The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 73: Unlock

Chapter 73: Chapter 73: Unlock

[Welcome back, Host.]

The sound didn’t just leave his throat—it tore free like a blade dragging through meat and memory. His lungs convulsed. His hands spasmed. Sweat poured from him in sheets, clinging to his chest like wet silk, his hair matted and slick with salt and fever.

The air burned.

The sky was wrong.

The trees — wrong. The wind — wrong.

No.

Not wrong.

Mortal.

Just ’mortal’

No singing stars. No whispering voids. No impossible colors bleeding from the clouds. Just the taste of dirt. The ache of breath. The ordinary, ’boring’, ’beautiful’ pain of being a man.

He collapsed backward into the earth, gasping.

The stars above were still.

The moon did not weep.

The grass didn’t breathe.

This was ’the ridge’

The same ridge where it had all begun—where he’d kissed Eli’s temple, bleeding and betrayed. Where he’d thrown himself into the abyss below the Dark Continent. Where he’d stopped being Atlas, and started becoming something else.

Now he was back.

And oh, how he had missed dirt that didn’t shift under emotion.

A sky that didn’t bleed memories.

A body that didn’t pulse with borrowed divinity.

He tried to laugh.

But the laugh curdled into a choke.

And then—

[Memory detected]

[Alert: Locked Memory Cluster Detected — Source: GUIDE. Category: Battle of the Dreaming.]

The notification chimed softly, too softly for what it implied. Atlas flinched as the words shimmered across his vision.

[Timestamp: During System Merge. Access restricted by cognitive protection protocols.]

[Would you like to unlock this sequence?]

Atlas groaned. "Are you serious?"

His voice cracked under the weight of his body, his breath dragging across ragged lungs.

He could feel the memory cluster — a pulsing knot just behind his eyes. It wasn’t pain. It was pressure. Like a dam holding back something not meant for human minds. Images whispered beneath the surface — fragments of the Guide standing against Dracula, of laws shattering, of monsters blinking into awareness.

Atlas shut his eyes tight.

"I just got back," he muttered. "I just got out."

His entire being ached for stillness. For silence. For the permission to rest.

[Caution: Memory integrity unstable. Emotional disruption likely.]

The system paused.

[You may decline.]

And for a moment, he almost did.

For once in his life, he wanted to say no. No to power. No to prophecy. No to being the hero, the tool, the chosen. No to carrying the weight.

But then... a flicker.

A face.

A crown made of frost.

Violet eyes burning with regret.

Elizabeth.

He thought of her walking back to her empire, her steps heavy with war. Of Lara, standing on a broken kingdom. Of Dracula, weeping in silence. Of the world — a world without sleep, without dreams — without him to remember how it ended.

He sighed.

Because he understood something now.

If he didn’t watch it, if he didn’t carry it — no one would.

And someone had to remember.

Someone had to be the witness. Witness to the moment when the world changed. Like the Guide said, the Dreaming was dead.

"...Fine," he whispered. "Show me."

[Unlocking memory.]

[Brace for overflow.]

[Memories unlocking....]

’It hit’

A spike — no, a ’sword’— of pure ’remembering’ drove through his spine and twisted up toward his brain. His back arched violently, muscles seizing, mouth open in a scream that wouldn’t come.

Not metaphor.

Not vision.

Memory.

A torrent of it.

The Guide’s footsteps across fractal oceans.

Dracula, kneeling in a field of dead lullabies.

The Elders—rising, weeping, devouring concept.

The collapse

The end.

His ears bled.

His eyes went white.

His mouth opened again—

—and this time, the scream DID come.

"HaaaAAAAAAAAAAAHHH—!!"

It roared across the ridge, across the valley, across the stars that no longer blinked.

Blood poured from his nose. His mouth. His tear ducts.

He felt the memories ’eating’ through him — every second a dagger, every truth a splinter in the mind.

The ’death’ of the Dreaming’s military hierarchy.

The ’fall’ of the Demon King in flame and silence.

Eli — pierced through the chest, laughing through pain, screaming ’his’ name.

He saw the Dreaming die.

He saw the ’world’ change.

And it HURT.

More than flesh.

More than fire.

Because this pain was truth.

And truth does not yield.

[Stress Overload Detected.]

[Activating Countermeasures.]

[Using Skill: ’World Understanding’.]

[Applying Passive Buff: ’Meditative Mind.]

[Clarity Burst: Engaged.]

[Meditative Shield

Emotion Suppression

Lotus Bloom

Gentle Repose

Silent Heart

Soul Soothe

Mental Oasis

Tranquility Field

.

...]

[Stress Levels: *High*. Initiating spread.]

[Using skill: ’Observer’s Perspective’ on Atlas, Claire, Kury...]

His mind widened—fractured into branches. He felt himself split—his pain pushed into ’others’. Threads pulled through space, binding his overload to other awake minds.

And in their confusion, in their stunned awareness...

A voice whispered into everyone, his voice.

"The Lord of Dreams has fallen."

Another surge.

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

Faster now.

"I tore open the lock. I burned the gatekeeper."

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

One more crack—deep, final.

"Not from Hell. Not from books."

"From beneath dreaming itself. Older than gods. Hungrier than death."

Atlas clenched the earth.

"A reckoning," he said aloud. His voice no longer trembling. "A correction."

His nails dug into dirt.

"The world was sleeping too long."

Blood dripped from his mouth.

"Now it will remember what it buried."

[Host’s psyke stabilizing...]

[Deactivating active skills.]

[Mental functions normalizing...]

It stopped.

Not like a crash.

But like a tide ’retreating’

Atlas collapsed forward, spine curling. His body trembled in soft aftershocks—like a vessel that had held gods too long.

He gasped.

Air. ’Normal’ air.

The burn had faded.

The overload passed.

His heartbeat slowed—not the erratic thrum of panic, or the burning pulse of rage.

No demon’s heart.

No Guide’s rhythm.

Just Atlas.

Just a ’man’.

And it beat.

Slow.

Steady.

Measured like a ticking clock — not of countdown, but of existence.

He rolled onto his side, blinking up at the stars. They twinkled, uncaring.

And for the first time in years, they didn’t blink back.

"...fuck," he rasped.

The word cracked like glass in a temple.

A profanity that felt sacred.

He laughed — short, broken, gasping.

"Therapy," he muttered. "I need so much therapy. Like... ’gods-tier’therapy."

He wiped his face with the back of his shaking hand. The blood smeared, warm and oddly grounding.

He touched the earth. It felt real. Not metaphor. Not memory.

Just ’real’.

He laid there.

Long.

Breathing.

Letting the silence be ’silence’.

And then, slowly, one thought came.

It didn’t scream.

It didn’t burn.

It ’echoed’.

You’re the only one who can dream now.

He didn’t know if the Guide had planted it, or if it was his.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

Because it was true.

The Dreaming was gone.

Dracula had fallen.

The gates were broken.

And he—Atlas Von Roxweld—

Still dreamed.

Not the dreams of comfort.

Not fantasies.

Not illusions.

But dreams that burned.

Dreams of what could be.

Dreams that tore through fate and asked ’why not’.

He closed his eyes.

Not to sleep.

Sleep was dead.

But to rest.

Because ’he was not’

Not yet.

[Brain stat Unlocked.....Congratulations!!]