Day in the story: 13th December (Saturday)

I spent nearly an hour painting our current location into my Travel Grimoire. As brutal as this whole ordeal had been, Ideworld still held a strange kind of beauty. Haunting, surreal but beautiful all the same.

I painted us on the edge of the skyscraper, which in my picture was horizontal, like a bridge suspended midair. But instead of stretching over water, we overlooked a sea of clouds, sunlight, and the thin shimmer of atmosphere. An endless void of sky.

To my right, I painted the Mirrored City. To the left, Ideworld's version of New York. They weren't twins. The Mirrored City looked closer to the original with its glass rooftops, familiar skyline, buildings pulled right out of Earth's New York, minus a few towering skyscrapers that stretched across the air like spines, linking this city to the one grounded in ideas.

The left side, the altered New York was wilder. It had been shaped by thought, warped by the minds of people who lived here. Roof-bridges stretched between buildings. A floating Chinatown, born from half-remembered streets. The concrete jungle, remembered not as it was, but as it was felt. I couldn't paint it all. Not in one scene, but I left traces. A red paper lantern drifting midair. A computer mouse scuttling over the glass of the bridge like it belonged there.

And I painted us.

All five.

Zoe, in her silvery form, hovered beside Peter in his black suit, both gazing out at the distant bridges like they were studying the breath of the air between them. Malik stood tall over two echoes of himself, like memories stitched in gold and violet. Nick sat on a blanket, prepping food for us. Focused, grounded. And me, in the middle, painting.

No Unreflected. No pursuit. No violence. Just peace, silence, and the kind of beauty only a soul can see when it's finally still.

I could've finished it minutes ago as I felt the anchor click into place. The memory had formed well enough for my soul to accept. But I kept painting. Kept brushing in the light, the movement, the idea of stillness.

Malik caught my eye, moving like a machine until he suddenly dropped into a breakdance pose I didn't recognize, spun, then landed on his feet and kept flowing into something new. He didn't need a pod or a phone. Said he could echo the songs straight from his mind. His power worked like his brother's that way. Robbie, or Rhythm as I knew him before. But while Malik's ability turned inward, Robbie's had reached out.

The music coming from his power was clearly visible when he used as streaks of his shadowlight in their usual shades of purple, blue, and gold streamed from his ears. Sometimes they appeared as a mist-like glow; other times, they burst out violently in jolts of electric light.

Nick, meanwhile, spent the time in quiet contemplation. He meditated, then ate. Raw eggs he'd salvaged from that apartment I woke up in. Not his favorite, clearly, but his body needed the protein and regeneration source. He followed it up with salted fish from home, chicken parmesan, even some grilled insects. Easy to call him a glutton, but this wasn't indulgence. This was preparation. For him, eating was what painting was for me.

When I finally finished the painting, two feelings settled over me like a heavy blanket.

First was boredom. My life had been a relentless blur of movement, decisions, danger. There was rarely enough time for something as still as boredom. It arrived second time today like an old stranger, unfamiliar but not unwelcome. For a moment, I just lay there, staring at the infinite stretch of sky above, letting the stillness wash over me.

But then came the second feeling, quieter, darker, and far more enduring: guilt. It slipped in under the stillness, replacing boredom like a tide swallowing the shore. And once it had a foothold, it gripped hard.

It was my fault. All of it. Or at least, enough of it to matter.

I never should've started anything with Jason, not with the imbalance between us so obvious from the start. I knew what he felt. I knew mine wouldn't match it, and I let it play out anyway. It turned into love for him. Love I couldn't return and that unreciprocated love turned him into a target for the Unreflected.

That was only the first part of the guilt. There were so many others. So many small, sharp failures stacked behind it.

I could've told him the truth. About the magic. The worlds. The risks. I could've given him protection openly, instead of waiting until it was too late to offer him a trinket holding memories. One he now carries anyway.

I could've gone alone. Left Peter, Malik, and Nickolas out of it. Now Peter's missing, and Nick's lost his arm. What if it had been Malik instead? His body doesn't regenerate like Nick's. What if I'd been just a few seconds too slow pulling him out of that horde?

