His consciousness sank into a warm ocean.
Unlike the cold and bloodshed of the real world, there was only gentle light and a reassuring presence here.
It smelled like home.
Sasuke slowly opened his eyes to the sight of an utterly familiar wooden ceiling.
"Sasuke, you're awake? Why did you sleep so soundly today?"
A gentle woman's voice came from beside him.
Sasuke's body suddenly stiffened, and he slowly turned his head.
His mother sat beside his bed, a loving smile on her face and a garment she was mending in her hands.
Sunlight spilled through the window onto the side of her face, warm and real.
"Come on, get up. Your father is back from chopping wood. We're just waiting for you to eat."
As soon as she finished speaking, a hearty male voice came from outside the door.
"I'm back! Don't tell me that boy Sasuke is sleeping in again?"
His father's tall figure appeared in the doorway, a bundle of firewood on his shoulder and a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, but his face was all smiles.
This wasn't a dream.
No, this could only be a dream.
A dream of incomparable happiness, yet incomparable cruelty.
Lower Rank One, Enmu-a demon who could make people die in pleasant dreams.
An almost imperceptible flicker passed through Sasuke's eyes, but boundless cold immediately replaced it.
"What's wrong, Sasuke? Get up."
His "mother" smiled and reached out to him.
Sasuke did not move.
He simply watched the scene before him in silence, looking at his long-dead parents, at the home he could never get back even if he gave everything.
Enmu's Blood Demon Art truly was formidable.
It had precisely seized upon the tenderest longing in the depths of Sasuke's heart, buried beneath the flames of revenge.
Had