Editing City Series:Volume6c Chapter2 (section)

===Part 1===

Hazel found herself kneeling in a dark clearing.

It was nighttime, but the sky was a dark red. The wind was blowing.

The ground below her was made of sand. This was a schoolyard giving a view of the crimson sky.

…''This is that bad dream I keep having recently.

The word dream helped her “wake up” in the dream.

But she did not actually wake up from the dream.

…''It’s the same dream I had when I came down with a fever in the Heidenheim they brought me to after arresting me in the middle of class 5 years ago.

The dream had returned now that she was 20. When she had asked the college doctor about it, they had said it was probably just the Nightmare Syndrome going around recently.

…''But this nightmare has plagued me for a while. It isn’t some new condition.

Nightmare Syndrome caused other people to be overwhelmed by indescribable anxiety as they slept, but Hazel’s nightmares had clear images, sounds, and other senses. And the events in the dream changed each time.

Now that she was partially awake in the dream, the images moved around her, the sounds reached her ears, and her skin sensitively picked up everything it could.

She had fallen to her knees after being shot and a large group surrounded her.

The stinging pain in her right chest quickly changed to such intense agony that she thought her entire body was breaking apart.

The distant sounds of sword fighting told her someone was still fighting out there, but she could not look to see who. She was in too much pain.

A woman stepped forward from the group of black-uniformed soldiers surrounding her.

Hazel did not recognize her.

She wore a green men’s suit and her long brown hair was worn in a braid.

Only now did Hazel realize how weirdly calm she was for having just been shot.

Her senses were sharp.

She could smell the sandy ground and the grassy scent carried by the wind. She could feel the wind and her hair blowing in it.

Of course…

…''I have no memory of this.

The dream was showing her this image.

The background resembled her former school and the smell of the dirt and wind reminded her so much of her school days in Germany.

This was only a dream. It was not real.

She kept telling herself that to wake herself up while she tried to bear with the pain coursing through her body.

It didn’t work.

The woman stood motionless before her. She did not even reach out a hand to help Hazel up.

But she did speak in too quiet a voice for anyone but Hazel to hear.

“Now, it is time to say goodbye to your free destiny. We have started down the path that leads to my death.”

Hazel’s mind was shocked into focus by the phrase “say goodbye”.

And the woman said more.

“You are just like us, Messiah. You fight only for the present.”

Those words reflexively sent Hazel’s thoughts in the usual direction.

…''Only for the present?

She had the will and a reason to fight.

…''I don’t want to run away, so I choose to fight.

“You cannot see where this fight leads either, can you? Or what it is you want to do once it is all over. …But that is fine. For you are only a tool for us. You are the Messiah who keeps the Nibelung turning.”

“…!?”

Her mind rejected that statement. But it was a reflexive thing with nothing to back it up.

…''There are things I want to do!

She woke up as soon as she shouted her response.