Dreamwalking

Within the palace frozen in twilight, the corridors stretched deep and long, the halls broad and empty. Low whispers of unknown origin echoed behind every door, as if countless unseen guests had gathered in this ancient, illusory palace, continuing their endless banquet while maliciously scrutinizing every visitor who entered.

Rosetta Augustus's footsteps rang out abruptly through the empty corridor.

The ruler of the Typhon Empire walked along a corridor he had traversed countless times, as though he could not hear the eerie whispers continuously rising around him. Beneath the narrow windows glowing with twilight, his figure cast shadows of varying lengths. Each shadow seemed to tremble faintly as if about to come alive, only to gradually settle again beneath the emperor's disregard.

He arrived at the chamber at the very heart of the palace, where portraits of successive members of the Augustus Family hung.

Expressionless faces sat within pitch-black frames, watching Rosetta Augustus with cold, indifferent gazes. Some of the figures within those frames had come alive, leaning toward neighboring portraits and muttering to one another in murky, inhuman voices.

Without exception, the portraits that had "come alive" depicted members of the Augustus Family from the past two centuries—Augustuses who had been born and active after the Great Collapse of the Old Imperial Capital, after the curse had descended.

Those who had lived between seven hundred years ago and two centuries ago, however, remained quietly within their frames, serving only as cold portraits.

Rosetta was accustomed to it.

Nightmares were products of the curse, but they were also reflections of the cursed person's spiritual world. Using the Great Collapse of the Old Imperial Capital two hundred years ago as a dividing line, the souls of the Augustuses had been free before the Great Collapse, and the nightmare could only project