And then there's the wreckage we left behind. I killed the terracotta guardian. He was protector of the memory-born Chinatown. And I dealt with him just because it stood between me and a path forward. I destroyed something ancient and good because it was in the way. I've lost count of how many corpo-zombies we cut down. At the time, it felt justified. They were shadows. Echoes. Projections, not people.

But what if that isn't true?

What if those shadows feel their deaths? What if the thing casting them, whatever soul or mind it comes from—feels it too? What if some part of them dies every time we strike one down?

I thought I understood this world. That I knew which lives were real and which were fragments. But that line… it's starting to blur.

Bobby seemed to be her own person, even with all her memory issues. What if the others were like her? What if every single corpo-zombie we cut down had some echo of individuality, some fragment of self? That wouldn't just make me a fighter. That would make me a mass murderer. An abuser of power. And worse than that, I dragged others into it. People better than me. People I care about.

Malik fights because he wants to be a hero. Not for praise, not for power, just because it's the right thing to do. Peter—Peter would throw himself into the depths of hell just to shield me, no matter what it costs him. And Nick? Nick made a promise to stand by me. To stay by my side. He's kept it, even now, even after everything.

I turned away from them, unable to watch them move around without the weight tightening in my chest. I looked toward the window, hoping for distraction and instead saw my own reflection.

No rabbit mask now. Just my real face. Pale. Freckled. Unhidden. A face I hated.

It wasn't the face that bothered me. It was what was behind it. The truth. I was someone who couldn't trust. Who took more than gave. Greedy. Selfish. Just as Jason said—broken. And because of that, everyone who got close ended up hurt. Cut up on those jagged edges of broken me.

[You are not only that.]

Thanks, Anansi… but right now, I feel like I am.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the black spray paint. Pressed the nozzle to the window. Painted a hole big enough to slip through, the colors shimmering with that strange rainbow light. My shadowlight.

It flickered, like oil on water, iridescent, prismatic, unstable. Everyone else's shadowlight was simpler. Nick's was green and orange, Malik's purple, blue, and gold. Shiroi's had a clean violet shimmer threaded through occasional white. But mine? All of them. Every shade. A full spectrum.

Dam once told me the color didn't matter. That shadowlight just shows how your soul sees your power, not what it means. It can change.

I was an artist. I used all the colors. My soul reflected that.

But right now, I didn't feel like a rainbow. I didn't feel like light at all.

I felt like the absence of colors, like a hole I painted. Black. Silent. Endless.

I sighed.

Then I jumped into the apartment, landing lightly on my feet as gravity shifted once again. The place belonged to someone wealthy or at least, a shadow coming from someone wealthy. A massive TV dominated one wall. An expensive laptop sat untouched in the corner. Sleek black cabinets lined the room, paired with dark red leather chairs and a matching couch. Silver accents were scattered around to break the monotony, but somehow, they only made it feel more sterile. Like the idea of taste, without any soul behind it.

I stepped out, looking for a bathroom.

Once I'd finished, I left without touching a thing.

The bathroom was just as pristine. Polished floors, gleaming walls. A mirror stretched across one entire side, but I kept my eyes away from it. The faucets, the tub, the fixtures, everything was silver, cold and clinical.

That's when I realized that I was depressed. Not in a poetic or dramatic way. Just hollowed out.

I hadn't even felt the urge to take anything and I always wanted to take something. That was my thing. "Things belong to those who dare to claim them." That was my motto. My justification. The story I told myself to explain the bad things. To make them survivable. Because it wasn't just a habit it was something I'd been taught. Conditioned into.

So why did I paint something happy, just an hour ago?

Was I already feeling like this when I was painting it? I didn't know. I hadn't paid attention. When the artist in me took over, everything else went quiet. The painting became the truth. The colors became more honest than I ever was.

And in that moment—yes—it made me happy.

But the pens are away now. The paint's dry. There's no truth to chase.

