The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 68:Reckoning

Chapter 68: Chapter 68:Reckoning

The night did not feel like night.

No stars. No dreams. Just silence stretched too thin, like skin pulled over a broken drum. The sky above Berkimhum Castle didn’t blink or breathe—it just hung, taut and quiet, as though the world itself feared shattering under the wrong thought.

Inside the throne hall, torches hissed in their sconces. The flames, once proud, now stuttered as if choking on the weight of sleepless air. Walls that once echoed with laughter and music now pressed inward like they too were holding their breath.

At the castle’s heart, anxiety curled into every corridor. The war council had long adjourned. Servants whispered in shadows, prayers mouthed with cracked lips. Some wept. Others simply ’waited’—for sleep, for madness, for the unraveling to complete its circle.

No one dreamed.

No one rested.

Everyone was awake.

Claire lay in Atlas’s bed.

She hadn’t meant to.

She’d told herself it was just proximity. Just convenience. But the sheets still carried his scent—iron and smoke, layered with something bitter-green, like scorched sage. She hadn’t changed them. Not out of loyalty. Not out of mourning. But because to touch anything would be to admit he might not return.

The blankets were cold. The room too quiet. Her body ached in ways she couldn’t name.

She’d tried to sleep. Gods knew she’d tried.

Once. Twice. A dozen times. But sleep stood just beyond her reach like a glass wall she couldn’t shatter. Every time her eyes closed, she felt herself ’hovering’—never falling. As if the world had clipped its own wings.

Sweat clung to her throat. Her breath came too fast.

Claire sat up, dragging the sheet with her, fingers curled tight around the cloth.

"Atlas..." she whispered. Her voice was smaller than she remembered it being. "Where... are you?"

The silence didn’t answer.

But the air shifted.

As if something was listening.

.

.

Elsewhere, down a corridor almost forgotten by palace scribes, someone died.

Not with a scream. Not with a shout. Just a soft gasp, like the world sucking its teeth.

The boy had not seen it coming.

One moment, he was tangled in silk sheets with pleasure he never felt before with laughter. The next, his throat was opened in a smile he hadn’t meant to make. Blood surged like a second heartbeat. His fingers twitched once, brushing the hand of the woman who had kissed him moments before.

Isabella stood over him. Unbothered. Naked. Triumphant.

Her skin shimmered in the torchlight. Not glowing—’gleaming’, like a blade recently drawn. She rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, and stepped over the corpse like it was a rug.

When she opened the door, the palace guards didn’t flinch.

They looked her over.

Looked past her.

Looked ’through’ her.

"An assassin," she labeled . Her voice dripped honey over razors. "He came for me. You were late."

The guards didn’t argue. They saluted.

And went to dispose of the truth.

By the time the palace bells rang—not in warning, but with the clarity of desperation—the war room had already begun to stir.

Nobles filed in slowly. Some carried weapons. Others, wine. Everyone carried questions.

King Henry sat at the table’s head. His body trembled beneath the royal mantle. His lips cracked from dryness. His hands shook, even wrapped in cloth. He hadn’t slept. No amount of potion or priest had helped. Not even the sleep-invocations crafted for battlefields.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d blinked without opening his eyes again too soon.

"What sorcery is this?" the First General barked, slamming a fist against the oak table. "A curse? Imperial sabotage?"

"No known spell affects this scale," muttered the court mage, eyes bloodshot. "Even the Black Mirror Plague only touched cities. This... this is global."

"Not global," Isabella said from her seat, golden robe barely tied. "Worse. It’s divine."

"You’re saying the gods did this?" Fiens spat. "Why? To what end?"

Isabella sipped from a chalice of dark wine. "Because we got too bold. Because we forgot what it means to sleep without owning the world in our dreams..." she voiced, laced with drunken thoughts.

Henry leaned forward, and the throne creaked like a dying breath.

"We can’t afford madness," he rasped. "Not now. Not with the Empire at our gates. Not with... her..."

He stopped.

No one needed him to finish.

Everyone in that room had heard the reports.

The coasts had fallen.

And Berkimhum would not survive a siege without dreaming minds to command its defenses.

Because the soul unraveled without sleep.

A young mage burst through the doors, panting. His robes clung to him with sweat.

"Sire—!" he gasped. "The Arcanum! Reports from Ardaron, Ishval, Lunis... the archipelagos—"

He paused, chest heaving.

"No one’s slept," he finished. "Anywhere. Not even for seconds."

The silence that followed was not just grief.

It was a ’reckoning’.

Then Claire stood.

No one noticed at first.

She rose slowly, like a puppet caught in invisible strings. Her gaze unfocused. Her hand rose to her temple.

"...Atlas?" she whispered.

Isabella’s gaze snapped toward her. "What did you say?"

Claire didn’t answer.

She stepped backward. Her eyes dilated, body trembling.

The torches dimmed.

The walls pulsed.

Claire gasped.

The air around her shifted, not like wind—but like weight. Heavy, invisible. Her knees nearly buckled. She reached for the war table to steady herself, but her fingers passed through it.

The torches flickered. The floor rippled like water. For a moment, everything dimmed—not to blackness, but to ’absence’.

And then—he was there.

Not in body.

Not in image.

But in ’presence’.

She could feel him—’Atlas’. Not just the memory of him. Not the warmth he left in bedsheets or the echo of his voice in stone halls. This was ’now’. A pressure against her skin. A hand, unseen, brushing her shoulder. A breath—right beside her cheek.

And a voice.

Not whispered.

Not distant.

But ’inside’ her.

’The Lord... of Dreams.... has fallen.’

Claire’s lips parted. Her breath shook.

’The Dreaming .....was never a kingdom.... It was a prison.’

The room around her began to melt. Not physically—but ’symbolically’. Maps faded. Walls bent. Nobles froze mid-motion, torches dimmed to dull embers.

Claire clutched her own arms, trembling.

’I tore open the.... lock. He.... burned the gatekeeper.’

His voice wasn’t angry.

It wasn’t proud.

It was... resigned. Like a king announcing his own war crimes.

’And in his place... came the Demons."

Claire blinked.

Her pulse roared in her ears. "Demons? You mean—"

’Not from..... hell. Not from books. From beneath dreaming itself. Older than gods. Hungrier than..... death."

She tried to see him. Tried to force her eyes to focus on the heat she *knew* stood inches from her. But her vision blurred every time she tried.

"Atlas..." she whispered. "What did you do?"

’A reckoning,’ he said. ’A correction.....The world was sleeping too long. ....Now it will remember what it buried.’

His words shivered down her spine like ice poured into her veins.

Claire’s legs gave out. She sank to her knees.

"But how do we fight that?" she asked. "How do we fight something no one remembers?"

"You don’t," Atlas said.

"You ’remember’ it first."

And then—

Silence.

The world blinked.

She was back in the war chamber. Gasps. Motion. Torches bright again. No one had noticed she’d gone.

Except Isabella.

Who watched her with a gaze that said: ’what the fuck happened?’

Claire didn’t speak.

She didn’t move.

But one word etched itself into her heart like flame on glass.

Reckoning