Chapter 633

Chapter 633: Dream Sinking

The threads were moving.

Duncan heard Alice’s cry. He snapped out of his thoughts and looked up at the window. Then a sight he would never forget filled his eyes—

On the sea where Lightwind Harbor had once been, the invisible threads, dense as hair and woven like mist, began to change wildly. The long veil of “gauze-mist” slowly swelled and shrank, writhing as it shifted between real and unreal. It slowly reshaped into a form. The part on the sea surface drew back, gathered, and rose higher, while the structure floating in the clouds swelled outward, split into crisscrossing branches, and slowly drooped toward the edge of the sea like another sky.

A hard-to-describe feeling of pressure from a colossal thing came from that shifting phantom. The whole sea began to fall under the shadow of that invisible crown. Only then did Duncan finally understand what he was seeing—it was a tree.

The “threads” that had floated over the sea were twisting together like strands of hair into the shape of a huge tree—a World Tree big enough to cover the entire sea!

Rune pushed himself up from the table with difficulty. The old elf who had relied on his own will to resist Atlantis’s call now seemed close to his limit. He too stared out the window. Without Alice’s power, he still could not see the invisible threads, and that stretch of sea remained empty to him. But suddenly, large patches of shadow appeared on the empty sea—the lines that had been invisible began to show outlines that the naked eye could see.

He saw the tree, the towering giant that was growing fast, spreading out from the elves’ racial dream.

“That is…” Rune’s eyes widened at once. Memories and feelings that had slept deep in his soul surged up like a tide, and he muttered without thinking: “Atlantis… Atlantis has come to take us home…”

But the next second, his eyes suddenly cleared again. Rahm’s power dragged his mind back to the Mortal Realm. He pressed his forehead hard: “Captain Duncan, Atlantis’s awakening has entered its next stage… She is remembering her original form…”

A long, clear steam whistle suddenly sounded from nearby. It was the Pilgrimage Ark at the edge of the sea warning the whole fleet. There was a note of urging in the whistle as well; the people left on the ark seemed worried about the pope’s safety.

Rune lifted his hand and quickly traced a few glowing characters in the air.

Duncan noticed at once: “What are you doing?”

“I am ordering the ark and the escort fleet to move away from Atlantis at once,” Rune said quickly. “There are still many elves on those ships. They may not be affected yet, but they cannot stay in this sea any longer.”

Duncan asked right away: “What about you?”

“That is exactly what I… wanted to say,” Rune answered. He seemed dazed for a second but soon recovered. “Take me into Atlantis’s dream—to the deepest part of the dream. I need to speak directly with that ‘Guardian’…”

“Talk?” Duncan frowned deeply. “Don’t tell me you plan to rely on your eloquence and sincerity to persuade a mad ‘Elder God’ to wake up.”

“No. I have another way. It might be able to affect her…” Rune said.

Duncan quietly watched the old elf for a moment. Only when a second whistle, the Cathedral ark’s signal to withdraw, came from nearby did he finally break the silence: “How can you be so sure I can take you into the depths of Atlantis’s dream?”

Rune steadied himself and met Duncan’s gaze: “Because the moment I made contact with Atlantis, I saw the Vanished. Even though it was sailing in the darkness at the border, I am certain that is proof you can communicate with Atlantis.”

As he listened to the old pope, Duncan’s expression did not change, but his heart suddenly stirred.

What Rune described… was what the world looked like from Atlantis’s “point of view”?

A plan that had only been vague before suddenly took shape. Duncan turned his gaze to the chart table beside him, to the keel sample lying on it.

Rune grew a little uneasy at Duncan’s sudden silence and could not help asking: “…You do have a way, don’t you?”

“…Things are a little different from before, but…” Duncan still stared at the block of wood on the table. Slowly, a small smile appeared on his face. “Yes, I have an idea, and I was just about to try it. I can give you a ride along the way. The only problem is… the journey may be a bit exciting.”

Rune froze: “…Exciting?”

“Have you ever ridden on a ghost ship, sailing through an Elder God’s nightmare?”

…

When the howl came from the street, Lucretia was asking Taran Ael to confirm the strange scene he had seen in the last moment of the Nameless One’s dream, and the voice from Atlantis that he had heard while half out of his mind.