Just me.

And I hated her.

And I didn't know how to change.

I had to put my mind to something, or I'd go crazy. It was so much harder to box the feelings in when nothing was happening. When my thoughts could spiral around what might be happening to Peter or Jason. So, I wandered around this strange apartment inside a building that stretched impossibly high. This whole section, the one we were in and on top of, had been created by the city itself. So there had to be some strange logic at work, the kind only buildings or urban landscapes could understand. Maybe something magical? I hoped so. I needed something to lighten my mood.

I headed toward the front door, just about to open it, when Nick peeked through the painted hole.

"You need any help in there?" he asked, his voice edged with concern.

"I'm just getting bored. Wanted to explore a bit, see if there's anything magical."

"Okay. If the apartment's empty, we'll wait inside. There's a caravan of people walking up from the bottom. I mean our side."

I turned back toward Nick. "Yeah, down here it's empty," I said, waiting for them to drop in.

Nick stepped away, and Malik was the first to hop through. He grinned like a kid when he saw the luxury around him and flopped onto the couch only to spring right back up, eyes scanning the place.

"Is there a bedroom somewhere? I could use a nap."

"Check that room," I pointed toward the one I hadn't explored yet. "Shadows don't sleep, far as I know, but they still build bedrooms."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As Malik disappeared into the other room, Nick dropped in, dragging one of the Unreflected bodies over to cover the painted hole.

"I don't want any wandering shadows falling in by accident," he explained. Then he glanced toward a corner of the room. "Why is there a CCTV camera inside the apartment?"

"First time you noticed them?" I asked. "They're everywhere, Nick. There was one in the place you brought me to, and in that empty unit we passed through. They were in China Town too. I saw some looking out from behind the windows on the bridge-building. At some point, I just stopped caring."

"Guys! I'm crashing for a while, okay?" Malik called out. A beat later, we heard a thump.

"Sure," Nick replied.

"Don't you want to sleep a little?" I asked him. "We've been moving at an impossible pace."

"I am tired," he admitted. "But I'll just drink some coffee if there's any, or eat a cracker. That usually keeps me going for hours." He made his way into the kitchenette. "You really don't care about those cameras? That one's tracking my every move."

"They all do that," I said. "But they've just been watching. Maybe that's all they can do, just watch."

"True." He grinned when he found some instant coffee.

"I'm going out to check the corridors. If I see anything weird or if Peter comes back, I'll portal back up, alright?"

He nodded, then went searching for the TV remote.

His arm looked like a much thinner version of the one he'd lost. It wasn't a small, dangly sprout anymore. Regrowing a limb must've hurt like hell, but he kept a good face on, covering it well.

I turned and unlocked the door leading out. I really needed to put my mind to something else. Anything other than my mistakes and the cost they'd already racked up.

The apartment I'd been in didn't have a number. Or not a real one. The marking beside the door looked like a pictogram trying to pass as a number but failing miserably. Similar symbols replaced numbers on every door down the corridor. The hallway itself was spacious and sterile, painted gray up to the midpoint of the walls, and stark white from there to the ceiling. In the middle stood a stairwell and two elevators, neither of which I was going to use.

Every door I passed was closed and unremarkable, until I came to one that smelled like a culinary paradise. That one I decided to open. I zapped its electronic lock with Ella, and pulled hard. Enough to break the locking mechanism without damaging the door itself.

The apartment beyond was completely different from the one the boys had claimed. It was bigger, warmer, suffused with soft tones: beiges, browns, oranges, and reds. Plush blankets and pillows were scattered across the couch. The furniture was all wood. A real kitchen stood at the heart of it, separated from the living room by a wide island. On the island: a full spread of dishes, all still warm, each one releasing mouthwatering scents into the air.

Garlic bulbs hung in lines from the ceiling. Pots of herbs stood in one corner, and one entire wall was dedicated to growing vegetables indoors, complete with its own lighting and irrigation system. And like an orchestra with all its instruments playing, there was one conductor in the center of it all.

A cook.

