The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 85: Abyss

Chapter 85: Chapter 85: Abyss

The room tilted.

The world held its breath.

One noble staggered back slightly, gripping the edge of a bench for support.

Another crossed himself, whispering a prayer against cursed names.

A third—Duke Elbern—laughed once, sharp and mocking. "And i will ask once more....what proof have you brought, then? A whisper in the wind? The screams of a battlefield hallucination?" He blurted now, his tone sharp as they come.

"Watch your tone," Lara said, steel edging her syllables.

But Claire held up a hand.

"No need," she said. "They’ll see the truth soon enough."

She turned slowly.

"Our armies dwindle. Our coffers bleed. The Empire’s soldiers never sleep. You feel it, don’t you?"

A shift.

A silence.

Even the nobles couldn’t lie about that.

None of them had dreamed in weeks. None of them dared say it. But the signs had begun — memory loss, fatigue, whispering voices that came only when one tried to close their eyes.

They were being starved.

But not of food.

Of rest.

Of hope.

Claire let the silence settle.

Then she struck.

"I propose," she said slowly, "that the war council delay its gathering. That we pause all operations until Prince Atlas arrives. Until his voice is heard."

Lara stepped forward beside her. Her voice, thunder.

"I second the motion."

Henry did not speak at once.

His face remained still. But his hands — the ones gripping the throne — trembled.

And then came the crack.

The whisper.

The break in the mask.

"...You still believe in him," he muttered.

He looked at them — Claire, Lara — and for a moment, the king vanished. Only the man remained.

The man who had once seen a strange child with unnatural eyes and thought, ’He’s dangerous.’

’He could be used.’

And when he stopped being useful, he’d been cast aside.

And now?

He had become a storm.

A return that could not be caged.

"...Very well," Henry said softly.

"But if you delay this meeting—if you pin our future on the boy you let vanish—then may the gods help you when he fails."

Lara’s breath caught.

Not from fear.

But from fury.

But before she could speak—

Claire laid a hand on her shoulder.

Not now.

The court stirred again.

But the nobles did not cheer.

They did not protest.

They watched.

Some calculating. Some afraid.

All waiting.

The throne room emptied slowly.

Not in noise, but in weight. Nobles filtered out like smoke from a dying hearth — whispering, scheming, adjusting plans they hadn’t yet had time to form. A few spared Lara glances as they passed, most of them unreadable.

But none of them dared speak to her.

Not after what she had said.

Not after what she had become.

When the doors closed, silence returned like a storm about to break.

Lara stood at the edge of the dais. She hadn’t moved since her father’s final words. Claire had stepped away, speaking with the chamberlain in low, clipped tones. Isabella lingered a few steps behind, her arms folded tightly across her chest, watching her daughter as if afraid the wrong word might shatter something permanently.

And maybe it would.

Lara didn’t look at either of them.

Her hand rested on the hilt of her sword, and her eyes traced the red threadwork in the rug beneath her boots — the same pattern she remembered from childhood. A crown with three blades beneath it. Back then, she used to trace those shapes with her fingers, whispering little oaths. That she’d protect the realm. She would be strong. That she’d never be weak no longer.

She was nine.

Now she stood in bloodied armor, with hundreds of men’s deaths still clinging to her breath, and realized none of those oaths meant anything.

Not in a kingdom ruled by shadows.

Her people were starving. Their crops barely held. Their soldiers barely slept.

The Empire loomed with immortal teeth and sleepless eyes.

And the court... talked.

Laughed.

Doubted.

She clenched her jaw.

’They’re not afraid of war. They’re afraid of change. Even after many sleepless nights. They stay the same...’

Like herself, they all bore it now.

Red eyes

Not from crying. Not from sickness. But from the quiet, persistent absence of sleep. A subtle hollowness beneath their gaze, like something had been gently scooped out from behind the iris.

Even the haughtiest nobles, those who powdered their faces and hid behind silk veils, wore that same unmistakable sign: fatigue without rest.

Lara saw it. Felt it.

And she said nothing.

Not yet.

Her eyes drifted along the long corridor—the councilors, the scribes, the guards at their posts. None dared speak of it aloud, but she could feel it gnawing under their skin. The silence of sleep was no longer a silence of peace. It was an absence. A blank space where dreams once bloomed.

Lara wanted to ask them.

Wanted to say: *Do you feel it too? The weight of nothing when you close your eyes?*

But she didn’t.

Because only he could answer that question.

Atlas.

He had always known things beyond what he should. Had always peered behind the veil, even when the world refused to acknowledge it.

