Herrscher of Dominance in Honkai, starting with the abduction of Kiana

The Honkai energy contained within the Honkai bomb was too massive. Kiana's consciousness and body had been severely eroded, and had both fallen into a deep sleep.

To prevent any accidents from happening to her, Ren chose to project the Dominance Theater onto Kiana's mindscape, using the theater to help her endure the excessive Honkai energy. The Gem of Serenity was still in her body, subconsciously repairing her body. Ren had actively invoked its powers, further increasing her recovery speed.

And her damaged consciousness was being maintained by the power of the Feather of the Past. With the Key of Consciousness, it was possible to construct numerous relaxing dreamscapes, allowing her weary spirit to rest.

This maintenance would normally take a very long time, enough for Ren to deal with the remaining problems in ARC City.

However, strangely, no matter how beautiful the dreamscapes were, they would quickly shatter, as if Kiana's subconscious was instinctively denying their existence.

In the huge Dominance Theater, a group of basic puppets were standing around the stage. Every time a dreamscape shattered, another puppet would appear. As the number of dreamscapes increased, the puppets' forms gradually became clearer, slowly transforming into a likeness of Ren.

This was Kiana's consciousness space. She had absolute control here, and the Dominance Theater, which was an invader, had unknowingly been influenced by her subconscious.

The changes in the Dominance Theater were a sign that Kiana's consciousness was about to awaken. However, according to Ren's prediction, her awakening would still take at least two days, and so he hadn't paid too much attention to it.

The dreamscapes continued to decrease. The sleeping girl didn't know what she was dreaming about, but a faint blush had appeared on her cheeks.

For some reason, this dreamscape lasted for quite a while before gradually disappearing.

Another dreamscape shattered. With Kiana's consciousness becoming clearer, the swaying Dominance Theater also grew more chaotic.

Until the final dreamscape arrived.

Rather than a dreamscape, it was more like a memory, a memory about Ren.

But Kiana's perspective was strange. It was as if her vision was very high, but the objects were huge.

In the previous dreamscapes, although many of them were relaxing scenes of her daily life, and of her time at St. Freya, even in her dreams, Kiana was clearly aware that someone very important was missing, which was why the dreamscapes had shattered so quickly.

And, with her consciousness becoming clearer, her impression of Ren had also become clearer, making it even harder for her to wake up. But, no matter how hard it was for her to wake up, it had been from her perspective. This angle was strange.

However, when she saw the young child, Kiana subconsciously held her breath, gradually forgetting that she was in a dream.

"Taxue." She heard the boy calling out. The boy was a little anxious, and kept searching through the room. But Kiana's perspective moved back a little, as if trying to hide herself.

She looked down curiously, and discovered that she had two small, furry paws with pure white fur, but her body was pitch black.

So, I was the cat called Taxue.

Taxue was hiding at the top of the wardrobe, with the high vantage point and her dark fur, the little boy couldn't find her at all.

Looking at the little boy, who was anxiously walking back and forth, not only wasn't Taxue feeling anxious, she was actually feeling rather bored. This stupid human hasn't been able to find me for so long. Truly an idiot.

With those thoughts, Taxue lowered her body, gradually closed her eyes, and began to purr as she slept.

Unknowingly, the sky had completely turned dark. Taxue, who had a good night's sleep, stretched, before jumping down from the wardrobe.

"Meow~" The crisp meow echoed in the room, but it was very quiet, quiet enough to make even the small cat feel a little scared.

She meowed even louder, but the little boy, who would usually respond when she meowed, didn't make a sound. The little cat felt a little strange, and jumped onto the windowsill to look outside.

Aside from the stars in the sky, there wasn't anything else there. The window wasn't closed. Taxue only needed to jump slightly, and she could go to the outside world.

But Taxue didn't do that. The boy had taught her to not randomly run out.

She just sat there by the window, waiting. Her stomach was already rumbling. The little cat wondered when the boy would come back.

She sat there for an entire night, thinking, until early morning. The boy still hadn't returned.

After two more days, Taxue was already weak from hunger, and the room had been emptied at some point. She didn't know what "moving" meant, nor did she understand why the boy had been in such a hurry.

Until one day, the door opened.

Taxue happily ran to the entrance to greet him, but it was a drunken man that had entered.

