Heir Of Azathoth : EXtra's Limitess EvOlution-Chapter 34: Ocean Of Thoughts

Imagine millions of minds dreaming in the same ocean of thought.

Not side by side and not separated by any true distance, but layered atop one another, drifting through the same vast and formless expanse while each remained convinced of its own completeness.

Every dream believed itself whole, stable, self contained, its dreamer unaware that what felt like a universe was only a fragile bubble of perception slowly solidifying into worlds, regions, galaxies, and endless stretches of reality that existed only because they were believed to.

Normally, the currents of that ocean kept those dreams apart, guiding them along invisible paths that never truly intersected, preserving the illusion of isolation that allowed each reality to remain intact.

The ocean itself was ancient and indifferent, neither benevolent nor malicious, carrying all dreams without preference and without restraint, allowing them to exist so long as they did not disturb one another.

But sometimes, the currents shifted.

When a dreamer was stirred from its slumber, threatened by awakening, pressured by superior logic, or shaken by disturbances it could not comprehend.

The boundaries of its dream weakened, thinning just enough for the ocean’s restless motion to press inward.

In those moments, when the waves churned violently and the structure of a dream faltered, fragments of that dream slipped through the gaps, torn loose and carried elsewhere by the same currents that had once kept them apart.

It slipped in a entirely different dream.

Incomplete, distorted, carrying with it not matter or form, but memory, a record of existence that belonged to another dream entirely.

The host dreamer had no place for such a record, no framework within its reality to acknowledge it, and so it could neither recognize nor erase what had appeared within its world.

Thus, the fragment persisted as an anomaly, a self referential contradiction embedded within a foreign archive

manifesting as a conceptual echo that violated the local laws of reality, a paradox that should not exist yet refused to vanish.

Sustained by the dreaming will of another dreamer and powered by an ontological source different from that of the host world

it could not be assimilated, but neither could it be rejected without consequence.

And so, the world fractured around it, forced to remember two incompatible dreams at once, its reality bending under the strain as logic faltered and coherence unraveled, giving rise to what later came to be known as Fractured Dreams.

Nirvasthla itself, the original homeland of the Lethyrae, had been a Fractured Dream once.

Detached from any higher cosmology, it was a true anomaly.

Unlike most fractures, where fragments from weaker, smaller Dreamers slipped into the dreams of greater ones, Nirvasthla had carried complexity far beyond what it should have been allowed to possess.

Its laws were layered. Its beings coherent.

Its foundation disturbingly complete.

That alone had made it dangerous.

Over time, it ceased to remain a Fractured Dream altogether.

The fracture stabilized, widened, and eventually collapsed into a reality cascade, but by then humans, driven by obsession and fear, had already made countless attempts to complete its narrative, an ending they were never meant to have.

They succeeded, in their own way.

Most of Nirvasthla was destroyed long before it ever fully manifested into reality.

What finally emerged was no longer a world in any meaningful sense, but an amalgamated ruin, harrowing landforms stitched together without harmony, corporeal landscapes warped by sinister energies, gargantuan craters, and structures reduced to hollow remnants of something that once obeyed logic.

It was no longer a place where life could thrive.

And so it was abandoned.

The Lethyrae left their birthplace behind and claimed a piece of land within our world instead.

One unusually vast, disproportionate to their dwindling population.

At the time, humans questioned it, whispering about greed or hidden intent.

Only much later did it become clear.

They did not take that land to expand.

They took it because they had already lost everything else.

Though it did not concern me in the slightest.

"I suspect that notion is... uh... off. As far as I remember, I didn’t go out of my mansion in the last few weeks.

Besides, I’m an orphan, with no powerful connections to back me up at all. I’m as common as one could get. Yeah, visiting the ancient Nirvasthla did strike my mind many times as an enthusiast... but that’s as far as I could ever go."

Hearing my answer, the Lethyrae twitched its tendrils, a subtle movement that I believed was their way of focusing, much like how humans rubbed their chin at the slightest doubt or contemplation.

His grin instantly faltered, reduced to nothing but a grim expression, the widening of his eyes slow and deliberate rather than sudden.

"Quite a clever guy you are... however, it’s not merely intuition," he spoke, his voice turning raspy all of a sudden, layered no longer, but heavier. "That is to say, my senses never actually deceive."

As he finished, he twisted his neck in a roundabout motion, followed by a dry, crackling sound that echoed faintly in the chamber.

His gaze settled on me again, though it was difficult to determine which eye I was even meant to meet.

"You will be required to follow me to Nirvasthla," he continued. "I give my word that you will not be hurt, to the full extent of my capabilities, as far as I am concerned. Although... this would be the second favor I would be extending toward humans, considering what you’ve managed to pull off this time around. You destroyed everything."

He delivered the verdict in a grim voice, my gaze fixed on his countless eyes as my thoughts drifted from confusion, to disbelief, and finally irritation.

It felt disturbingly similar to those torrents of emotions I had only ever read about within novels but could never quite imagine, until now.

I opened my mouth, words leaving in a neutral tone, careful not to betray anything more.

"I don’t wish to follow along with your fantasies, not when there are far more pressing matters at hand... such as, well, escaping from the church. Not to mention, you’re being passively aggressive for someone striking a deal, hinting that I could potentially get hurt and..."