Reality is cruel.
Especially to the weak.
Sunny opened his eyes.
What he saw was not a battlefield, nor a paradise. It was a blank realm — gray like forgotten ash, silent like the breath before a blade touches skin.
"This is your beginning," a cold voice said.
A figure emerged. Not divine, not demonic — simply efficient. A man who had climbed too high to look back. A Starborn.
"You're the weakest among us," he stated without emotion. "Rank 1. The first rank. The lowest walker in the dream path."
Sunny did not respond. He had learned something in his suffering — words did not change fate.
"Do you know why you are weak?" the Starborn continued. "Because your dream was the first. And the first dream is always the most fragile. It has no protection, no evolution, no reinforcement. You are walking on a shattered foundation."
A sphere appeared in the Starborn's hand — neither beautiful nor terrifying. It pulsed with restrained potential.
"This is your reward. You cannot use it yet. Complete your first mission — only then will this activate. Once it does, it will give you command over an entire realm."
Sunny raised his head slightly. "What's the cost?"
The Starborn's lips twitched — not into a smile, but into understanding.
"There is no reward without loss. There is no realm without ruin."
He walked in a slow circle around Sunny, speaking like a scholar dissecting a theory.
"Inside the body of every Dreamwalker are realms. Invisible domains born from emotional scars, mental fractures, and the agony that reality injects into a soul."
He gestured sharply.
"Most beings possess a single realm. Strong ones hold two. Destroyers… three."
"But if someone suffers enough — truly suffers — his tears become oceans, his silence becomes architecture. He starts forming more."
"When five internal realms reach Level 3, the body transforms. The mind shifts. That person is titled Starborn."
He paused. His gaze pierced deeper.
"But if six realms reach Level 3... the transformation is irreversible. That being becomes... an error. Something that should not exist. He becomes…"
The void around them trembled faintly.
"Starborn Silence."
"Silence" — the final realm.
It is not peace. It is not acceptance.
It is when the soul has cried so long… it forgets what screaming is.
---
Sunny's fists clenched.
He said nothing.
Because in this world, power wasn't given to those who wanted answers — only to those who could endure them.