They were told it was a simulation.
A harmless, instructor-guided dreamscape meant to assess their magical instincts under pressure. One hour, shared dreamspace, no lasting consequences.
"You'll wake when the spell concludes," Professor Elan had said. "Unless you panic. Then the dream will hold you."
Comforting.
---
Elior opened his eyes in a field of pale light.
Fog curled low over the grass, humming with ambient magic. The air was thick with silence—not the absence of sound, but a kind of listening.
"Kael?" he called.
No answer.
Instead, the world shifted underfoot—and the fog parted.
A memory appeared before him. Not his.
He was in a corridor of dark stone, glowing slightly at the edges. Torches flickered but gave no heat. A child—no more than ten—stood at the end, back turned, facing a sealed door.
Kael.
Too small, too still.
Then came the voice—low, cruel, and echoing from the shadows.
"You were never meant to be soft."
The boy flinched.
Elior took a step forward instinctively. "Kael—"
The memory turned to smoke before he could touch it.
---
Kael, meanwhile, had ended up in an entirely different dream.
He stood in a white room, floor to ceiling covered in pressed flowers. Gentle light fell from above. Peaceful.
Until it wasn't.
The flowers began to decay. Petals browned, curling. The light dimmed.
And in the center of the room—Elior knelt, shoulders shaking, arms stained with green magic.
He was whispering something again and again.
Kael stepped closer and caught the words:
"I couldn't save them."
Suddenly, Kael was yanked backward, through a corridor of fading memories—he saw flashes of Elior tending to a pale figure in bed, heard the muffled coughs, the weeping, the desperation.
He didn't want to see it.
But he couldn't look away.
---
They collided in the center of the dreamplane.
Literally.
Elior stumbled into Kael mid-sprint, and they both went sprawling into a pool of silver water that hadn't been there a second ago.
"Seriously?" Kael groaned, soaked.
Elior wiped magic from his face. "You ran into me!"
"I was trying to escape your trauma dump."
Elior flushed. "Excuse me?!"
Kael sat up, blinking at the shifting dream-light above. "…Sorry. That came out wrong."
A long silence passed, water rippling around them.
Then Kael added, quieter, "I saw something I wasn't supposed to."
Elior stared into the reflection. "You weren't supposed to see any of that."
"Well, you weren't supposed to see my whole 'childhood conditioning via emotional torture' tour either, so I think we're even."
"That… wasn't what I expected."
"Yeah. Me neither."
They sat there for a beat too long. Shoulder to shoulder. Not touching—but aware.
The dreamscape shimmered again—preparing to dissolve.
"You carry too much," Kael said suddenly. "Alone."
Elior met his eyes. "So do you."
For once, Kael didn't deflect. "Maybe we're not so different."
"Don't say that," Elior muttered. "That's what villains say before setting something on fire."
Kael smirked. "Yeah, but I'd only set your books on fire. Symbolically."
---
They woke at the same time.
Back in their real bodies, back in the simulation hall, back under the concerned gaze of Professor Elan.
"Interesting reactions," she said, jotting something in a notebook.
Kael sat up. "How much did you see in there?"
"Only the surface layer," she replied. "The rest was yours."
Kael and Elior exchanged a glance.
Not quite enemies.
Not friends either.
But something else now.
Understanding.
And in the quiet that followed, for the first time, neither of them had anything clever to say.