We were welcomed back by the sound of applause.

Two figures stood before us. The one on the left I recognized immediately—Gin. Ever theatrical, he appeared no older than twelve, and every bell on his patchwork ensemble rang in perfect rhythm, forming a miniature orchestra as he clapped with gleeful, exaggerated flair.

The man beside him was a stranger. Tall, commanding, and statuesque in posture, he exuded the kind of presence that demanded silence more than reverence. His complexion was umber, ageless. Salt-and-pepper hair cascaded in a long, meticulously twisted braid, adorned with golden thread and bone-carved beads. His goatee was equally well-groomed, but what struck me—and unsettled me—was his eye.

Singular. In the center of his forehead. One eye, deep and luminous, seeming to contain stars within its iris.

"Bravo! Bravo!" Gin beamed, bouncing slightly on his heels as he clapped louder. "Encore! Encore! And you got the girl! Really, Alex, you're hitting all the narrative beats. Fantastic!"

"I think I speak for all of us when I say," the other man interjected, his voice low and rasping, dry as old parchment, "shut up, Gin."

Gin merely grinned wider, clearly unbothered.

The one-eyed man turned to me then, his gaze sharp and knowing. "Alexander. We meet in person at last. The last time we spoke… was through a letter."

A letter?

I blinked.

The man seemed to sense my confusion, and with a flick of his long fingers, conjured a brilliant spiral of light—words etched in flowing script forming midair before fading.

"This will clarify things," he said, and then offered a slight bow. "I am Danatallion. Master of One Thousand Faces. Keeper of All Known Knowledge. Lord of the Library. Owner of the Infinitely Lost."

He said it not as a boast, but as a simple matter of fact—each title carried by shifting cadence. His voice didn't just change in tone; it became another voice entirely. Now richer, more layered, almost like a chorus of personalities distilled into one. A mix of a jovial elder, a weary scholar, and a practiced orator who had long since grown tired of speaking, but did so anyway.

"No. Way." Fallias spoke at last, barely above a breath. Awe had hollowed her voice.

She dropped to one knee immediately, hand over her heart, her reverence unmistakable. "Do you know how rare this is?! I've heard you speak only twice. Twice! And both times were cataclysmic events. What did we do to earn this honor, my lord?"

Danatallion shook his head gently. "Fallias. I am not your lord. Not anymore."

A flick of his wrist, and the space between them shimmered. "That archive," he said solemnly, "was buried long ago within my vaults. It no longer requires an archivist."

From the air, a large ivory key formed, floating into Fallias's trembling hands. The moment her fingers closed around it, it dissolved into dust and light, vanishing into her skin.

"For your loyal service, I grant you access to any archive. No doors barred. No paths hidden. And a Key to the Halls themselves." His single eye softened, almost mournful. "Live free. It is what your mother always wished for you."

Fallias's breath caught. She barely whispered, "May Ryxathra rest in her eternal tomb…"

Danatallion's gaze then turned to me.

"Alexander Duarte-Alizade, as Bast would name you," he intoned, the syllables heavy with meaning, "but I shall call you by the title you've begun to shape for yourself. Star-Writer."

I felt the weight of it. Like a crown that hadn't quite settled on my brow.

"For your meritorious service," he continued, "I cannot grant you a Key. You already have the means to navigate the Halls through dream and quill. But I can offer you these."

First, he presented a feather—one I immediately recognized as unlike any bird's. Its shaft was seamless, and it shimmered in two exact halves: left side white, right side black. No matter how I rotated it in my hand, the division remained perfect, as if it rejected the very notion of change.

"This," Danatallion said, "is the Quill of Histories. It is what Vassago bartered for that cursed dagger. I highly suggest binding it to yourself. Sooner rather than later."

I stared at it, already feeling the resonance in my palm.

"And second…" he sighed, clearly less enthusiastic. "Gin asked me to grant you a favor."

Gin gave me a toothy grin, wagging his finger like a child who'd just shared forbidden candy. "You're welcome~."

