In the shadows of the S Ranked Main character -
Chapter 58: Weird dreams
Chapter 58: Weird dreams
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Kai woke up gasping.
Not a soft, peaceful return to the world of the living. Not one of those slow, cozy wakeups where you blink against sunlight and stretch out into warm blankets.
This was sharp.
Instant.
Like being punched back into consciousness.
His eyes snapped open, breath catching in his throat. He sat upright — or tried to — but his body didn’t quite respond. His right arm didn’t move at all, and pain bloomed hot across his side and down into where his leg used to be.
"Ah — dammit, ow—"
He dropped back onto the bed with a grunt, glaring up at the ceiling like it had personally offended him. For a second, all he could do was breathe, the dull ache of healing magic buzzing just beneath the surface of his skin.
Everything hurt.
But he wasn’t dead.
Progress.
His head turned slowly, scanning the room.
Soft sheets. Plain walls. A faint humming sound healing wards, probably and the gentle scent of disinfectant. Standard academy infirmary.
I didn’t they had one all the way down here
A clean bed. A soft pillow
He blinked a few times, trying to process.
"I’m alive," he mumbled. "Huh."
Then the memories slammed into him all at once.
The Prism.
The corpses.
His leg.
His arm.
Kathlyn.
The kiss.
He froze.
His heart gave one heavy, confused beat in his chest.
Then another.
"She—"
His fingers twitched. His whole face went still. And then, like a poorly coded memory fragment, it looped back in his mind again.
The kiss.
It hadn’t even been long. A second at most. More of a brush than a proper moment. But it was there — soft,
>in case I don’t come back thank you
What ominous words
And then she was walking away.
And then the light.
And then—
"Shit."
Kai ran a hand through his hair, or tried to — his right arm still wouldn’t lift. He cursed again, more quietly this time, and stared up at the ceiling.
So that’s where we are now.
Kathlyn was gone.
He was... here. Alive, bandaged,leg hurtslike hell, arm just as much — temporarily, he hoped — and surrounded by sterile magic and crisp white sheets.
And for some reason, he wasn’t angry.
He should’ve been. Furious, even. Kathlyn had gone in alone. She hadn’t waited. She hadn’t let him stop her. That whole "this part I have to do myself" speech had felt noble in the moment, sure, but now it just made him want to scream into the pillow.
Except...
He smiled.
Stupid. Dumb. But it crept across his face anyway — slow, reluctant, tired. Because that was her. That had always been her. Eyes sharp, heart burning, fists clenched even when they shouldn’t be.
And maybe...
Maybe that kiss meant she was scared. Just a little. Enough to give him something to hold onto.
Kai let out a breath and let his head fall back against the pillow.
A few minutes passed. Then maybe more.
Eventually, his eyes slid shut again. Not to sleep. Not really. Just to rest. His thoughts drifted — back to her, of course.
Back to Kathlyn.
In his head, the image shifted.
It wasn’t the battlefield anymore. Not the Prism. Not the ash or the bones or the pain.
It was something... dumber.
A picnic blanket.
Some stupid flower field — not even the magic kind. Just regular grass. A breeze. Sun. Her hair down instead of tied up. Kai in a fresh shirt that wasn’t torn to hell. Maybe two sandwiches. Maybe a little music if someone had brought a spell crystal.
He snorted softly at the idea.
Kathlyn, trying to pretend she didn’t care about food. Him, loudly insisting she eat more because "he made extra on purpose." She’d punch him in the shoulder, which would start a mock fight, which would somehow turn into a real one that ended with her on top of him threatening to fry his eyebrows off.
Yeah.
He could live with that future.
And he was going to.
That smile sharpened. Not soft anymore.
Because now he had something to do.
Kai opened his eyes again. The pain hadn’t gone away. The missing leg was still missing. The arm was still dead weight. But that spark in his chest — that ember that hadn’t gone out even when the corpses closed in — it flared.
"She’s still in there," he muttered, eyes fixed on the ceiling like it was the first rung of a ladder. "So I guess I’m going back in."
A pause.
"...Eventually."
His stomach growled.
"Right after food."
Then, quieter, more serious: "And after I figure out what Mallet’s end goal is it’s never clearly explained what he wanted outside of raising his aptitude
Because something was off.
Even before the Prism had sealed. Even before the fairies had sacrificed themselves.
That professor had known something. Had wanted something. And if Kai had to drag himself through every tower and archive in this damn school to find out what it was, he’d do it.
For Kathlyn.
For the answers.
For the chance to change what came next.
He reached for the bedside tray, managing to knock a pitcher of water straight onto the floor.
"...Okay," he muttered, staring down at the puddle. "Step one: survive the hospital bed."
Then he smiled again.
Not tired this time.
Focused.
Ready.
Kathlyn had gone in
But his delusions didn’t have to end shut in’s will imagine a whole rom com after a girl talks to them once what would if they got a kiss on the cheek?
Kai drifted again.
Not into peaceful unconsciousness, but that murky, half-delirious realm where dreams hijacked your brain with no filter.
And Kathlyn was there.
Only this time, things went sideways.
Very sideways.
She was in his room — his actual room — wearing one of his shirts. Just one. Nothing else. Sleeves too big, collar hanging way too low, and that little flat, unimpressed look she always gave him when she was pretending not to be flustered.
Except this time, her hair was down, legs crossed on his bed, flipping through one of his smutty light novels like it was research.
"Really?" Dream-Kathlyn said, deadpan, raising an eyebrow. "Chapter 43: The Elf Princess and the Thirty-Two Tentacles? This is your bedtime reading?"
Kai, in the dream, just shrugged helplessly, sitting on the floor like some guilty gremlin caught in 4K "There’s so much more it’s a paperback version of one of the greatest visual novels ever made
"Uh-huh." She turned a page. "Is that what we’re calling it?"
Then, with zero warning, she stood up, walked over, and dropped the book on his head and kept walking. The shirt hiked up with every step. She knew what she was doing. Dream-Kathlyn had no shame.
"You owe me, Kai," she said, stretching with absolutely zero decency as the shirt rose criminally high. "I saved your ass how many times? And I still haven’t gotten my reward."
Kai blinked. "What kind of—?"
Suddenly she was on top of him again not even remotely dream-appropriate distance. Her face inches from his, her thighs on either side of his hips.
Her smirk turned wicked.
"I want you," she whispered, "to explain the mechanics of Shadow Clone again. In detail."
Kai’s dream self was sweating. Profusely.
"I... I mean, it’s just a pieceof darkness, and you split it into—"
"Use diagrams," she purred, "and show your work."
"...Yes ma’am."
Right as Dream-Kathlyn grabbed his hand and started guiding it somewhere it absolutely shouldn’t be under the pretense of "dual cultivation"
He woke up and cursed the world
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