Chapter 282: The Night... Awakens (2)

As Akasha and Yume’s eyes opened, both revealed identical pupils—purple and grey infinity symbols swirling endlessly.

Suddenly, everything in Dream Land fell into an eerie stillness.

The blood-rain hung suspended in the air; masked humans froze mid-smile and mid-strike. Swords, tendrils, powers, and tumbling bodies halted as though the very Domain had inhaled once and refused to exhale.

Though it was not because time stopped or because existence had stopped working... No, it was purely because of the absolute sense of... fear they were feeling in this moment.

Instinctively, everyone’s eyes shifted toward Akasha and Yume.

Jovian stood in the high air with Fate Breaker still in his grasp, knuckles pale around the gold-and-black hilt.

"I’m starting to think," he muttered, narrowing his eyes as though trying to bring the distant pair into sharper focus across hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

"Maybe... my cheatsaren’tt all that special after all."

Luna had never bothered to explain to any of the visitors why they were here, nor where Akasha had been this whole time, but in this moment, no one felt the need to ask.

With an invasion spilling right into the man’s own home, Jovian and Harlan, in particular, understood it was only a matter of time before Akasha made his appearance.

Jovian had always suspected Akasha possessed more main-character-like powers than he did, and watching a single appearance bring billions of beings to a standstill, he could only shake his head.

"Does this guy have some kind of instant power-up cheat?"

Melissa and the others stared with the same stalled awe, weapons half-raised and their enemies near past thoughts.

Liliana’s chaotic thoughts, which had been tearing themselves wider with every kill, snagged on the sight of him and found a thin, sudden clarity.

"Akasha..." she muttered.

----

While all eyes stayed fixed on the two of them, Yume appeared much the same as ever on the outside—long blue-and-purple hair flowing behind her, a slender, petite frame, pale beauty, and that same subtle chill lingering beneath the new dress.

The chaos around her didn’t faze her one bit. Her eyes stayed locked on Akasha, a soft smile playing on her lips as she floated a little higher, placed a gentle kiss against his cheek, and then disappeared.

She reappeared at Luna’s side, slightly lower in the void above the canopy. Luna’s heart-shaped gaze swept over her in mild surprise.

"Hmm, you’re finally surprised, huh?" Yume teased, her tone more mature than before the cocoon, lips curved, and head tilted just a touch.

"Why," Luna began as she arched a brow, smiling as she continued. "Does it feel like we’re much closer than before?"

The question wasn’t just about the physical space between them. In every way—physically, emotionally, and in all the subtle layers of closeness—something in Yume had shifted nearer, so close that Luna couldn’t quite find the words to describe it.

"Well," Yume said, her smile widening.

Her eyes transformed into perfect gray infinity symbols, and the woman before her became almost impossible to hold in a single, coherent thought.

"What about now?"

In an instant, Luna’s eyes widened completely.

The sudden shift in closeness was so intense it caught her breath.

She hadn’t moved a single muscle, yet it was as if Yume had vanished—not in the literal sense of someone leaving a space, but in a deeper, more unsettling way.

Almost as though Luna was facing a stranger she’d never truly known before.

If it weren’t for Luna’s own strength keeping the memory intact, she would have lost all trace of who Yume was—her name, her face, and every moment they had shared.

As Yume’s eyes gradually returned to normal, Luna let out a quiet laugh, the sound intimate against the silence of the battlefield.

"I guess... I should have expected nothing less."

Luna’s voice carried easily through the stillness of Dream Land, her words drifting into the quiet air as she and Yume spoke openly, unconcerned with keeping their exchange private.

Below, the frozen invasion seemed to pause, its silence owed not to fear of the two women, who talked as though nothing significant was happening, but to something else entirely.

Eyes from all around had lifted toward the canopy, drawn first to Luna and Yume, only to shift—almost reluctantly—toward the third figure, the one who hadn’t uttered a single word since his eyes had first opened.

Akasha hung his purple-and-white hair falling down his back now instead of stopping at the neck; luminous brown skin and the infinity mark on his face held in a stillness so complete it looked carved.

The evolution had refined him into something more perfect inside his imperfection, and none of that was where his mind was.

Before him piled an endless stream of notifications.

The latest ones, naturally, detailed all the information about his most recent changes, but much like the invasion—and the watchful eyes fixed on him—those alerts seemed to pass right by without truly registering.

What grabbed his attention more than anything else were the updates detailing everything his Pantheon members had done over the past year.

"What?"

The word wasn’t a silent murmur... it ripped free, reverberating across all of Dream Land in an instant.

"What?"

He said it again, his voice loaded with confusion and anger he couldn’t mask.

Out of everything that had happened during his evolution, the one thing that truly stunned him was Amber’s death.

In that moment, it felt as if the entire world had disappeared, leaving only the glowing notification about Amber’s fate before him.

Most of what he saw was exactly what he’d expected; hell, he had even anticipated Melvin getting into some kind of fight with Amber

. But never, not in a million years, would he have imagined Amber would actually die—not just at Melvin’s hands, but also with her own mother, Liliana, involved.

’How...’ he thought, struggling to make sense of it.

’How could Liliana have a hand in her own daughter’s death?’

He knew without a doubt that Liliana was a pure yandere, not just for him but for anyone she loved. And Amber, her daughter... she was as important to her as anything or anyone else in the world.

After her recent evolution, Amber could not be underestimated, and he believed she could, at the very least, evade anyone if she so desired.

Moreover, although he neither loved her nor viewed her as someone with whom he wished to form a serious relationship, he could not ignore the fact that she had begun to find her way into his life.

From their shared experience at the auction, he had set her a deadline, intending to gauge whether she could impress him and potentially earn her place.

However, before any results could materialize, she was taken away—not only from him but also from the Pantheon of Infinite Dreams.

And... this was perhaps the greatest source of his anger, for a member of his Pantheon had perished.

His thoughts came to a sudden stop, and the infinity symbols slowly faded from his eyes.

In their place were pure black, pupil-less voids—two dark, unlit rooms drifting from the status notifications toward the sky as he took it all in.

Bodies lay scattered across his Domain in such numbers that he didn’t even bother trying to count.

He saw billions of Masked Humans standing frozen, their strange smiles fixed in place, all staring at him because fear had left them nowhere else to look.

Above them, the Smiling God, who had arrived at an awfully horrible time, hovered in that same air, carrying a terror his long life had never prepared him for.

Akasha laughed once, cold enough that the sound did not try to be humor.

"Fuck it."

HUMMMMMMM!!!!!!!