Dream

Nelisa’s efficiency was absurdly high.

Less than fifteen minutes after Klein finished speaking, a medium-sized sailing ship was already prepared at the harbor. With a shallow draft and a narrow hull, it was the kind used by the Silver Scale Chamber of Commerce for offshore surveys—fast and agile. The cables and rigging on deck had just been replaced, and the copper fittings were polished to a shine.

Nelisa spread the nautical chart over a wooden crate by the pier and pointed to the nearest marked area. “This stretch of sea is six nautical miles offshore, with depths between thirty to forty fathoms. It’s the fishing ground where anomalies were first reported. I’ve arranged for two sailors familiar with the channel to accompany you—”

“No need.”

The voice came from behind Klein. Ophelia stepped forward, fastening the top button of her cloak.

“The sea is unpredictable; bringing more people will only cause trouble.” She paused, then added, “I’m enough.”

She spoke plainly, without any hint of boasting—she was simply stating a fact. Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded arrogant, but from Ophelia, it made Nelisa simply press her lips together.

She hadn't had many dealings with Ophelia, but she knew what she needed to know.

“Then be careful, everyone.” Nelisa handed the nautical chart to Klein. “Keep your communicators on and contact me immediately if anything happens.”

Klein took the map, folded it twice, and tucked it into his inner chest pocket. “Don’t worry, I value my life.”

Nelisa didn’t bite on the remark, turning to walk toward the warehouse. She had a mountain of things to handle—settling the five coastal fishing villages, scheduling patrols for the blockaded waters, and coordinating with the people from the Privy Council once they arrived.

Klein watched her retreating back for a moment before jumping onto the boat.

When the sails were raised, the sea breeze rushed in from the southwest, filling the canvas. The hull sliced through the gray-green water, trailing white foam in its wake. The outline of the harbor slowly shrank in their vision, and the flag of the Silver Scale Chamber of Commerce atop the warehouse became a blurry smudge of color.

Klein rested one hand on the gunwale and used the other to open his backpack, taking out the array disk and portable analysis components one by one. His original plan was to use a long-range detection array to scan the underwater biological distribution; its coverage radius was decent, and its precision was enough to distinguish the informational characteristics of individual organisms.

He placed the array disk on the deck, and just as he was about to connect the mana circuit, Ophelia walked over from the bow.

“Put it away for now.”

Klein’s hand froze in mid-air.

Ophelia crouched by the side of the boat, her right hand bracing against the hull as she leaned her head to look at the water. Then she extended her left hand from beneath her cloak, fingers splayed and palm facing down.

The wind brushed over the back of her hand. The black patterns lay quietly beneath her skin, showing no movement.

“The things beneath the water,” she said, “I can feel them.”

Klein didn't reply immediately. He stared at her left hand.

“Their blood aura is different from the things of this world. It’s subtle, but distinguishable.” Ophelia withdrew her hand and rubbed her left wrist.

She looked up.

“Leave the detection to me. You just focus on your analysis.”

Klein remained crouched by the array disk, his fingers still touching the circuit interface. He looked at Ophelia, his mouth opening slightly before closing again.

The division of labor was reasonable. The efficiency was higher. Logically, there was nothing to find fault with.

But her action just now—extending that hand—didn't come without a price. He had seen what she smelled when they entered the warehouse. Now, by actively using that hand to sense cognate organisms underwater, the sensory pressure she endured would only be greater.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

The conversation ended there. Ophelia wasn't the type of person who needed repeated confirmation; asking once was enough.

Klein packed the array disk back into his bag, leaving only a small recording array on the deck. He leaned against the bitt at the base of the mast, holding a charcoal pencil and a waterproof, hard-covered notebook.

The boat sailed toward the open sea for about twenty minutes.

Ophelia stood at the bow, her left hand hanging at her side, palm slightly turned outward. The sea breeze blew her cloak back, revealing the lines of her entire left arm. Her body was relaxed, but her breathing rhythm was slightly slower than usual—the specific frequency used when channeling battle qi for perception.

“There’s something down there,” she spoke. “A lot of them.”

Klein looked up. “How wide an area?”

“Between fifteen and thirty fathoms below the hull, scattered widely.” Her brow twitched slightly. “They aren't gathering; they’re moving independently. Just like… the movement patterns of a normal school of fish.”