It was that mean man. He seemed to be the boy's father. The small cat didn't know what "father" meant. She only wanted him to take her to the boy.

The drunkard had stepped on Taxue's paws. He hadn't seen the small cat, only after Taxue had meowed in pain did he react.

"Where did this thing come from?" The man cursed before kicking Taxue away.

The small cat crashed into the wall. She struggled to get up, but her paws wouldn't listen, and her waist was numb. Broken bones were making cracking sounds. Taxue used her two remaining front paws to desperately crawl to the entrance, and sat there, waiting for the boy to return.

Her consciousness gradually faded. Taxue finally saw the boy's figure, and meowed.

The boy waved at her, calling out her name.

Silently separating from Taxue, who had stopped breathing, Kiana took a deep breath. There was only a photo in front of the cat's corpse. And, the place she had found it wasn't the doorway.

In the photo, the little boy was holding Taxue, and sitting on a bench in a park, happily smiling.

Kiana didn't know why she had dreamt of this, but she was very familiar with the boy in her dream. In many of her previous dreams, she had been recalling his appearance.

Ren.

So, what was the meaning of this dream? Before she could properly think about it, the entire dreamscape had shattered and disappeared.

As the world had been plunged into darkness, she had finally awakened from the last dreamscape. Kiana, who was in the theater, gradually opened her eyes.

"Where is this place?"

The girl murmured, looking at the collapsing theater. The puppets that had been created by the subconscious of her dreams were also gradually disappearing. All of these strange things made her feel as if she was still in a dream.

However, when warm blood splattered onto her face, Kiana suddenly realized something. She tightly grabbed the threads that were breaking apart. Then, images slowly began to surface.

…

Crying, wailing. In the midst of the great Honkai disaster, no one could be saved.

The gray-haired boy was standing in a desolate wasteland, looking up at the smoke and haze-filled sky.

Gradually, the sun had set, and the boundless darkness had swallowed the earth. The cries and wails of the despairing people had disappeared. Only a silent world remained. The boy stood alone in the wasteland.

Even though she could only see the boy's back, Kiana could see the tears streaming down his face.

After a long time, the moonlight pierced through the haze. The boy, who had been looking up at the sky, turned around and looked in Kiana's direction.

And so she had finally seen, beneath the boy's gray hair, illuminated by the moonlight, golden pupils.

The image suddenly disappeared, and Kiana was startled awake.

"What was that?"

That gray-haired boy was undoubtedly Ren, but the numb and despairing expression on his face didn't match the never-give-up boy in her memories.

「Don't you already know? That's the sign of a Herrscher awakening.」

A familiar voice suddenly sounded in the silent mindscape. Just like a hunter who had been watching its prey for a long time, she had pierced Kiana's mind with her weapon, shattering her delusions.

「And this familiar scene of a great Honkai disaster, can you guess who had caused it?」

Kiana didn't speak, and looked at where the voice had come from.

With the collapse of the Dominance Theater, some secrets that had been hidden away could no longer be concealed.

Sirin's consciousness, which Ren had captured, hadn't been eliminated, but had instead been bound. Now, with Kiana's awakening, the Herrscher of the Void's consciousness had also begun to recover.

Countless threads were wrapped around her body, firmly binding her behind the stage curtains. Her usual haughty demeanor of a queen was gone, and she could only struggle like a caterpillar.

"Sirin? I knew that while I was asleep, you wouldn't give up on invading my consciousness." Kiana wasn't surprised by the appearance of the Herrscher of the Void's consciousness. When she had decided to use her own body to absorb the Honkai energy from the Honkai bomb, she had already anticipated that the Herrscher's consciousness would invade her.

But, Kiana, when facing the Herrscher's consciousness, would no longer choose to escape like before. She clearly understood that, as long as her will was strong enough, the Herrscher's consciousness wouldn't be able to take control of her body.

She snapped her fingers, and a small, pitch-black room appeared. The best way to deal with the Herrscher's consciousness was to not listen to it, not to think about it. Although imprisoning it in the deepest parts of her mind wouldn't eliminate it, it would temporarily prevent her from being affected by it.

However, Sirin, who was about to be imprisoned in the small, dark room, didn't resist at all. Instead, the mocking smile on her face grew wider.

