The world of dreams has its boundaries.

  Yvette passed through a deserted village, wanting to see if the road leading out of the village could take her elsewhere—after all, the forest not far from the lake was already covered by strange silk-like webs, and only the village seemed accessible.

  But when she reached the road leading out of the village, she found it, too, was occupied by the webs. Without the cover of trees in this open area, she could clearly see behind the intertwined grayish-white threads something she had never witnessed before: plump, pale worms wriggling, incessantly chewing on something.

  What they were devouring was the very fabric of space itself!

  Yvette realized that wherever the worms’ mandibles passed, everything would vanish—whether it was soil, weeds, trees, or even the space itself. The road leading out of the village opened into a broad field, through which she could faintly glimpse that the world beyond the webs had already transformed into something unrecognizable. There was an unnaturally bright black starry sky and barren, sandy earth—like the desolate planet from a science fiction film she had seen in a past life.

  They were chewing through the space of the dream, converting it into another world, another planet…

  Was one alien dream replacing another?

  Yvette glanced back at the village where she stood. Aside from the enormous moon in the sky, it was a perfect replica of the real village. Was this the kind of dream the supernatural entity controlling this place would have?

  She doubted it. Perhaps the village and the lake were the dreams of the humans who had lived here, reflecting their actual lives and labors.

  Gazing through the web, Yvette saw an endless expanse of wasteland beneath an eerie starry sky. With no vegetation to obscure her view, she could see far into the distance—this hazy, lifeless gray land stretched endlessly ahead.

  She couldn’t help but suspect that not long ago, this dreamscape had been larger than she imagined. The villagers might have dreamed of grazing livestock or gathering firewood just outside the village, their dreams interweaving to form a more complete little world—not just the narrow confines of their own homes.

  But now, the dreams they had built were being eroded. The wasteland beneath the stars belonged to the hidden kin’s dream. The worms consuming space indicated the villagers’ fading remnants of consciousness; soon, this place would be entirely replaced by the kin’s memories of its homeland.

  Yvette was now trapped in this dream. Based on her own experience, any soul entering her dreams had almost no means of escape—unless they had not undergone the blood ritual. For instance, Bishop Lorenzo had willingly invaded her dream, only to abandon his intellect and return to reality as a fool.

  But anyone who stained her with blood and was then killed by her would become a prisoner of her dreams. Even those slain by others, if they had given their blood to her, could—depending on the soul’s choice—end up imprisoned within her forever or return to dust like a normal spirit.

  If blood was the medium…

  Yvette recalled the mead she had once drunk, brewed with Martha’s blood as an ingredient. Since Martha bore the bloodline of the Bee God, by consuming it, Yvette had effectively ingested the deity's diluted essence. At first, the Bee God’s power might have been too weak, affecting only its direct descendants. But as it consumed more and more souls, even someone like Yvette, who had merely drunk a small amount of its diluted blood, could be pulled into the dream through the lake’s reflection of another world.

  Yet now, the normal human dreams were shrinking. If the erosion continued unchecked until it swallowed all the space she could occupy, what would happen then?

  Yvette snapped off a tree branch and carefully tossed it through the web.

  Though the web appeared dense, the branch passed through effortlessly, piercing the illusory threads and worms before landing in the barren world beyond.

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  Almost instantly, the fresh branch, still bearing green leaves, withered before her eyes. With a sudden burst of rising vapor, its remaining material turned into a cloud of dark gray powder, scattering onto the sandy wasteland before vanishing without a trace.

  Black powder… Had it been reduced to simple elements like carbon, alkaline salts, and other inorganic matter?

  Life originated from organic compounds, yet the rules of the dream’s other side seemed to forbid such substances—a vacuum-like realm of death.

  Thinking about it, this wasn’t all that strange. In the universe, planets capable of sustaining life were rare; most were lifeless deserts. The world she knew was the exception.