Taran Ael had said that before the Nameless One’s dream ended, he saw the world being destroyed. That scene was very likely the one burned deep into the elves’ racial memory, the memory of the Great Annihilation at the start of the Deep Sea era that generations of scholars had sought in vain. He had also said he heard a voice that seemed to be Atlantis’s, and the anger and terror in that voice seemed to point to a secret. Lucretia felt she was already touching the final truth of this dream, but just as she was about to keep asking, a strange howl swept over the entire city-state.

She jumped to her feet and ran to the window.

The sight before her made even this “sea witch” lose her breath. She stood there, stunned.

The “sky” above the city was burning. Roaring flames swept across it, like huge waves rushing out from the depths of an endless nightmare. They rolled over the layered crowns of trees above Lightwind Harbor and the muddy, chaotic sky between the branches. The fire was like a blanket, covering everything. It shrieked and leaped down into every street under the canopy, pouring like a flood to devour every inch of land in sight.

It gave her a feeling—as if the forest that had stretched out from the dream had suddenly transformed into solid fire, and that fire had then begun to burn the whole city-state.

The moment the flames fell, explosions, screams, the crashes of Steam Walkers in runaway state slamming into buildings, and all kinds of loud, chaotic noise almost instantly filled the entire city-state!

The shocking change came so suddenly that Lucretia felt a strange, unreal sense of tearing. She stood at the window in a daze, staring at the scene outside. After two seconds, her gaze rose on its own, as if something were pulling it, toward the blazing sky.

In the flames that already covered the sky, she saw a huge structure slowly coming into view. It was like a solid Day of Ruin pushing down from the heavens, pressing inch by inch toward everyone’s heads.

…What was that?

The question rose in Lucretia’s mind without her even thinking it. The next second, a cry from behind finally snapped her out of her brief daze.

“By Rahm’s name!” One of the knowledge guards stared at the window and cried out: “What is that thing?!”

Even Taran Ael, whose condition had been poor and whose head was full of noise and pain, pushed himself up from his chair. He wobbled over to Lucretia and looked out at the burning sky and the streets in chaos.

Confusion and fear filled the scholar’s eyes. He seemed unable to imagine Lightwind Harbor falling into such horror so suddenly. Even though the forest that had spread out of the Nameless One’s dream had already swallowed the whole city, the sight outside now still made him feel as if he had fallen into yet another layer of nightmare. He could not help muttering: “It really is a nightmare…”

“No, Master Taran Ael,” Lucretia’s voice came from beside him, pulling him out of his daze. He saw the sea witch turning her head, her eyes deep as the ocean. “This is a nightmare.”

A brief look of confusion crossed Taran Ael’s face, while the light of the flames slowly reflected in Lucretia’s eyes.

She saw the room starting to fall apart. The figures in the room curled and twisted in the fire. She saw the light of the sky’s flames pierce the roof and turn into cold beams of sunlight that swept through the air. She saw a huge tree appear in the distance—it rose from the sea, as if it were an extension of the city-state itself.

She stepped forward and put her hand on Taran Ael’s shoulder.

“My father said that Lightwind Harbor has vanished from the Mortal Realm. There is only a blank space over that sea now.

“Mr. Taran Ael, we have never woken up from the start—the whole city is still asleep.

“But Atlantis is about to wake up from the dream…”

She pressed down slightly and pushed Taran Ael forward, who had frozen like a statue without her noticing.

“Come on. Let’s go see what exactly Atlantis has been dreaming about.”

The next second, under the blazing flames and the falling sky, Lightwind Harbor slowly and quietly fell apart.

At the last moment, as the flames swept over it, the city turned into bubbles, gleams of light, smoke, wind, and whispering voices. Its final shadow reflected on the calm sea. The remaining firelight and twisted, torn scene in that reflection looked like an illusion, slowly swallowed by the breaking waves.

Amid the rising and falling waves, a huge shadow was slowly growing up from the seabed—it seemed to be a giant tree.

And along the edge of that tree, which kept growing from the deep, another shadow, sometimes real and sometimes ghostly, was moving slowly.

It was a ghost ship, slowly rising into view.