His clothes were soaked in sweat, blood, and tears. His skin was marked by cuts, his eyes were tired and hollow — but more than that — his soul was bleeding. There was a look in his eyes that hadn't been there before.
Something had died there.
Just as…
Something had awakened.
"Now you feel… But do you accept?"
Heart God whispered in his ear, but not even the deity's whisper made Kaelis stop his path to the next floor.
He ascended the stairs to the next level with a resolute gaze — and his soul…
Was being destroyed more and more.