Middle-aged, with a nose slightly too large and two extra sets of arms that let him work at an inhuman pace. He chopped vegetables with one set, plated dishes with another, and stirred something fragrant in a wok. Tikka Masala, by the smell of it.

"Hello," I said to draw his attention.

"Hello," he replied without looking up. He finished slicing through a handful of vegetables before finally turning toward me. His eyes blazed. Actual flames smoldering behind them, smoke curling out. When he spoke, there was fire inside his mouth too, and every breath came with a puff of smoke.

"Why are you in my kitchen?"

"I was passing by and smelled your delicious creations," I began.

"And you thought you could break my lock and just come in?" he snapped, smoke rising more sharply now. Maybe this was a mistake. Or maybe exactly what I needed. "Are those the manners of people from Earth?"

"What? How do you know that?" I asked, my hand drifting toward my cards for reassurance.

"Aren't you from Earth? A mage, perhaps?"

"I am. What are you?"

"Another rude question," he said, now cutting into a chicken breast with one of his many hands. The knife glowed with shadowlight, blazing and molten, just like his eyes and mouth. "What am I? Why not who?"

"I'm sorry. You're right. I'm not used to having meaningful conversations with shadows here. Who are you?"

"My name is John. I'm a chef and I'm fucking amazing at it," he said, not even slightly modest. "And I'm also pissed at you for breaking my lock."

"Are you a shadow too?"

"I don't know why you'd call me that, but I get that there's another world. Where people like you come from, if that's what you're asking. People who walk in here like they own the place. And that pisses me off. So get the fuck out, lady."

"I'm sorry, again. I just don't usually meet people here who know what's—"

I couldn't even finish the sentence. He hurled a knife at me. I barely dodged in time, stumbling to the side.

"I just wanted to apologize!" I called out, watching the smoke curl around his furious face. Typical chef energy—angry, chaotic, but talented. Pure fire.

"Okay, man. I'm going." I backed toward the door.

"You know what?" he said, voice low and seething. "I've decided I need to teach you a lesson after all."

A second later, I barely dodged a pot of boiling water hurled straight at my head. I snatched up the knife he'd thrown earlier. It was still fuming with heat as I used it to block a rapid-fire assault of kitchen utensils. Spatula after spatula clanged against the blade, the air thick with smoke and the scent of fire-charred food. I grabbed a nearby chair and flung it at him to knock him off balance, then bolted out the door, slamming it behind me.

Without thinking, I teleported to the building's outer wall.

I paused only for a moment, scanning for the caravan Nick had mentioned earlier. They looked like ordinary shadows. Just people, so I ignored them and turned toward the window to move the Unreflected's body aside and hop back in.

On the way, I glanced down at the knife I still held. Its blade radiated heat, curling smoke from its edge. It was heavy with authority, old, imbued, and elegant. The kind of knife someone passed down like a crown. Japanese-style edge, beautifully engraved.

But before I could fully admire it, two things happened.

First, the good: Nick noticed me from inside and smiled. That smile of his could bend light around grief. It made things feel okay, even when they weren't.

Then, the bad: a sound like glass shattering through the sky.

John tore through one of the windows, leaping onto the rooftop bridge like a kitchen god made of wrath and fire. His skin glowed red-hot where it showed, smoke billowing around him like storm clouds. Each of his six hands held something metal: knives, pans, spatulas and all ablaze. Swirling around him was a miniature tempest of food: apples, oranges, hunks of meat, even entire cooking pots spun in his orbit like planets around a furious sun.

When he noticed me, an apple broke formation from the orbiting storm around him, launched straight at me and morphed mid-air into a fireball. It exploded before it reached me, scattering flaming apple seeds in every direction. I dodged, but not fast enough. Several seeds grazed me, stinging like hot needles, ripping through my suit like it was paper. This guy wasn't just angry, he had serious Authority backing him.

As he charged at me, I pulled a card from my coat, infused it with steeliness, and threw it at his face. It hit. Sliced a clean line through his cheek. A hiss of blood escaped, but it never hit the ground. It burned off midair in a puff of smoke from the heat radiating off him.