Danatallion did not smile.

"I loathe this favor," he said. "Bestowing it upon someone who has yet to ascend is a reckless, dangerous thing. But the rules of debt compel me."

He raised both hands. Between them floated an egg.

It was massive—about the size of my chest. Its surface shimmered with interwoven fractals of color, but beneath it all was an ancient, slumbering presence. Even Fallias gasped at the sight of it, instinctively stepping back.

The power it radiated made the air hum.

"This is…?" I asked, wary.

"A Spirit Beast egg," Gin answered helpfully. "This one, hopefully, won't hatch while you're unconscious and be raised by three lunatics who think their faction is perfect."

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I groaned softly. "Please tell me that's not a reference to my first one—"

"Oh, it absolutely is," Gin winked.

Danatallion, clearly not done with his commentary, muttered, "Pandora's Box doesn't even believe their faction is perfect, Gin. I have seventeen contradictory essays in my archives proving that."

Gin shrugged. "Well, they believe it more than most. That's the bar, right?"

I looked down at the egg again. Holding it felt like clutching the coalesced hopes of a dying star. It was beautiful. It was terrifying.

"Is there anything else?" I asked, my voice quieter.

Danatallion tilted his head, features shifting again—now he looked like a traveler, now a sage, now a skeletal prince.

"You've done well, Star-Writer," he said. "But the Halls are ever-changing. Stories are always written, rewritten, or erased. You were not meant to be here, yet here you are. Chosen. A wild card."

His one eye glowed faintly.

"Write well. Enjoy your time back home. And take care of Fallias." He took a large bow, before disappearing into a hundred different specs of dust and fading away.

***

Home was, well, home.

Warm air welcomed me, faintly touched by rosewater and the scent of polished wood. Servants moved about the manor with focused purpose, handling tasks with the urgency of people who had gone too long without sleep. Familiar sounds returned to me like memories carried on the wind. Footsteps across marble. The flutter of parchment. The quiet hum of order.

The first thing I did was call a name.

"Isaac!"

Within seconds, the older gentleman rounded the corner, still in his crisp waistcoat and carrying a silver tray under one arm. His face bore exhaustion, the sort that sleep did not quite cure. But the moment he saw me, he froze.

Then, slowly, a smile bloomed across his tired features.

"Ah. There you are, young master." His voice was steady, but beneath it there was emotion he could not fully hide. "You have been missed. Your companions have searched every inch of Marr these past few weeks."

I blinked at the word.

"Weeks?"

Before he could answer, a shift in shadow made me flinch. Cold crept along my spine. Out from the darkness at my feet, the familiar shape of Lumivis rose as if peeling out of my own silhouette.

"Permit me to explain, sire," he said smoothly. His tone was as polished as ever, the edges of each word honed like a dagger in the dark. "It is uncommon for me to be barred from following my contractor, even within the more arcane domains. In fact, there are only two other times I have been so thoroughly denied."

He adjusted the cuff of his long sleeve, eyes flashing with interest.

"Both of those times, my previous contractors had been pulled into what the scholars call a 'challenge' or a 'distortion.' Judging from your question regarding time, I would wager it felt like only a few days for you."

I gave a slow nod.

"Then it was a distortion," Lumivis confirmed. He conjured a floating shape from his palm, something between a clock and a compass, which pulsed faintly with blue light. "Time in distortions flows... differently. It bends, splits, collapses, and sometimes forgets itself entirely. You were likely drawn into a fold within one of the library's deeper labyrinths. That tends to happen when certain... resonances take notice."

He paused to look at me more closely. His gaze lingered, not just on my face, but my chest, my arms, my aura.

"Gin has already returned with your companion. Fallias, if I recall correctly. Unusual bloodline, that one. Her body is laced with miasma. So is yours, now that I observe it more closely."

His tongue clicked in thought.

