The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 67: When the World Forgot to Sleep

Their eyes of reverence still lingered in her ears.

Even as the cold wind clawed down the stone roads, even as her boots touched the cracked cobblestone of Berkimhum’s outer rim, Lara felt the weight of her own words trailing behind her like a cloak woven of expectation. Her speech had not been poetry. It had been a scream in a burning house. But they had heard it—the people. The weary, ash-dusted, almost-broken people.

And for the first time in what felt like centuries, they looked up and saw not doom, but her.

They called her ’princess’.

As if the title hadn’t been carved from their own suffering.

As if it had not once tasted like mockery on her tongue.

When she passed through the crowd, marching forward at the head of the war caravan, her system flickered faintly behind her eyes. Notifications pulsed like gentle knocks on her skull—small, persistent.

[Mana Concentration Rising: 3 individuals. Source: civilian sector.]

Her eyes flicked toward the crowd’s edge. A cloaked figure stood too still. A child’s gaze glowed a second too long. A baker’s boy wrung his hands, not from cold, but the compression of power poorly hidden.

Lara said nothing.

Not now.

They had a kingdom to reach. A capital to reclaim. And no time to dissect every shadowed face and system anomaly.

So she marched.

Not with certainty.

But with something heavier.

Hope.

Hope that her words were not just wind. That the crownless prince of Berkimhum—the Mad One, her brother, her sin, her savior—would return like a storm to raze the Empire’s dreams to ash.

She did not pray. But she hoped.

And in this land, hope and prayer had become the same thing.

The tavern they stopped at was older than history. Its bones groaned with every gust of wind. The roof sagged like a man who had seen too many winters. The walls leaned inward, not to collapse, but as if trying to whisper to each other secrets too ancient to bear.

The innkeeper, hollow-eyed and hushed, gave them rooms without words.

War didn’t need pleasantries. Only places to breathe.

Lara’s room smelled faintly of cedar, candle wax, and old parchment. The kind of scent that made you feel like time had curled up and slept here long before you. The bed sagged under her weight like it remembered better bodies, less burdened ones.

She removed her armor slowly—pauldron, vambrace, chestplate—each piece falling away like a shell grown too tight. Her shoulders rolled, sore. Her back ached with hours of rigid command.

She lay down.

The mattress sighed.

Her eyes closed.

And still—nothing.

No dreams.

No sleep.

Not even the prelude to either.

Just silence.

Her eyes opened as if they had never closed.

The candle by her bedside burned in still air, the flame strangely still—as though the world itself were holding its breath.

Lara sat up, the blankets whispering against her skin like ghosts retreating from a grave. A part of her, the soldier part, hoped it was just adrenaline. War nerves. Another sleepless night, nothing more.

But her system buzzed.

[No Sleep Detected. Time Elapsed: 4 hours, 32 minutes.]

[Dream Attempt: Blocked.]

Blocked?

She touched her temples, as if pressure could restart what had failed to begin.

"...Tch," she muttered, dragging her fingers down her face. "Get a grip, idiot. It’s just—"

But she stopped.

Because the silence wasn’t hers alone.

She rose, bare feet against cold wood. The floor creaked—not in protest, but like an old friend trying to warn her.

Outside her door, the hallway pulsed with quiet dread.

Not wind. Not rats.

’Footsteps.’

Deliberate. Measured. Heavy with exhaustion that couldn’t sink.

She opened the door.

Half her unit stood in the corridor.

Beta leaned against the wall, arms crossed, face pale. The shadows under his eyes weren’t just fatigue—they were the ’void where rest should’ve lived’.Denish paced, hands twitching, eyes too wide. Captain Elayn sat on the stairs, one hand white-knuckled around the banister.

Lara stared.

"...Why...?"

"We can’t sleep," Elayn said, voice dry. Empty.

Lara blinked. "None of—?"