He flew past where I had just stood, and I immediately teleported again, blinking just behind him. For a heartbeat, he was confused, back still turned. I closed the distance and drove his own knife into him. Once. Twice. Three quick jabs, dodging between the orbiting foods. Each strike left a burning gash in his back.

Then he turned.

A glowing red pan swung toward me like the hand of an angry god. I vanished again, just in time, leaping out of range and out of the mealstorm.

And still he came.

He charged again, fury in every motion. I saw the wound on his back still open, but the one on his cheek? Already gone. Healed.

Oh fuck no. Another food-mage. Another one with regeneration.

Just then, the body covering our apartment's painted hole shifted aside and Nick emerged.

John didn't even glance at him before launching more dishes. One—some kind of flaming casserole dish—detonated against the glass beside me. Another hurled through the air like a molten frisbee. Explosions rippled in their wake, shattering glass, flinging shards and hot steel in every direction.

Then Nick joined in, no questions asked. He was already mid-cast, launching his projectiles. Sleek, bone-forged weapons like skeletal darts. One lodged in John's side. Another tore straight through him. A massive fishbone now stuck out of John's stomach like a macabre harpoon.

John reeled and turned toward Nick.

"Another!?" he roared. The sheer heat coming off him incinerated the fishbone where it stuck. It crumbled to ash, burned away instantly.

Below his feet, I saw the glass begin to melt.

"I should never have let you leave the apartment!" Nick shouted, and then out of nowhere his fist expanded, covered in salted armor. He stretched his arm like a slingshot, winding back, and launched it forward with a crack.

A rocket punch.

It slammed into John's chest with a force that staggered him, knocking him off balance. I blinked. I'd never seen Nick do that before.

Was that cheese? It had to be cheese.

Nick retracted his arm like it was nothing, and before John could recover, launched another volley of fishbone quills shooting from his arm in a tight arc aimed right for the guy's face.

I followed up with a fan of more cards, flinging them in bursts, aiming for his exposed back. They hit, slicing into him, embedding in glowing skin, but not stopping him.

John wasn't just standing there taking it either.

He retaliated fast, dishes flying like divine wrath. Apples, oranges, slabs of meat, entire roasts, all searing through the air like artillery shells made of food. Some exploded mid-air in scorching bursts. Others slammed into the glass under us, carving out impact craters in bursts of heat and broken shards.

The rooftop bridge shook with every blast. The storm of food and fire grew louder, hotter, more chaotic. And we were in the middle of it, dueling with a kitchen god gone ballistic. I loved it!

I teleported close again just as he shifted to the side. I struck fast, slashing him with a flurry of quick cuts, dodging his retaliation by inches. He roared as his own knife tore into him, searing skin that sizzled, then regenerated before my eyes.

Unfair. Just flat-out unfair.

"What's going on!?" I heard Malik shout from the apartment entrance. So much for letting him nap in peace. Between the shouting and explosions, that was impossible now.

"Stay back!" Nick barked, raising a broad salt shield just in time to block a flaming projectile. The blast hit hard, tongues of fire licking across it, melting it down within seconds.

I grabbed Noxy and fired off two rounds at John, just enough to divert his attention back to me and give Nick time to launch more projectiles.

But John was already turning, already locked in on me. He hurled his red-hot weapons, glowing kitchen tools flying through the air. I jumped up, flipping over them—

Big mistake.

He had been waiting. The last piece of food, some oversized flaming something, launched straight at me in midair. I couldn't dodge, not without leverage.

So I teleported again, instinctively, back to my usual spot on the rooftop.

But John wasn't dumb. He was already there.

He grabbed me by the collar the instant I landed, yanking me off the ground. Heat poured through my suit, scorching hot and rising fast, biting through to my skin beneath. One of his sets of arms locked around my legs, trapping them, while the third—

Pounded into my chest and stomach.

