When the familiar announcement reached him, Kurogai paused, then felt a rush of elation he had not expected. He had not heard that voice in a long time. The condition for his second pupil ring to activate was clear: sufficient magical knowledge. The first time, he had opened the Duplicate Eye inside Kamar-Taj's library, and the second time he had unlocked the Eye of Annihilation because Kaecilius had used dark magic. After so long, Kurogai's magic eye had not reawakened. Now, years later, a new pupil technique surfaced as soon as he touched fresh arcane material.
It was gratifying that it had triggered immediately, he thought, pulse quickening. Given his progress before, this made sense. After opening the Eye of Annihilation, he had focused on tracing the ancient magicians who had left traces in Kamar-Taj. The private collections and hidden lore of the ancients outstripped the formal library many times over. By the time he had left for Asgard, his arcane knowledge had been pushed to the brink; now, with this new insight, his second pupil ring would saturate and open another technique.
He raised the second pupil ring and promoted it. A warm current rose above the ring and flowed down his optic nerve, converging on his eyes and subtly reshaping them. When he opened his eyes, vermilion dots arranged in longitudinal lines had appeared within his pupils, coalescing into an unfamiliar sigil.
Dream Eye, he murmured inwardly, recognizing the pattern. In the old texts of The Legend of the Legendary Brave one of the five demon eyes was called the Dream Eye, a power that let its bearer peer into another's sleep. Dreams are in the eye, the proverb said.
This new Dream Eye behaved similarly, though with differences. Traditionally, the Dream Eye required the target to be asleep to see into their dreams. Kurogai's variation could force a weaker mind into sleep, making it possible to access dreams by compelling slumber when his mental strength overmatched the target.
Interesting, he thought. This ability was not primarily offensive. It leaned toward support and reconnaissance. Dreams could yield secrets, fragments of memory, impressions the waking mind hid. Yet information was only the basic application. The true utility of a power over dreams, he realized, lay in shaping dreams themselves. If he could manipulate that realm, the implications were formidable.
A voice interrupted his musings. Thor had been speaking to Sif, who stood close by and watched Kurogai with a mixture of curiosity and guarded concern. Sif had been vigilant, worried he might act rashly, but now she seemed outwardly calm. Still, when Kurogai moved in a way she did not expect, her attention sharpened again.
"Just testing," he said, keeping his tone even. He meant only to experiment. Sif stood beside him, and Kurogai directed the Dream Eye toward her. Their gazes met for a moment. Then his eyes glowed, and an irresistible tide of sleep washed over her. Her legs folded, she sank to the ground, and rest took her without resistance.
The potency of forcing someone into sleep struck him. On a battlefield, compelling an enemy to sleep would neutralize a threat and often decide engagements. But his focus remained on the Dream Eye's deeper function. He closed his own eyes deliberately, and his consciousness slipped into a dreaming state that felt more tangible than any trance before.
Within that sleep he found a dream that was unmistakably Sif's. In it she held her long sword, and across from her stood a version of Kurogai who held a magic tome. The dream replayed the moment that had just transpired, with Sif on guard against him. The real Kurogai watched from the edges of the scene while the dream presented an imaginary confrontation, a strange doubling of reality.
"Are you planning to invade Asgard?" the dream-Sif demanded. Her voice carried the fierce conviction he expected.
"Yes," the dream-Kurogai answered with a tone of arrogant triumph, "Asgard will be mine. You will serve me. Bow willingly and I will make you my princess."
"Don't be deluded. I will never bow to you. I will annihilate you, demon. Kill him," dream-Sif roared as she charged, blade raised.
In the dream, the other Kurogai laughed, voice like a herald of conquest, and threatened to subdue Asgard and claim Sif as his own, conjuring images of legions and offspring to mock her defiance. They clashed in a vivid duel, cinematic and intense, as though pulled from myth.
Watching that version of himself provoke Sif, the real Kurogai felt a jolt. The scene was a distorted mirror of how others might imagine him: a conqueror, a dark sovereign bent on domination. It was unsettling to see an echo of that image manifested in Sif's subconscious, the way she perceived him in a tempest of fear and defiance.
He had not intended to insert such extremes into her mind. Yet the dream contained those themes, and that offered insight into how powerful presumptions about him could be. Dreams tended to magnify fears, fantasies, archetypes. For Sif, who trusted in steel and honor, the image of a demonic ruler seeking to subjugate Asgard had taken frightening clarity.
Kurogai braced himself against the temptation to exploit that fear. The aim of his experiment was not to humiliate or break allies, but to understand, and perhaps to find subtle ways to protect or guide them. Knowledge, he knew, could be a double-edged sword. Misused, the Dream Eye would betray trust and shape realities he might later regret.
He let the vision play out a little longer, analyzing details: the tempo of Sif's movements, the emotions layered under her words, the faint symbolic images at the edge of the dreamscape. Bits of memory and symbolic matter rose up and dissolved like clouds, and from those he gleaned impressions: a stubborn refusal to submit, fierce loyalty to Asgard, and, unexpectedly, a flicker of curiosity about the strange man she could not easily categorize.
When the dream began to fade, Kurogai eased his focus and withdrew. Sif's breathing deepened and stabilized. He opened his eyes to see her still slumped, the faint color of rest on her cheeks. Even as she slept, the dream had provided him more than confirmation of the Dream Eye's mechanics. It suggested how others framed him and reminded him to be cautious with a power that reached into the most intimate, vulnerable places of the mind.
The possibilities were vast, and so were the dangers. Kurogai Alexander Blackwood, alone for a moment with the new sight, understood that mastery would require restraint, tact, and disciplined purpose. For now, he would study the ability, learn its boundaries, and decide how it could serve the greater battles to come.
____
Send Power stones 🥀
Advanced chapters are available on patreon
Patreon.com/Zphyr