The lamps had burned down to threads of gold, their last breaths curling upward into faint wisps of smoke. The air was thick with the scent of melted wax and spent mana, that familiar metallic tang that always followed heavy use. The blue residue of magic still lingered, tracing lazy spirals through the air, pooling in the low corners of the chamber like fog that refused to leave.

Everyone else had long since gone quiet. Wallace's armor rested in a half-assembled heap against the wall, his shield leaning beside it like a slumbering sentinel. Ten's chains had gone still, no longer whispering against stone. Cordelia had long since slipped into trance, her breathing deep and steady, her mind no doubt wandering in dreams I couldn't enter. And Fallias… her soft, rhythmic breathing drifted from the corridor beyond — a quiet lullaby that, in another life, might have been enough to let me sleep.

But not tonight.

Only Lumivis remained awake with me — or rather, whatever passed for wakefulness in his kind. His glow hovered near the desk, pale and soft, a suspended moonlight that breathed with faint rhythm. It threw a shimmering reflection across the cube resting between us.

The Manuscript of the Star-Writer.

It pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat made of glass and light, whispering soundless syllables only the soul could hear. The thing practically watched me. Every flicker of my breath mirrored in its surface. Every thought I tried to bury echoed through its quiet hum.

I hadn't realized until now how loud silence could be.

"Is this where you've been hiding?" I finally asked. My voice cracked the stillness like a pebble dropped in an empty lake.

Lumivis tilted his head — not as a man would, but like a marionette trying to remember the motion of life. His voice, when it came, was low and measured, a wind threading through hollow wood. "The distance provided to me allowed… more freedoms," he said. "This cube, my lord, is beyond perfect for you in all things. I suggest absorbing it."

I exhaled, rubbing my temples. "You've been repeating that for hours. You ever think about how that sounds coming from a spirit that won't even tell me what it does?"

His light dimmed fractionally, the air cooling around him. "So would we like to know," he admitted. "The only certainty is that it reflects you. What you are — and perhaps what you will become."

I barked a laugh, sharp and bitter. "That's rich. Coming from a myth." I straightened, staring into that soft white glow. "Your kind are all born from the same story, aren't you? The gallows tree — the man who hanged himself for truth. Twenty-two spirits, each one an echo of that choice. And you…" I leaned forward. "You're the spirit of indecision. The one forced to choose when no right choice exists. That about right?"

Lumivis did not flinch. He rarely did. "That is accurate."

"Then tell me, Spirit of Indecision — who am I?"

His glow trembled slightly, as though a faint current had passed through it. For a few seconds he only regarded me, expression unreadable — not that his kind had faces in any human sense. When he spoke again, his tone was quieter. "That," he said, "is a question only you may answer."

"Convenient."

"I can tell you what others see," he went on, unbothered by my tone. "What they whisper when your back is turned. What they fear, or expect, or adore. But that is not you. You are who you believe yourself to be. Unless—"

"Unless I've lied to myself," I finished, flatly.

Lumivis inclined his head. "Yes."

I pushed away from the desk, pacing. My boots made soft sounds on the stone floor — muffled echoes in a room that felt far too big all of a sudden. "You want truth? Fine. Here's the truth."

I stopped beside the window, where the blue haze of mana had begun to gather like frost. "I'm angry. I'm infuriated. I'm tired of being manipulated by people who think they know what's best for me. Monarchs, spirits, Mother, the gods-damned laws of Demeterra itself." I turned, meeting his glow head-on. "I'm seventeen. Seventeen! And every choice I've made so far was made for me. By someone else. For someone else."

The words came sharper now, slicing through whatever restraint I had left. My pulse matched the flicker of the cube — one heartbeat, two, three — until its light seemed to rise with mine.

"I'm just a piece," I said. "A pawn pretending to be a king. And I'm—"

That was when I saw it.

The shimmer.

At first, I thought it was just exhaustion — the sort of thing that happens when you've gone too many nights without proper sleep. The corners of the room began to blur, like wet ink bleeding across parchment. The edges of the desk bent slightly, curving inward as though the wood had forgotten how to exist.

But then the distortion spread.

The walls melted into colorless gradients. The air thickened — heavy, syrup-slow, pressing against my skin.

And the sound… the sound stopped. No breathing from the corridor. No hum of mana. Not even the faint crackle of dying lamps.

I turned toward Lumivis. "Morres," I said quietly. "How long have I been in a dream?"

The world froze.

Lumivis's form — that serene glow of his — flickered once, then twice, before rippling outward like a reflection disturbed by stone. His light collapsed inward, drawing tight into a human outline. When he spoke, his voice was softer now, almost hollow.

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"You only just noticed."

My heart jumped. "Answer me," I snapped. "How long?"

The figure's glow wavered. "You were meant to be sent to my otherrealm," the voice said — but it wasn't Lumivis's anymore. The tone was deeper, rougher, edged with something real. "To slay the viraloid. That was the task. But this…" The outline shifted, color returning, features slowly coalescing. "This is something else."