Each strike was searing, bruising, brutal. I tried to teleport away, tried to reach out through the Grimoire, through anything, but his authority gripped tighter. His strength was rooted, overpowering mine, choking the magic I relied on like it was nothing.

I couldn't move.

I'd die here. On a rooftop in a world that shouldn't exist, in a fight I started, out of recklessness, guilt, and whatever else Reality had cursed me with.

And I knew it.

Nick was on top of him now, in full melee, pummeling with his encrusted, armored fists, sprouting claws to slash, doing everything he could to stop the raging chef. But it wasn't enough.

Even Malik tried.

He threw a punch and instantly recoiled, hand burned by the searing heat but it triggered an echo of an attack. That worked, at least a little. It was strong enough to stagger John, to make him drop me.

I hit the ground like seared meat off a grill. Burned, broken, and barely breathing. The guys kept going, trying to stop him, to keep him away from me.

But Malik was already spent. That one echo attack had drained him dry. He couldn't even stand. Nick stepped in front of me again, now just blocking, shielding doing his best to be a wall.

And that's when my vision expanded.

Four new angles opened in my mind, each one showing the battlefield from a different point of view.

Peter had arrived.

I turned, groaning through the pain, and saw him.

He looked wrecked. Suit torn in half a dozen places. Legs and chest exposed, bruised and bleeding. But his hood was still on, shadowing his face, except for his eyes.

Those eyes glowed like crystal lakes. pure, calm, deadly.

Then they lit up. White and blue shadowlight swirling out of them, building around his whole form like a storm breaking loose.

He didn't ask questions.

He charged.

I saw the muscles in his arms bulge before the first hit, a wave of raw strength building into the blow and launched John back a good few meters. Peter didn't stop. Another blow from the opposite side cracked across the chef's ribs, sending him tumbling toward the ground.

Right next to one of his long knives.

John grabbed it and slashed up in a furious arc.

"No!" I screamed as the blade hit Peter's chest, blood spraying across the rooftop.

But instead of hitting the ground, the blood hovered, caught as if in his gravitational field, suspended in the air like crimson pearls. Then, impossibly, it reversed direction, pulled back into his body.

I watched as droplets of water formed on his skin, drawn from the air itself. They moved across his wounds, healing him even as he fought. Every strike Peter threw was backed by force and grace, fists landing like tidal waves.

John fought back, slashing with molten blades, each cut deep but Peter regenerated. His water spiraled around him now, fused with his shadowlight in a storm of blue and white. He looked like a maelstrom, moving over the glass with fluid, terrible beauty.

Steam hissed as his water met John's fire. But Peter didn't stop.

Every hit pushed John closer to collapse.

And now Nick joined again, firing with precision, every shot sticking, every one hurting.

The tide had turned.

Peter and Nick struck together. Salt-encrusted claws and fists of water and light hammering John from both sides. Until finally—

He stopped.

Stopped attacking.

Stopped moving.

Just burned.

And crumpled.

"Lex," Peter was by my side in an instant, leaving the defeated body behind. "I'm so sorry… I tried to get here as fast as I could."

I saw myself through the eye in his hood, my suit burned away around my chest and stomach, skin red and charred. Smaller burns littered my neck, legs, arms. Everywhere John had touched me. My shins. My collar. I tore the Authority out of Peter's hood as I couldn't bear to look at myself anymore.

Nick appeared beside us, a sadness in his eyes. Wordless, he took off his blouse and draped it over me, shielding my body. Not that there was much worth hiding. I didn't look good. I was burned and ruined.

I closed my eyes.

I was ready to drift away. Let go. Maybe wake up somewhere better.

Then a sharp slap.

"Don't close your eyes," Peter snapped. I hadn't realized, he was carrying me now, cradled in his arms. "Guys, I need to get her into the water. Please."

"Come." Someone replied—Nick or Malik, I couldn't tell anymore. My mind was fading in and out.

I dozed for a moment.

Gravity twisted. My stomach lurched.

I heard footsteps...

And then the cold hit.

The rhythm of falling water echoed around me, cool and constant.

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