Over the years, she would always dream of that strange dream, the dream that she should not remember.
At first she was troubled by it, but a few years later she realized -
It wasn't a dream at all, but something that had happened deep in her consciousness.
Adriana Velez clearly remembers how, as a child, she would echo through the corridors of the manor for hours on end at night, with only a lamp to chase away the shadows and no servants or nannies to follow.
The family would panic at first, but her father would always find her at the top of the clock tower because she could find peace in the chirping of the birds.
There is a nest of black swallows on the top of the tower, and she often feeds them there.
There she could see the sun rising over the mountains, and her father, the heroic father who had been a high-ranking officer in the Astra Militarum, would sit on the floor next to her and ask her the same question, every time. .
"Daughter, what are you thinking about?"
She would tell her father about her dreams and the scenes in them, and he would listen patiently as the birds fluttered their wings rapidly above their heads.
And after she finished speaking, he would put his hand on top of her head, smile, and say that familiar sentence.
"They're just dreams, Anna, that's all."
For a long time, she believed him.
She no longer wandered the corridors or climbed to the top of the tower.
Then one day, when she dreamed of winged creatures coming to speak death into her father's ears, she did not tell him—she merely comforted herself with his words.
"They're just dreams, that's all."
But they are more than just dreams. They rarely do.
Her father eventually died in a car accident when she was 14, and when she found him, black crows were surrounding him, overhead, jumping and fluttering their wings.
The doctors and priests who arrived later blamed his death on the wounds he had sustained during the war, on a moment of trance, and on the wine he had drank while thinking about the war and his mother.
They even blame the weather, but none of that is to blame, none of it.
Adriana Velez knew she was the one to blame for touching the dream but concealing it.
If she told her father, maybe—
Adriana Velez's father left her a fortune and a high status, and her aunt was the wife of the planet's governor, but she still chose to join the Sisters, and she still hides own thoughts and dreams.
After that, she took her title in the order, and she followed where her dark dreams led her.
But since her coma, her dreams have changed.
There was a person who kept breaking into her dreams, calming her inner uneasiness and confusion, and making her dreams no longer dark.
It seems good if it stays like this, but every time at the end of her dream, there will always be a touch of light blue that ruthlessly destroys everything. That person——
"Um?"
Awakening again, she stood up from the wooden chair where she had fallen asleep, but looked panicked and started groping around for something. Her desk was piled with scrolls and star maps and books and folders, and the floor around her was also filled with scrolls and star maps. Same.
She wore a simple robe that clung to her body and outlined her graceful curves as she searched around.
Almost everything in the room was cluttered, except for the small bed in the corner where she hadn't slept in weeks.
Some people joked that during the ten years she slept, she slept all the sleep she should have had in her entire life, and sometimes she thought so.
It's actually not a good habit to have everything so untidy, she wasn't always like this, it's too messy here now.
Velez read the words on the table quickly, lifting them and flipping them open, pushing the stack of papers to the floor as she searched for the words she needed.
Every book, scroll, or piece of paper here was ancient, incredibly valuable, and almost unique, but there was none of what she was looking for.
She stepped over the piles of books and scrolls on the floor, searching individually until finally she found her target.
"Got you."
She said to the book in her hand.
It was a small book made of old cowhide. It had no title, no author's signature, no edition mark or trace of printing. It was hand-knitted and handwritten. Just holding it in her hand made her I thought of the mountain air and the cold, ancient stones.
It reminded her of her father's voice.
"Daughter, what are you thinking about?"
She opened her father's diary and went straight to the last page, turning to the verses that she had memorized clearly since childhood. Her fingers traced the words written in dim blue ink, her hands slightly moving in the process. Tremble.
Soon, she read to the end of the page, exhaled slowly, and closed the book even more slowly.
She reached towards her collar and pulled out the pendant she was wearing.
It was an object that had once belonged to her father, a skeleton surrounded by a halo of ten spiers, and she turned the pendant over in her hands, feeling its weight and texture, feeling its warmth against her hands.
Then she curled her fingers around the pendant and squeezed it so hard that the spikes on the halo pierced her skin.
She opened her hand and saw ten tiny drops of blood appearing in her palm.
This was a test to prove that she was awake and not still dreaming.
She did this because her dream was so deep that it even gave her the illusion that she had woken up, but in fact she did not really wake up. She didn't know if this was a sequelae of long-term coma.
At least she could confirm that in her dreams, the pendant's spikes never caused her to bleed.
"He might be in danger..."
After Velez confirmed that he was truly awake, he leaned back in his chair and recalled his dream, a burning world, countless twisted and grotesque shapes, and a gray eagle entangled in fire.
Now that she knows this, she needs the help of another person, someone who should not exist in the order.
She stood up, quickly put on her lightweight overlapping armor, tied up her hair, and picked up her side sword from the weapons rack next to the door.
They were a pair of swords, two identical curved blades made of steel and polished bone, with prayers and blessings engraved on the blades.
One of them is the sword she has carried since she joined the order, and the other is the symbol of the Grand Sister.
She walked out of the room and into the cold stone corridor.
The lights were now at night, burning with faint starlight, and the seamless obsidian floors and walls absorbed all the light and the sound of her footsteps.
There is something silencing and sacred about this place, like a tomb, like a monument to silence.
It wasn't like this before. When the order was at its most prosperous, it was filled with young nuns and servants coming and going.
After so many years, the order has barely recovered from the previous blow. The number of nuns has only reached half of what it once was, and there are still many recruits who still need to be trained.
Velez walked quickly down the quiet hallway toward the room she always went to when she needed relief from her confusion.
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