"I asked the innkeeper," Elior cut in. His hands trembled. "Everyone. Not just soldiers. Every person in this town. No one’s slept. Not even for a moment."

Lara’s stomach turned.

"That’s not—"

"Natural?" Denish snapped. "You think?"

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she activated her system.

[No Sleep Detected: Full Village Sync Achieved]

[Error: Realm ’The Dreaming’ Is Inaccessible]

[Ego is not Strong enough.]

Her pulse throbbed in her ears.

She stormed down the stairs, boots forgotten behind her. Cold bit at her toes. She didn’t care.

The tavern’s front door groaned as she pushed it open.

And the world outside did not look dead.

It looked ’awake’—horribly, endlessly awake.

Candles flickered in windows. Horses shifted in their pens. People moved—slowly, aimlessly—but with open eyes and dragging limbs.

A little girl sobbed into her father’s chest.

"I tried, papa. I was tired... I tried. But... every time I close my eyes, I fall in. And then I fall right back out."

The father hugged her tighter.

His own eyes were bloodshot.

Lara’s throat burned.

Sleep had been stolen.

Not killed. ’Sealed’.

She turned back to her team, to the silent, shivering line of soldiers who had seen war but never ’this’.

"Say it," she said. "Say what I’m already thinking."

Elayn looked down. "The Dreaming..."

"The Third Realm..," Elior whispered.

"Dracula," Ale finished, her voice barely more than a breath.

Lara closed her eyes.

Brother, what is happening there....?

She remembered the crack in the sky. The system scream. The day the world shifted on its axis without asking.

She had known then—had felt it. Something ancient had broken. And now the weight of it was crushing the world beneath a sleepless moon.

Behind them, the tavern door creaked.

The innkeeper stood in the frame.

Pale. Wide-eyed. His voice a tremble.

"...Your highness... what is happening?"

Lara didn’t answer.

Because the answer wasn’t hers.

Because ’what if it was Atlas?’

What if he had cracked open the Third Realm—and left this world stranded without dreams?

What if the man they needed most...

Was the one pulling the stars from the sky?

She looked up.

No clouds. No moon. freewebnoveℓ.com

Only endless, stinging light.

’Sleep is a door,’ she remembered her brother once whispering, after their first shared battle. ’Not just rest. A door. Proof you made it through the day.’

And now, someone had slammed that door shut.

.

.

Far above the town square, cloaked in shadow atop the rusted spire of the ruined bell tower, three figures stood unmoving.

They had been there since dusk.

They had waited for sleep.

And it had never come.

"The people were supposed to fall asleep by now," whispered the first, a tall figure whose voice buzzed like hornets beneath silk. "A sleeping crowd. A sleeping target. That was the plan."

"It’s not working anywhere," murmured the second—a slender shape cloaked in robes that shimmered faintly, reflecting no color that belonged to the living. "Don’t know what’s happening...strange."

"She saw us," said the third. A low, rumbling voice, made of gravel and mourning. "When she drove the blade into the stone... her eyes met mine. Just for a second."

The others went still.

"And she let us go?" the first hissed.

"No," said the third. "She chose not to act."

A tense beat passed. Wind stirred the edges of their cloaks. Below them, Lara stood beneath the dying torches of the square, her shoulders square, her hands still faintly glowing with mana.

"She’s too powerful when awake," the second murmured. "We wouldn’t succeed."

"We weren’t sent to fail," said the first. "We were sent to ensure silence. She is not silent."

The third looked toward the eastern horizon, where distant, twisted spires clawed upward into the clouds—far beyond the reach of this kingdom. A land wrapped in nightmares and ruin.

"She is not our target anymore," he said at last. "The Empress remains in the Dark Continent. Alive or dying, she is ours to recover."

"For the Empire?" the second asked.

"No," said the third. "For her."

They did not argue.

One by one, they stepped off the spire—and vanished into the smoke-stained wind, too fast for eyes, too quiet for dreams. They marched.

For the Empress.