"Morres." I swallowed the name like a curse. "You're borrowing his form."

He nodded once. The light finally settled into the man I knew — faintly gaunt, eyes deep with worry, his armor's runes glowing dimly under spectral light. "I had to. His presence was still anchored to you. I needed a shell to speak through."

"What happened?" I asked. "Why can't I wake up?"

Morres's expression tightened. "Because you aren't asleep."

That stopped me.

"What?"

"This isn't a dream in the sense you understand it," he said. "This is an induced state. Something — or someone — has anchored you inside your own mind. A constructed layer, drawn from your memories and fears. Everything you see is an imitation."

I looked around. The realization settled cold in my chest. The walls, the desk, even the cube — all of it felt too perfect, too quiet.

"Then the cube…?"

"Fake," he said grimly. "Fabricated to keep you engaged."

My stomach turned. "So why? To keep me here? For what?"

Morres crossed his arms, eyes scanning the warped air like a soldier watching for invisible arrows. "You were supposed to return from the otherrealm after cleansing the viraloid infestation. But something went wrong. The viraloids burned themselves out far too quickly — almost as if something consumed them through you."

"That doesn't sound like something that happens by accident."

"It doesn't," Morres agreed. "Your blood was infected, Alexander. They nested inside you for days before the purification rites caught up. And when they burned away, they didn't just die — they converted."

My pulse stuttered. "Converted into what?"

He looked at me — and that look told me he didn't want to say. "Mana. Potent mana. Dense enough to distort your inner realm. Enough that even I can't regain control of my tower through the link."

"You should have full authority over it," I said, my mind spinning. "You're the Warden of the Tower of Veil. If you've lost that…"

"It means one of three things," Morres interrupted. "First: the realm itself is shifting to keep you here. Second: it's making you prisoner. Third—" he hesitated "—you are ascending."

That word hung there, vibrating with a power I didn't like.

I forced a laugh that sounded more like a crack in glass. "What's the likelihood of the last one?"

"Not zero," he said simply. "Which is what frightens me."

"Why?"

"Because not even a Dominus can sustain a full life-realm until they reach Soul-Tier Seven," Morres said, voice heavy with warning. "It's the first stage where their essence stabilizes enough to build reality from thought. You are not there yet, Alexander. You shouldn't even be close."

"And yet here we are."

He didn't answer that. The silence was answer enough.

Morres's form flickered again, the boundaries of his presence thinning. "Listen to me. There isn't time. Whatever's built this — it's maintaining it by feeding off your focus. The longer you look, the longer you think, the stronger it gets. You have to break pattern. Disrupt the logic of this place."

"How?" I asked.

"Run," he said simply. "Don't fight it. Don't reason with it. Run. Everything here is designed to keep you engaged — to trick your mind into weaving its own prison. The cube, the room, the conversation… even me."

I stared at him. "You're saying even you might not be real."

He hesitated. "Possibly. But if I'm not, then whoever's speaking through me knows enough to fear what happens if you wake."

That didn't help.

"Find any irregularity," he continued. "Something that doesn't belong. A misplaced object, a missing shadow — anything. And if you can't find one…" He paused, eyes narrowing. "Then remember who you are."

"That's vague as hell."

"It's the only thing that's truly yours in here," Morres said. "Every lie they tell you will be built around your truths. Anchor yourself to one thought that you know is real."

I swallowed hard. "And if that fails?"

His expression darkened. "Then find a book."

I blinked. "A book?"

He nodded. "You're a Tome-Walker, Alexander. That connection still runs through you — even if this place has stolen every other thread. If you find a written work, even a fragment, you might be able to fall through it. Connect back to the true library."

I frowned. "You make it sound easy."

"It won't be pretty," Morres said grimly. "It never is."

The world flickered again. The room began to bleed colors it didn't have before — purples where there should be blues, gold seeping into shadow. The cube pulsed brighter, now frantic, a dying heart in glass.

And underneath it all, I heard something. A whisper. A low, steady, rhythmic chant in a language I almost understood.

The sound of reading.

I spun toward it, scanning the distortion. "Morres?"

But his image was already breaking apart. His outline fractured like a cracked mirror, shards of light peeling away into nothing.

Before he vanished entirely, he managed a final breath — a whisper that barely reached me.

"His library, Alexander. Danatallion's."

The world convulsed.

The cube shattered in light. The air burst into fireless flame — letters and runes spiraling upward like ash. My knees hit the ground before I even realized I was falling, my ears ringing with the echo of Morres's last word.

Danatallion.

The name burned in my chest like a brand, pulling at the threads of reality itself. And then — as the dream began to collapse inward, folding over me like a closing book — I saw them.

Words. Thousands of them. Falling like snow.

Each one whispered a truth, a lie, or a memory. Each one carried a piece of me.

And in that endless cascade of ink and light, I understood what Morres had meant. This wasn't just a dream.

It was a story. And I was the one trapped inside it.

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