Beast Gacha System: All Mine

The temple corridor stretched before Father Rohan like the nave of a cathedral submerged in water. The hour was that strange moment between night and dawn.

The sky beyond the high, arched windows shifting from black to charcoal to the faintest wash of indigo, not yet gold, not yet light, but no longer entirely dark. Torches still burned in their iron sconces along the stone walls, but it looked less bright than before.

The screams that had torn through these halls hours ago still seemed to echo faintly in the stone.

Every footstep Rohan took was wet and rasping against the cold floor. Every breath he exhaled curled faintly in the air before dissipating.

The corridor was wide. Grand, even, designed to accommodate processions of priests and dignitaries. And yet it felt impossibly narrow compared to the sky.

It was open, this place. Soaring. Built to inspire awe and humility before the divine. And yet, somehow, it was suffocating. The kind of space that reminded a man how small he was. How alone. How easily swallowed by forces far greater than himself.

When Father Rohan stepped through the heavy oak doors into the outer courtyard, dawn was already approaching in earnest.

The sky had lightened to a pale, watery gray, the stars fading one by one like candles being snuffed.

Arzhen stood facing east, his back to the temple doors, his silhouette stark against the brightening horizon. He had been standing here the entire time, waiting, and the displeasure on his face had not lessened in the slightest.

If anything, it had deepened. His tail gave a single, sharp lash against the courtyard stones.

"What happened to her?" Arzhen asked. His voice was flat, but the tension beneath it was like a coiled wire drawn tight, waiting to snap.

"My only guess is the vision she was seeing, my Lord," Rohan said. "Thus, I genuinely think it is fundamentally different from your predicament."

Arzhen wanted to say, Fear is the same everywhere. But when the words rose to his lips, it immediately died there. He didn’t want to admit that it was fear that had first triggered his condition.

Before meeting the figure of the Dragon Lord in those woods, he had woken from a terrifying nightmare.

A figure inside a white mist. Shapeless, vast, watching him with eyes he couldn’t see but could feel like cold fingers on his spine.

And then he had genuinely encountered a dragon in real life, when trying to harvest its bones from the ditch where it should have died.

The nightmare and the reality had blurred together, and ever since, his body had been betraying him.

But he couldn’t say that aloud. Ever.

This time, though, he had woken from a dream he couldn’t even comprehend. The images were gone, erased the moment his eyes opened, but the sensation remained.

Vivid.

The phantom feeling of being torn apart, of claws in his flesh and teeth in his throat, of his body being scattered across the earth like garbage.

"My Lord, I have seen the Saintess break down with my own eyes, and knowing who she is, I am ninety-nine percent sure it’s extreme shock from a terrifying vision," Rohan said. "And I genuinely feared for my life imagining what future the Saintess was seeing."

Arzhen turned to him, and for the first time, he understood the healer’s perspective.

Right.

Tending to someone like the Saintess was a terrifying responsibility. When she suddenly screamed in horror while clawing at her own throat, anyone would fear the worst.

Anyone would assume the cause was something beyond mortal comprehension. A vision of the apocalypse or a prophecy of doom. Something far more significant than the nightmares of a disgraced prince.

That was why this healer was dismissing Arzhen’s symptoms as fundamentally different. He couldn’t be compared to the Saintess, after all.

"Unless I see for myself the trigger of your breakdown and its effects, my Lord, I might not be able to completely and decisively diagnose the cause," Rohan continued. "Though no matter how different the cause may be, I am sure it is just as serious."

He was trying to explain that because the causes must be different, he couldn’t treat them the same way. It would be reckless.

"I said it could be sorcery, didn’t you hear me?" Arzhen growled, still deeply offended by the dismissal.

"Even if it is sorcery, and even if the Saintess did also fall from the same thing, it’s even more fickle, is it not?" Rohan patiently explained.

"Sorcery... mind magic, illusion, dream magic, hypnosis magic. Even among those, when affected, each person would react so differently from another. The same spell might cause one victim to scream and another to fall into silent catatonia. To treat them identically would be the height of foolishness."

Arzhen couldn’t answer. The man was right. He hated it, but the man was right.

"My Prince, I will prepare more medicine for you. Please wait a moment." Rohan bowed, preparing to take his leave.

Arzhen was startled. He hadn’t expected the healer to end the conversation so abruptly.

"Wait!" Arzhen called out as Rohan turned to go.

The healer paused, glancing back over his shoulder. "Yes?"

"Dream magic. That one," Arzhen said.

Hearing that, Rohan’s eyes widened with genuine surprise. This bastard actually suspected a specific kind of sorcery?

He had narrowed it down, identified a category, and shown a level of self-awareness that Rohan hadn’t anticipated. He needed to consult the Luna even more urgently now.

"It would be excellent if we could research this kind of magic immediately," Rohan said, and suddenly his expression shifted. The professional gentleness gave way to something more eager.

Perhaps, the genuine spark of intellectual curiosity caught Arzhen off guard.

Arzhen stared at him.

So he genuinely wanted to cure him?

The interest in his eyes was more real than everything he had seen so far. It somehow made Arzhen trust him.

But he misunderstood. He didn’t realize how glad Rohan was to have extracted this information. It had nothing to do with compassion, but it had everything to do with proving himself to the Luna.

After handing this brat his medicine, Rohan would leave and check on Arkai. Then, finally, he would find an excuse to go north and investigate what was left of Sienna.

He couldn’t wait to leave.

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