She would wait.

And then—her breath caught.

A sudden pulse.

Not pain. Not system-triggered damage.

’A shift.’

It wasn’t just her.

It was ’everyone’.

The air grew heavy, like humidity thick with mana—but not magic. Not spell-based. Something deeper. ’Older’. Her skin prickled with the sensation of thousands of souls beginning to stir in ways they weren’t meant to.

Her system flickered at the edge of her vision.

[Status Update: Mana Surge Detected]

[Origin: – Unstable Subconscious ]

She inhaled sharply.

’It had begun the moment the Dreaming died.’

It was subtle at first—a faint vibration in her bones, like the hum of a blade before it sings. Her body still felt exhaustion, yes—but it no longer crushed her. The yawns stopped halfway, her limbs heavier but strangely aware.

She should have collapsed by now.

And yet... she remained.

A tension hummed behind her eyes.

Her mind—it was different now. Not entirely her own, not fully something else. A strange rhythm emerged between her waking thoughts and something deeper—her subconscious no longer lying dormant but

’whispering’.

Not words.

Not images.

Abstract sensations. Fleeting epiphanies. Hints of herself she’d never accessed before.

It was as if a door had opened within her.

A door that had always existed, yet had never been meant to unlock.

’This... this isn’t sleep. It’s not even wakefulness. It’s... something between.’

She glanced around again.

The others were experiencing it too. She could see it now—the stiffness in their posture, the alertness beneath fatigue, the way some turned their heads to sounds that hadn’t yet happened.

They all felt it but could say it aloud. Scared if they would be called madmen.

But She had her system.

And it spoke again.

[Notice: A Unconscious Realm is Stabilizing...]

[...Caution: Early Stage Mind-Wake Syndrome Detected]

Lara swallowed hard.

Her instincts screamed.

Something inside her soul twisted—not in pain, but in ’depth’. Like her thoughts had reached too far inward and touched something vast and unknowable.

’The mind is an abyss.’

And if humanity stared into it too long, ’it would stare back.’

And then it did.

A chime.

Soft.

Cold.

Too sharp for mortal ears.

[Notification!]

[...An Unknown Entity is watching you.]

[...Source: The Depth of the broken Dreaming.]

Her thoughts shattered for a moment.

’...What?’

She stopped walking.

Her boots locked in place, heels clicking once before silence returned.

Her heartbeat slowed.

Not in fear.

But in preparation.

The system’s words didn’t elaborate. They never did when real things were watching.

She glanced behind her.

Claire and Isabella had stopped too, just a few steps back.

They felt it.

Not the system, perhaps, but something else.

A ripple. A chill. A sudden sense that the air had grown too tight around them.

Claire noticed first.

"Lara?"

Lara didn’t speak.

Her gaze roamed the room — not for assassins or spies, but for shadows that shouldn’t have moved.

Her heart thudded once. Twice. Faster.

Then steadied.

She was not afraid.

But she was no longer alone.

"Love?" Isabella moved to her side. Her hand reached for Lara’s arm. "Are you—"

Lara pulled away. Not roughly, but firmly. Like one does from a vision they don’t yet understand.

Her breath slowed. Her thoughts did not.

That presence — it hadn’t felt hostile. But it hadn’t felt passive either.

It was aware.

Intimately.

Impossibly.

As if something from the broken edge of sleep had seen her name in a dream, and was now... ’curious’.

She turned to Claire.

But Claire was watching Isabella now, not her.

"Just rest, child," Isabella was whispering. "Let the council figure this out. You’ve done your part."

Claire’s eyes narrowed.

She didn’t like the tone.

Didn’t trust it.

"...If you’d just—" she began.

"Just shut it," Isabella snapped, voice steel-wrapped velvet. "I’m her mother. You’re not."

Claire flinched.

Not outwardly. Not visibly.

But Isabella caught the twitch in her eye. The faint stiffening in her spine. It was the smallest thing. But it told her everything.

The tension. The fracture that had always existed between the two of them.

And it was about to split wide open.

’Later,’ Claire thought.

Lara stepped forward, past both women, and moved down the hall toward the war chamber.

No word.

No explanation.

Claire followed last.

No protest this time.

But before she stepped through the archway, she looked back. Just once. Toward the tall stained-glass windows, now cast in pale blue twilight.

And under her breath, so quiet even the guards couldn’t hear:

"...Come fast, Atlas."

Her voice trembled.

Not with fear.

But with the weight of too much waiting.

"We need your miracle."