Chapter 603: Help Us!
And so the household sank into gloom.
Family dinners, once affairs full of laughter and the clatter of multiple conversations happening at once, became silent and strained.
Movie nights were canceled one after another, the empty couch where Mika should have been sitting too painful to look at.
The sisters tiptoed around each other, unsure how to bridge the growing chasm that had opened in their family.
Charlotte watched it all with a growing sense of horror.
She had done this. She was the cause of all of it. If she had just listened to Mika, if she had just stopped exploring dangerous dreams like he asked, none of this would be happening.
Her family wouldn’t be falling apart. Mika wouldn’t be walking around like a ghost.
Her mother and aunts wouldn’t be walking around with those hollow, guilty expressions.
For the first time in her life, Charlotte felt helpless.
She had always believed that she could get anything she wanted.
And for most of her life, that belief had been justified.
Her blessing, her charm, her sheer force of personality—all of it had bined to make her invincible.
But now she was learning a lesson that her privilege had always protected her from: there were some things you couldn’t force.
Some bridges you couldn’t rebuild just by wishing.
Some wounds that wouldn’t heal just because you wanted them to.
And the realization was devastating.
—
The only place she could escape was the Dream World.
She knew it was wrong. She knew Mika would be even angrier if he found out.
But she couldn’t help herself.
The Dream World was her drug, the only thing that could take away the crushing weight of her negative emotions.
When she was exploring other people’s dreams, she didn’t have to think about her own problems.
She could lose herself in the strange and wonderful landscapes of sleeping minds and pretend that everything was fine.
And so, a week after Mika had stopped speaking to her, Charlotte returned to the Dream World.
She was more careful this time. She avoided the gloomy orbs, the fractured ones, the ones that pulsed with sickly colors.
She only entered dreams that glowed warm and bright—happy dreams, safe dreams, dreams that she knew would bring her joy rather than terror.
But even as she explored, her mind kept drifting back to Mika and eventually—
—she resolved to give it up entirely.
‘I’d much rather have Mika look at me and speak to me than spend time in any dream.’
Charlotte thought, drifting through the constellation of sleeping minds.
‘I would give up dream walking forever if it meant he would forgive me.’
And she meant it. For the first time in her life, she was willing to give up something she loved for the sake of someone else.
But would Mika believe her? Would he even give her the chance to tell him?
Well, it was no matter.
She would prove to him that she could change. That she valued his presence more than any blessing, any power, any adventure the Dream World could offer.
But until then…
Until then, she needed something to hold onto.
Something to keep the despair at bay.
—
That night, as Charlotte drifted through the Dream World, she noticed something strange.
At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. The Dream World was always full of light—countless orbs in every color imaginable, floating like stars in an infinite sky.
But tonight, there was something different. Something that didn’t belong.
One of the orbs was glowing far brighter than the others.
It wasn’t just bright—it was radiant. A blazing white light that seemed to overwhelm everything around it, washing out the colors of the nearby dreams.
But the brightness wasn’t the strangest part.
The strangest part was that other dreams were being drawn toward it.
Charlotte watched in fascination as smaller orbs drifted through the Dream World and were caught in the larger orb’s gravitational pull.
They didn’t just float nearby—they attached themselves to it, merging with its surface like droplets of water joining a larger pool.
‘What is this?’ Charlotte wondered. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’
She drifted closer, her curiosity overing her caution.
Up close, the orb was even more impressive—a massive sphere of pure white light that pulsed with an almost hypnotic rhythm. The smaller dreams attached to its surface flickered weakly, their colors dimming as they were slowly consumed.
Charlotte reached out to touch it.
And then she stopped.
Mika’s voice echoed in her mind: If something seems strange, if something seems wrong, don’t investigate. Just leave. It’s not worth the risk.
She hesitated. This orb was unlike anything she had ever seen. It could be something amazing—a new kind of dream, a new realm of possibility.
But it could also be something dangerous. Just like last time.
She pulled her hand back.
‘I should leave.’ She thought. ‘I should go back to my own dreams and forget I ever saw this. Mika was right. It’s not worth the risk.’
She started to turn away.
But then she heard it.
No—she didn’t hear it. She felt it.
Multiple voices whispering through the void, reaching out to her with desperate, pleading intensity.
‘Help me…’
‘Please, someone help me…’
‘I beg you…save me from this place…’
‘I don’t want to die…it hurts…it hurts so much…’
Charlotte’s blood ran cold. She had never heard dreams speak to her before. Never felt their emotions pressing against her consciousness like drowning victims grasping for a lifeline.
‘Please…you have to help us…’
‘I want to see my mother again…’
‘God, why do you make me suffer this way…’
The voices were not a trick. They were real and they were begging her to save them.
Charlotte reached for the orb.
Then stopped again.
Mika’s words flashed through her mind.
“The next time you get trapped in some lunatic’s nightmare, don’t call for me. Don’t expect me to e rescue you.”
She pulled her hand back. She couldn’t do this.
She had promised in her heart that she would be more careful. That she would listen to him. That she would stop putting herself in danger.
She turned away.
But the voices surged.
‘PLEASE! Don’t leave us!’
‘You’re the only one who can hear us!’
‘He’s torturing us! Every night, he tortures us!’
‘I can’t take it anymore…I can’t…I can’t…’
Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut. She should leave.
But those voices…
They weren’t just figments of a dream.
They were real people, crying out for help from somewhere deep within that pulsing white light.
And Charlotte, despite her selfishness and her stubbornness was kind and not a coward.
She was a Battle Angel’s child. And Battle Angels did not abandon people who needed them.