  But now, the dream was gradually shifting toward another set of laws—one that followed the universe’s common rules, devoid of miracles. It wasn’t hard to imagine that if the erosion intensified, even she herself would have no place left, inevitably reduced to nothing more than sand composed of carbon, calcium, iron, and other elements, just like the branch.

  How could she escape?

  Suddenly, a dream Yvette had before arriving here flashed in her mind—a dream where she saw abandoned clothes by the road, the lake behind the village, and another version of herself. All of it had come true except for one thing: the well. In her dream, the well’s water had been filled with the bloated corpses of pale worms, yet she had not encountered that here.

  Why had she dreamed of that well? She had no precognitive abilities—could it have been a sign from her god?

  If so, then nothing in her dream had been meaningless. Moreover, Martha had told her that the well near the church was a secret passage leading to an underground sanctuary. Before leaving, Martha had seen other female bees like herself being devoured by worms nesting inside them, after which the worms crawled down the well. Martha speculated that they were heading for the underground sanctuary.

  Was there some secret hidden there—one she needed to uncover?

  With no other options left, Yvette decided to explore the old well while she still had time.

  The well was ancient, its stones worn smooth over time, darkened to a deep iron hue by moisture. Peering inside, Yvette saw only deep, clear water—nothing out of the ordinary. Following Martha’s instructions, she found an inconspicuous stone lever at the base of a weathered statue of the Virgin Mary nearby. With a firm twist, she activated it.

  A series of mechanical clicks echoed from the well, followed by the dull rush of draining water.

  Looking in again, Yvette found the water level had dropped, revealing a dark, narrow tunnel in the side of the well.

  Now, the only thing left was to venture inside. At least for now, she was still within the shared dream of the villagers’ lingering human consciousness—where the laws of their world still held. Once even those last remnants were devoured, no one could say what would happen.

  And it would most likely be something irreversible and terrible.

  But if there was danger within the tunnel…

  Yvette tested her supernatural abilities once more and found they all still worked. In this dream, physical matter acted just as it would outside—plants burned, releasing acrid smoke. But compared to the godlike powers she wielded in her own dreams—manifesting objects from nothing, turning into fire, or manipulating reflections—her abilities here were far weaker.

  According to Martha, the villagers had reacted with fear and panic to the current events. Though they carried the blood of the kin, like most people in the world, they had lived ordinary lives outside their secretive worship.

  This was the instinct of living creatures—as long as they had protein-based bodies, those bodies would drive them to seek survival until their minds were fully corrupted, turning them into puppets and sustenance for the kin.

  Since the remaining parts of the village still resembled their ordinary selves, under the lingering will of the villagers, Yvette and the unknown kin were likely on somewhat equal footing here—governed by the rules of this world, not the lifeless waste beyond.

  She had seen the primordial beginning of this world in a dream—a toxic, turbid atmosphere, a boiling sea, and ceaseless thunder in the sky. Because there was air, friction generated electricity, which in turn electrolyzed inorganic compounds in the chaotic ocean into energy-rich organic molecules—the origin of life.

  But the world beyond the web, beneath that eerily bright starry sky, likely had no atmosphere, meaning no conditions for life as she knew it.

  The outer gods had never encountered such a world before. Intrigued, they extended their massive, terrible appendages, seeking to explore and understand it.

  But the laws of this world must have been utterly alien to them and their descendants. As long as the dream still followed those laws, she might be able to use them against the enemy—to defeat it, to expel it.

  "The gods and the kin knew not death—until they came to this world and gained mortality."

  This ancient saying took on a new meaning for her. Did it mean that in other realms, the old gods and the kin existed as incorporeal spirits, untouched by time and death? But upon entering this world—when they took on tangible, mortal forms—they became vulnerable to death as well?

  With this thought, Yvette’s gaze settled on the weathered Virgin Mary statue.

  Before descending into the well, she turned the hidden mechanism once more. As water gurgled in the passage below, the well slowly refilled.

  Just before the rising water submerged the tunnel again, she gripped the rope and slid down with practiced ease, swinging into the dark passage before landing steadily inside.