"It is dense. Refined. Old," Lumivis said, his voice like silk being drawn across a blade. "You brought something back with you, Star-Child. And not just her. I'd highly suggest you refine that miasma into your shell, using whatever meditation method works best."

"Oh. That's easy for him!" Gin chimed in, half-sprawled on one of the servant benches, his feet kicking in the air like an overexcited child. "It's archery."

I gave him a flat stare and rubbed the base of my horn, trying to massage the forming headache. "Excuse me?"

"I've been watching your miasma cores for a while now, delicious rabbit," Gin said, his eyes gleaming with mischief. "And I gotta say, you condense energy easier when you're just… shooting something. It's actually quite elegant. There's a few clusters that refer to it as 'zen archery,' or 'kyudo,' or 'seeking enlightenment through the dao of the bow.' Old names, recycled truths."

"Clusters?" I echoed. And just like that, the headache blossomed behind my eyes.

"Ah yes, the soup metaphor!" Gin exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. "Clusters are like dumplings in soup. Each dumpling is a cluster.. Soup is delicious. Especially rabbit stew. Can I eat you yet?"

"No."

"Teasing, teasing." Gin wagged a finger. "So, to clarify. Clusters are groupings of Otherrealms, each ruled by a Grandis. But more than that—they share laws of physics, narrative resonance, and structure. Kind of like how all stories in a shared mythos have a similar feel? That's a cluster."

I nodded, resisting the urge to sit down. "Okay. So, clusters are sets of Otherrealms. Got that. Dominus rules one Otherrealm. Multiple Dominus per cluster."

Gin's smile widened, like a cat with a mouse it hadn't yet decided to eat. "Correct. And above the Dominus, you have your Archons. One Archon governs three-hundred thirteen Dominus. Simple enough. Now, if you follow the structure upward, every thirteen Archons serve a Sovereign."

I could feel Lumivis watching me carefully as the framework was being laid out. "And Sovereigns are beneath… Grandis?"

"Mmhm," Gin hummed, the bells on his collar chiming softly. "Each Grandis rules over five Sovereigns. The power structure follows the primed power law—five, thirteen, three-hundred thirteen, twenty thousand three hundred forty-five. It's tedious but vital if you're trying to understand the multiversal structure."

"Twenty thousand three hundred forty-five?" I repeated. "That's how many…?"

"Forces can exist in an Otherrealm." Lumivis finally interjected. "Forces are any unique type of Arte that can exist within an Otherrealm's schema. Not the wielder. The concept. You are not a Force. Paper Manipulation is."

Gin nodded emphatically. "Exactly. Your Arte, Paper Manipulation, is one Force among the twenty-thousand-three-hundred-forty-five that the Dominus of your Otherrealm governs. If someone else had, say, Lightning Forging or Bone Weaving, that would be another Force in that set. The idea is that a Dominus maintains narrative coherence. It's not about who, but what can exist."

"Think of it like grammar," Lumivis added. "Each Otherrealm is a language. Each Force is a word. You might speak the word. You might be the speaker. But the word existed before you did."

That… made a disturbing amount of sense.

"Now," Gin said, rolling over onto his stomach, "some clusters are strict. They'll only allow one version of a Force to be manifest. Others are experimental. They allow variants—twists. So instead of just Flame Manipulation, you might see Phoenix Flame, Astral Flame, Cursefire. All related, but each is a distinct Force."

"And if two people had the same Arte?" I asked.

"They're considered bound by the same Force," Lumivis replied. "Unless the Arte has diverged so significantly it has become its own."

Gin added, "So you and another Paper Manipulator? Same Force. You and someone with Ink Manipulation? Possibly related, possibly not. Depends on how it's categorized."

"Who decides that?" I asked. "The Dominus?"

Lumivis shook his astral head. "Not even the Grandis sets that. It just... happens. Many believe those in the upper echelons of power control everything. They don't. The problem is, when we're talking about the Grandis…"

"No one has seen one in eternities," Gin, the Archon of Calamity himself, declared.

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