「Invade? No, I'm just prey that has fallen into a trap. Before that, aren't you curious about why your mindscape has become like this?」

Sirin's words had hit on Kiana's current question. She was indeed curious about the changes in her surroundings. And Sirin, in her current state, didn't seem to have successfully invaded her mind.

More importantly, in the successive dreamscapes, she had kept dreaming of Ren. Aside from the previous chaotic ones, the final dream was far too real, and the image she had seen before had made her feel incredibly uneasy.

Ren is a Herrscher? How is that possible?!

"You're still like before, trying to break my will through the people around me? I won't believe you no matter what you say." As soon as her words fell, the door of the small, dark room opened, imprisoning the still bound Sirin.

「Kiana, you and I are one and the same. What I can guess, are the thoughts that already exist in your heart.」

「You've actually already been suspicious of him, but you chose to run away, chose to lie to yourself. You didn't dare to believe it.」

「You think you can escape? You can't escape.」

「Admit it, Ren… he's a monster, just like you.」

「And the one who created the Herrscher, was you.」

…

The voice finally disappeared, but the oppressive feeling in her heart didn't lessen at all. It had only grown heavier.

The small, dark room was buried in the depths of her consciousness. Kiana stood blankly in the center of the stage. A beam of light shone from above, illuminating her figure. The threads that had been used to create the theater were disintegrating, transforming back into Kiana's original mindscape.

These strange scenes were about to disappear, and Kiana realized that.

She slowly extended her fingers, before, after a moment of hesitation, touching those threads with her fingertips.

Even though they were just threads, Kiana could sense a familiar aura—Ren's.

While Kiana's consciousness had been sleeping, in order to project the Dominance Theater, Ren had been forced to connect his consciousness to hers. These threads, in a certain sense, were a materialization of his consciousness.

And, at times like these, their hearts were the closest.

It was because of this that, after touching those puppet threads, Kiana was able to sense the memories that had been hidden deep within Ren's heart.

Kiana didn't understand how, but her intuition told her that these threads represented Ren's consciousness, and it made her accept a single truth.

"Those images… they were all real. They were Ren's past."

Sensing it again, there weren't any images appearing now.

Even though there weren't any rejections between their mindscapes, it wasn't possible to avoid the mutual repulsion of their souls. The awakening of the owner of the mindscape meant that Ren's influence over her had become insignificant.

When the grand theater completely collapsed, their consciousness would also be completely disconnected.

However, the Honkai erosion on Kiana's body hadn't recovered yet. Even though her consciousness had awakened, she still couldn't wake up. In this state, she could only temporarily remain in her mindscape, which had temporarily delayed the speed of its collapse.

In this extremely quiet environment, even though Kiana desperately tried not to let her thoughts wander, the words that Sirin had spoken kept echoing in her mind.

"Herrscher…"

"He tricked me…"

She should have been feeling pain, but strangely, Kiana didn't feel much resistance towards Ren being a Herrscher.

Instead, it was the images that had appeared, that made her clench her fists tightly.

The haze-covered sky, the Honkai beasts that had appeared out of thin air. In her time wandering, she had seen far too much of this.

The Great Honkai Disaster!

And, Ren had awakened during that very disaster.

She didn't know what Herrscher Ren had awakened as. She didn't even dare recall the look in the boy's eyes.

Only those who were trapped in despair would be chosen to become Herrschers. After inheriting the Herrscher of the Void's memories, the experiences of the Tower of Babel had also become her nightmare. It was because of that, that she clearly understood that pain better than anyone.

And what had caused Ren to awaken… had been herself.

He… probably already knew it was me.

A deep darkness gradually began to converge, trying to envelop Kiana once again, just like before, wanting to drown her.

"What an idiot…" Tears flowed down her face. Kiana opened her palms. A faint light flickered in her hands.

That was the small flame she had borrowed from Ren. As long as it was with her, then Kiana's mindscape would never be plunged into complete darkness.

"Idiot!" No one knew if she was cursing herself, or if she was cursing Ren, or if the two of them were simply idiots, struggling forward in this dark world.

The theater was still collapsing, but Kiana suddenly reached out, tightly grabbing those threads, wrapping them around her arm.

"Come back!"