They helped them!
She opened her eyes. She turned back to the orb.
And before she could second-guess herself, she reached out and touched it.
—
The white light swallowed her whole.
For a moment, there was nothing. No sound. No sensation. No up or down or left or right.
Just an infinite, blinding whiteness that seemed to erase everything she was.
And then, slowly, the world resolved around her.
She was in an old room, with dark wooden panels on the walls and a fireplace crackling weakly in the corner. The furniture was antique, heavy, covered in a fine layer of dust. The curtains were drawn, blocking out whatever might be outside.
It was exactly like the nightmare she had stumbled into before.
‘No.’ She thought. ‘Not again. Please, not again.’
But there was no point in panicking. She had made her choice.
She had e here to help those people, and she couldn’t do that by cowering in a corner.
She had also developed a failsafe that would let her escape any nightmare instantly. Whatever was in that orb, she could handle it.
So she steadied her breathing, squared her shoulders, and walked toward the door.
‘Please don’t be a classroom. Please don’t be a classroom.’
She opened the door.
It was a corridor.
Charlotte nearly wept with relief. A long, elegant corridor stretched before her, lined with old paintings and lit by flickering lanterns.
It looked like something out of a historical drama—the kind of mansion that belonged to old money.
‘Okay.’ She told herself. ‘Okay. This is fine. I can handle this.’
She began to explore.
The mansion was enormous. Room after room unfolded before her.
Bedrooms with grand beds. Sitting rooms with dusty furniture. A kitchen with pots hanging from the ceiling.
Everything was old-fashioned, as if the house had been frozen in time centuries ago. There was no electricity, no modern conveniences, just lanterns and candles and the oppressive weight of history.
And there were no people.
Charlotte searched every room she could find. She called out, hoping someone would answer.
But the mansion was empty. Silent except for the creaking of floorboards and the distant howl of wind outside the windows.
She paused at one of those windows and looked out. The view made her stomach clench.
A dark forest as far as the eye could see.
There was no moon. No stars. Just an endless black canopy that seemed to swallow light itself.
‘Don’t go outside.’ A voice in her head whispered. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go outside.’
She didn’t need to be told twice.
She continued her search, moving from room to room, floor to floor. But no matter where she looked, she found nothing.
The mansion was a hollow shell, beautiful but fundamentally wrong.
Until she found the basement door.
—
The moment Charlotte laid eyes on it, she knew something was different.
The door itself was unremarkable—just a heavy wooden portal set into the wall at the end of a servants’ corridor.
But the feeling that emanated from behind it was anything but ordinary.
It was like standing at the edge of a precipice, looking down into darkness so deep it had no bottom. Cold seeped through the wood. Silence pressed against her ears.
And beneath that silence, faint but unmistakable, was the sound of suffering.
‘Help me. Please. It hurts so much.’
‘I can’t take it anymore. I can’t. I can’t.’
‘He’s ing back. Oh god, he’s ing back.’
‘I want to die. Why won’t he let me die?’
The voices were stronger here. She could almost make out individual words now, individual pleas.
They were ing from below.
Every instinct told her to run. Every lesson Mika had tried to teach her screamed at her to turn back.
But Charlotte had never been good at listening to her instincts.
She opened the door.
A staircase descended into darkness. Stone steps, worn smooth by centuries of use, spiraling down and down until they disappeared from sight. The air that rose from below was cold and damp and carried the faint, unpleasant scent of decay.
Charlotte began to descend.
The staircase went deeper than should have been possible. Step after step, curve after curve, spiraling down into the earth like the throat of some massive beast.
The temperature dropped with every level. The torchlight grew dimmer. The oppressive weight in the air grew heavier.
And then, finally, she reached the bottom.
She was in a dungeon.
Cells lined both sides of a long corridor, their bars rusted and ancient.
The only light came from a few sputtering torches mounted on the walls, their flames barely enough to push back the oppressive darkness.
Charlotte took a step forward. The straw on the floor crunched beneath her feet.
She reached the first cell and peered inside.
At first, she saw nothing. The darkness within was absolute, swallowing the torchlight before it could penetrate.
But as her eyes adjusted, she began to make out shapes. Huddled forms pressed against the far wall.
People!
There were two of them—a man and a woman, both young, perhaps in their mid-twenties.
They were pletely naked, their bodies thin and pale, their hair matted and wild. But it was their faces that made Charlotte’s blood run cold.
They looked broken.
Not injured. Broken in a deeper way. Their eyes were hollow, staring at nothing.
Their expressions were frozen in masks of perpetual terror. They didn’t move. Didn’t blink.
Didn’t seem to register her presence at all.
“Hello?” Charlotte whispered. “Can you hear me?”
They didn’t respond. They just stared at the wall, their expressions blank, their minds seemingly lost in whatever private hell they were enduring.
Charlotte moved to the next cell.
Two more people. A young man and an older one, both in the same condition—naked, emaciated, broken.
The next cell. More people.
The next. More.
Every cell in the dungeon was occupied. Dozens of people, maybe more, all of them looking like they had been here for a very long time.
And all of them…felt real.
That was what made Charlotte terrified.
In a normal dream, the people she encountered were just figments. Projections. They moved and spoke and acted according to the dreamer’s subconscious, but they weren’t people.
But these prisoners…they didn’t feel like figments.
They felt like living, breathing human beings, with souls and consciousness and the same spark of reality that Charlotte herself possessed.
How was that possible?
Illustrations have been posted in the ment section…Check them out!
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Illustrations have been posted in the ment section…Check them out!
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