Chapter 75: A Dream That Feels Too Real

Maybe it was because she was depressed.

Or maybe it was the conversation about light, faith, and the Temple of Light.

Whatever it was, Lucion came to mind. The child she had left behind. The child she had saved.

It had been so long since she thought of him. She had pushed those memories away, unwilling to dwell on the past.

But today's events—her bad mood, the talks about faith, the unsettling silence from the Crown Prince's group—must have triggered something.

She hoped he was doing fine. He had stucked inside a dark basement cave for tens of years, will be be able to integrate into society alone?

Yuna shakes her head forcefully, not wanting to dwell on it.

He will be fine....Yuna comfort herself.

Night fell, and Yuna, exhausted by everything, drifted into an uneasy sleep.

Unaware to Yuna, the Dimension Stone embedded in her chest began to glow. The dimension stone that had stayed quiet for three years.

A deep, pulsating shade of purple started to glow eerily.

—

At first, it felt like a dream.

Yuna floated downward, weightless, purple and white light shimmering around her.

Below her, people knelt in rows before a veiled statue.

The scene was holographic, ethereal, blurry—like a half-formed memory.

The only thing she was certain of was that she was emerging from the statue.

The worshippers remained unaware at first.

Then, one voice shattered the silence.

"My God! You finally came!"

Yuna turned her head.

And froze.

A boy—no, a young man—stood at the forefront of the kneeling crowd.

His golden hair glowed under the ethereal light, his golden eyes more striking than anything she had ever seen.

He was… beautiful.

So beautiful, in fact, that Yuna found herself momentarily speechless.

Before she could react, he stepped forward.

Then—he knelt. And kissed her foot.

Piously. Devotedly.

Around them, the other worshippers began kowtowing, voices trembling in worship.

Yuna, who was vain but not that vain, was instantly uncomfortable. She felt like a fraud.

Her 'dream'—if that's what it was—was making her skin crawl. Her first instinct was to wake up. She wanted to hypnotize herself into waking.

But then—

A child's voice broke through the chants.

A desperate, heart-wrenching plea.

Yuna's blurry vision sharpened.

A sickly pale girl, no older than five, knelt in the crowd, her tiny hands clutching her chest.

Beside her, a woman—her mother, most likely—sobbed, begging.

"Please! Save her! Have mercy!"

Yuna's entire body stiffened.

Her mind went blank.

…Save her?

Heal her?

Her eye twitched.

'I'M NOT A HEALER!' Yuna thought

Yuna had seen many strange things. But this? This was on a different level of bizarre. More and more sickly people emerged from the crowd, their voices trembling as they cried out.

"Have mercy on us!"

"Please, save us!"

Yuna barely had time to process their pleas before she saw it—

Strange, glowing light.

It rose from their bodies like mist, hovering in the air before it rushed into her.

Yuna stiffened.

Her breath caught as the eerie, shimmering streams of light sank into her corporeal body. Her very soul felt like it was being stuffed full of something alien and incomprehensible.

And she was absolutely creeped out.

"No, no, no—Get out. Get OUT."

Yuna immediately tried to expel the strange light.

Her first attempt was with the sickly child.

She crouched down, hesitantly placing her hand on the child's thin shoulder, and willed the floating light to leave her body.

Like water sloshing from one container to another, the light drifted out of her and back into the child.

It was… surprisingly easy.

Yuna, still too busy purging her body, did not notice the miraculous change—

The child's pale cheeks flushed with color. Her frail body straightened. Her sickly aura vanished in an instant.

Instead, it was the child's mother who saw it first.

She gasped.

She stumbled back, then lurched forward, kneeling before Yuna's feet in a frenzy.

"My daughter—! Is she healed?! Is this a miracle?!"

Yuna, impatient, still feeling weirded out, gave the most half-hearted response of her life.

"If you believe, she will be."

She hadn't even finished speaking when—

The mother collapsed onto her knees.

"I believe! I believe in the Holy One!"

The people around her erupted in frantic shouts.

"We believe!"

"We believe in the Light!"

Yuna's entire body went rigid.

'What?! Wait—what are they saying? Its so noisy!'

Their words sometimes clear and sometimes faint, their murmur like a chanted script, a noisy murmur.

More and more light emerged from the people, streaming into her at an even faster rate.

Yuna's vision blurred as light flooded her body, seeping into her very being like she was a sponge soaking up holy energy.

She panicked.

With all her willpower, she raised both hands—

And violently expelled everything all at once, hurling it back at them.

For a brief moment, it worked.

The floating light left her, spreading back into the crowd.

Yuna barely had a second to breathe.

Then—

The moment they received the light…

Even more of it emerged from them, twice as much as before.

And it rushed back into her body.

"OH, COME ON!!"

The more she expelled it, the more it entered her again.

It was a never-ending cycle, and Yuna had never felt so utterly fed up in her life.

She was so exhausted that, in the end she stopped fighting it altogether.

At that moment, Yuna turned her head slightly—

And froze.

The golden-haired boy stood at her side, tears streaming down his perfect face.

His golden eyes shone with an emotion so raw, so overwhelming—

Love.

Devotion.

A deep, desperate worship.

Yuna's scalp tingled violently.

Her body prickled with unease.

'Nope. NOPE. I'm waking up. I am LEAVING.'

As if something had heard her plea, a sudden tug pulled at her consciousness.

Her vision blurred.

The dream shattered.

And then she woke up.

Yuna gasped, sitting up abruptly. Her chest rose and fell with uneven breaths, her mind reeling.

She stared blankly at the ceiling, still shaken.

Then, after a long silence, she whispered hoarsely—

"…What the hell was THAT?!"