Klein jotted a line in his notebook.

“About a mile further ahead, the density increases.” Ophelia tilted her head as if listening to a very distant sound. “The variety has increased as well. It’s not just fish; there are others—some crawling along the seabed, others clinging motionless to reefs.”

She suddenly wrinkled her nose.

“What is it?”

“The scent is getting stronger.”

Klein stood up and walked over to her side. The wind blew from directly ahead, and he sniffed hard—but he smelled nothing except the ordinary briny scent of the sea.

“I can’t smell it.”

Ophelia didn’t explain. She simply pushed her left sleeve up two inches, revealing the black patterns on her wrist.

The patterns weren't spreading, but they were moving—a rhythmic, extremely subtle pulsing. Unlike at the harbor, this wasn't a passive reaction; it felt more like a… resonance.

Klein stared at those patterns for a few seconds, then crouched down to draw a rough distribution map in his notebook. Halfway through, he stopped writing and rubbed his temples.

Ophelia noticed.

“You look pale.”

“I’m fine.”

“How many hours have you slept since we left the manor?”

Klein’s pencil paused on the paper. He thought about it, honestly calculating the time. Three days in the carriage, two and a half days of work, and that remaining half-day spent writing the review report at the post station. After arriving at the harbor, he went straight to the warehouse for over half an hour of experiments, and now he was on the boat—

“…Enough.”

“How many?”

“Six hours total.”

“Six hours in three days.”

“The bed at the post station was too hard.”

Ophelia didn't respond. She walked to the mast, pulled down a roll of spare canvas wrapped around the bitt, and spread two layers on the deck. Then she pointed at the canvas.

“Lie down.”

“I still have—”

“I’ll handle the detection. The things you’re recording can wait until you wake up.”

Klein looked at the canvas on the floor, then back at her.

Ophelia’s expression was nothing special. It wasn't worry, nor was it forcefulness; it was just that look of 'you know the truth yourself.'

He closed his notebook.

“One hour,” he said. “Wake me in an hour.”

Ophelia didn't agree, but she didn't refuse either.

Klein lay down on the canvas. The deck swayed with the waves; the motion was slight, almost like a cradle. He used his backpack as a pillow and closed his eyes.

The sea breeze surged from all directions. Above him, the canvas flapped against the mast in the wind, making a rhythmic, dull thud.

But his mind wouldn't stop.

The readings on the array disk, the information structure in the final second before the cube's collapse, those excessively normal fish—especially that blue-backed fish. He had noticed a detail during the dissection that he hadn't thought much about at the time, as it was overshadowed by subsequent analysis results.

The arrangement of that fish’s scales was correct, as was the count. But the starting position of the scale growth—the anchor point where the first scale sprouted from the skin layer—didn't differentiate during the embryonic stage.

In normal fish, scale growth begins during embryonic development; the positions of the anchor points are determined by genes, and the spacing is fixed. But the spacing of the scale anchor points on that blue-backed fish showed a uniform distribution—too uniform. It was so even that it looked as if they had been measured with a ruler and planted one by one.

What did this mean?

This fish hadn't “grown.” It had been “generated.”

The process of information turning into matter had not undergone embryonic development, cell division, individual variation, or random disturbances during growth. The information fragment of the Siren had directly projected into a complete form—skipping all intermediate steps.

So the question followed: could these completed forms reproduce?

If they could—would the offspring be normal or similarly “generated”?

If they couldn't—then their numbers were fixed, and they would eventually die out.

What if there was a third possibility? They didn't need to reproduce because—

Klein’s thoughts stalled there.

A notion surged up, but before it could take shape, it was scattered by the sound of the waves. His breathing deepened, and his body relaxed on the canvas. The fatigue accumulated over five days seemed to finally find an outlet, surging forth all at once.

He wanted to keep thinking about that “third possibility.”

But his eyelids betrayed him first.

Ophelia turned her head and glanced at him.

He was asleep. It was almost laughable—the man who had just been stubbornly saying he was “fine” was out within two minutes of lying down. His breathing became steady, though his brow remained furrowed, the mark of his frown still there.

She didn't go over to smooth it out for him.

She turned back to face forward. Her left palm was turned outward, sensing the blood aura beneath the water that did not belong to this world.

They were swimming. Crawling. Clinging quietly to the reefs.

Getting closer and closer to the boat.

...

...

Klein had a dream.

A very strange dream.

He dreamed of the Siren.

Not the Siren as she was sealed in the cube, nor the chaos of the moment of collapse—but something earlier. Or rather, something deeper.

He saw the many organisms contained within the Siren.

Fish. Crustaceans. Mollusks. Algae. Coral. And many forms he couldn't name—some couldn't even be considered “organisms,” being closer to an intermediate state between matter and information, semi-solid, fluid, constantly swaying between the two states.

They were being torn apart.

The process had no sound, no sensation of pain, only a pure, cold decomposition. A fish was dismantled into scales, bones, muscle fibers, and pigment cells; then further down into protein chains, mineral lattices, and water molecules—and further still, into even smaller units, so small they were no longer matter, but a type of encoding carrying specific arrangement rules.

Then, they were reassembled.

Those codes were rearranged, folded, and nested according to new rules. Matter condensed from the information, growing layer by layer—no, not growing, but “cast.” Like iron casting, liquid metal was poured into a mold, cooled, and shaped. No embryo, no development, no time.

What was doing this?

What power could erase the boundary between matter and information, allowing the two to convert freely?

The Klein in the dream asked this question.

Then he looked up.

He saw a celestial body.

No light. No heat. Even its shape was unclear—its boundary was not a line, but a region of “disappearance.” Everything that approached it fell inward, whether light, matter, or information. In the process of falling, they were stretched, distorted, and compressed, eventually crossing an invisible critical boundary to be completely erased from this world.

A black hole.

A celestial body capable of distorting spacetime and annihilating information.

No—in the logic of the dream, he suddenly realized something. The black hole wasn't “destroying” information. It was converting information from one form to another. Matter fell in and was compressed to an infinitely small volume; all structures, all arrangement rules, everything that defined “what” the object was, was stripped away—but it didn't disappear. It was still there. In a form he couldn't understand, but it was still there.

What if what the Siren was doing was the same thing?

What if those “generated” fish, shrimp, and crabs weren't created from nothing, but were—

Klein snapped his eyes open.

The deck was swaying. It was still daylight. The sound of the canvas flapping against the mast was rhythmic, and the sea breeze rushing into his collar was chilly.

A layer of sweat covered his back.

It took two seconds for his vision to focus. First, he saw the sky, where low, gray-white clouds pressed against the sea. Then the mast, the rigging, and the silhouette of the person standing at the bow.

Ophelia was still in the same position. Her left hand hung at her side, palm slightly turned outward, in the exact same posture as before he closed his eyes. The wind pulled her cloak wide, framing her silhouette against the gray-blue sea and sky.

Klein propped himself up on the deck, his head bumping against the hard corner of his backpack. He hissed, reaching back to rub the spot.

“How long was I out?”

Ophelia didn't look back.

“Less than fifteen minutes.”

Klein blinked.

Fifteen minutes. There had been so much in the dream, so much that he thought he had slept for at least half a day. Less than fifteen minutes—and all those images of matter, information, black holes, and collapse had been packed into those fifteen minutes.

He rubbed his face, wiping the sweat from his palms.

Ophelia turned her head then and glanced at him. Her gaze lingered on his face for a moment, but she didn't ask what he had dreamed.

“Go back to sleep.”

“I’m not sleeping.”

Klein was already rummaging through his backpack. He pulled out the hard-covered notebook; his charcoal pencil rolled half a circle on the deck before he snatched it up.

“I thought of something.”

He flipped open the notebook, his fingers moving so fast he skipped several pages at once. After finding a blank page, he lay flat on the deck and began to write, his handwriting so hurried and messy he might not even recognize it himself in two days.

Ophelia watched him lying on the deck, writing furiously, and swallowed the words she was about to say.

A man who had slept six hours in three days had bounced back up after less than fifteen minutes.

She turned her gaze back to the sea.

The black patterns on her left wrist were still pulsing rhythmically. The things beneath the water were still swimming, crawling, and clinging quietly to the reefs.

They were closer than before.