Once Morres left, I was alone with Lumivis.

The silence that followed him wasn't natural—it was weighted. Heavy, like a blanket pressing down over the world. Even the air seemed to thicken, the edges of the room bending faintly as if something was breathing beneath the walls.

I stared at Lumivis. Hard.

He looked perfect—every detail exact. The white and gold robes, the faint blue pulse beneath translucent skin, the placid expression I'd come to trust. That stillness was always his nature, the serenity that steadied me when everything else turned violent or strange.

But this wasn't serenity. This was imitation.

The faint tilt of his head was off by a fraction. The way his eyes tracked me was too deliberate. Like someone trying to remember how Lumivis should move.

I let the silence stretch. Then, softly, I said, "Lumi."

The word tasted wrong in my mouth. I had never—would never—call him that. Lumivis hated diminutives; to him, names were sacred. He once said shortening one was like cutting a word's meaning in half.

So I used it deliberately. A provocation. A hook.

"Tell me something," I said, tone casual, though my pulse quickened. "What do you regret most between us?"

As I asked, I thought a single phrase to myself, shaping it like bait in the water. Not believing in each other.

It wasn't something I said aloud. It was a thought—a very specific one. Lumivis and I shared a spiritual bond; he could feel thoughts like that, but he would never echo them back unless he was truly speaking to me. The real Lumivis respected boundaries.

So if this one repeated it—word for word—I'd know.

The figure blinked once, as if sifting through memory. Then his lips parted.

"Sire," he said softly, voice smooth and sure, "I regret most that we don't believe each other anymore."

Perfect cadence. Perfect rhythm.

Too perfect.

I felt my jaw tighten.

That was all the confirmation I needed.

"Right," I murmured. "That's what I thought."

Then I stepped forward and punched him square in the face.

The impact wasn't solid. My fist sank in like I'd struck wet clay. The illusion tore—the body of "Lumivis" splintering into a dozen thin ribbons of white and gold light. Beneath them was something shapeless and ugly, writhing like smoke given form.

"Nice try," I muttered, backing away. "But he would've never said it out loud."

The thing hissed, dissolving into motes of static. The false calm of the room shattered with it.

The world rippled.

The polished stone beneath my feet bent inward, the surface warping into liquid reflections. I ran.

Almost immediately, shapes began forming from the walls—too familiar. Faces. Figures.

My friends.

Or what was left of them.

Wallace emerged first, his armor fused to his skin, metal veins pulsing under torn flesh. The lines of his helm split open like jaws, showing glimpses of the face beneath, smiling too wide.

Ten appeared next, her chains dragging behind her like tails, each link moving with animal intent. Her eyes were void-black, yet her grin carried that same sardonic tilt she'd flash before a fight.

Cordelia's flowers bloomed from her throat, their stems twisting through skin, the petals whispering as they opened and closed like mouths.

And then came Fallias.

Her draconic scales were radiant, glowing in full array, but the light was wrong—overexposed, feverish. Her fingers had elongated into blades that shimmered with a molten sheen. Her wings hung behind her like tattered mirrors, reflecting a thousand versions of her twisted smile.

She looked hungry.

Behind her, Fractal drifted, beautiful as ever, her body composed of hovering bismuth shards—iridescent, glittering. If she weren't trying to kill me, I might've stared. The blades orbited her in slow, mesmerizing precision, each rotation leaving streaks of color across the dark.

They all smiled. Every one of them.

Smiles that stretched too far. Smiles that belonged to puppets, not people.

"Fantastic," I muttered under my breath, reaching for my cubes. Nothing answered. No light. No pulse.

"Lunarias!" I called again, louder this time, not even a whisper came back.

I flexed my fingers—no paper, no flicker, no spark. My Arte was dead.

The whole dream had locked me out of my own power.

Which meant I had one option left—the one Morres had warned me about before vanishing.

Run.

So I did.

The twisted versions of my companions lunged after me, their movements perfectly in sync. They knew my habits, my reflexes—because they were drawn from my memory. Every instinct screamed at me to fight, but I knew better. Powerless, cornered in an unstable realm, fighting was suicide.

I darted through corridors that folded and refolded upon themselves, each step making the world ripple like water under glass. The air was metallic, sharp, humming with static. The laughter behind me grew louder—my friends' laughter, but wrong. Layered, stretched thin, echoing in harmonies that clawed at the edges of hearing.

Fallias's claws shredded the wall beside me, sparks spraying like molten rain. Fractal's bismuth blades whirled overhead, slicing through a marble column as though it were paper. Cordelia's flowers burst from cracks in the ceiling, petals drifting down like ash, whispering my name as they fell.

The floor pulsed beneath my feet, keeping time with my heartbeat.

The world wanted me still. It wanted me to stop running, to freeze long enough for it to close its hand around me.

I didn't.

I kept weaving, dodging, turning corners that didn't exist a second before. The world twisted itself into a maze around me, the streets rewriting in real time. Fire erupted from one end—gunfire from another.

"Damn it, V." I hissed, diving behind a crumbling archway as a bullet screamed past my head. "You too?"

Of course. The dream was borrowing my friends' skill, not just their faces. It mimicked their fighting styles, their timing, their coordination. Every trap, every shot, every strike.

But not mine.

It wouldn't let me use my own.

I gritted my teeth and sprinted through the next opening, heat licking at my back.

Left. Right. Another right. Then a narrow alley that reeked of ink and blood.

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An open door appeared ahead, warped wood with a single rune burned into it. I didn't think—I just dove through, slamming it shut behind me.

The moment I did, the noise cut off.

For the first time since Morres vanished, there was silence.

I pressed my back to the door, breathing hard, ears ringing. The room was dim, lit only by the soft flicker of something unseen. Shadows crawled over the walls like liquid.

Then came the voices.

Soft. Slurred. Too close.

"Find him."

"He has it."

"She wants it."

"She needs it."

I froze. My pulse skipped.

"She?"

The words echoed, bouncing around the small space until they became one continuous whisper. I pressed a hand to my temple, trying to anchor myself. What was it that was said at the start?

It came back like a shard of memory stabbing through the fog.

Either kill the Viraloid and the Infestation, or never return.

And then it clicked.

The Queen. The Viraloid Queen. She'd been manipulating everything from the start.

Every vision. Every "hint." Every road I'd followed here.

Even this—this dream, this false Lumivis, this realm that bent itself to my fears—it was hers.

It wasn't trying to kill me. Not really. It was trying to direct me. Twist me into doing what it wanted by showing me what I wanted most.

Agency.

That word hit like a hammer to the ribs.

That was the lure. The one thing I truly desired—the one thing I'd been denied for two whole cursed years.

Agency over my own damn life.

For a second, the thought burned bright enough to feel holy. And then it curdled.

Because it wasn't the first time someone had offered it.

First it was Marryyllin, whispering promises wrapped in faith. Then Morres, with his games and half-truths. Ranah and Temptation, both tugging at opposite ends of my will. Gin, who tried to turn me into something I wasn't. Lilliane, who wanted to make me forget who I was entirely.

And now—now it was her.

Another voice in the chorus. Another puppeteer tugging at invisible strings.

I ran a hand through my hair, forcing myself to breathe. The walls around me pulsed faintly, like they were waiting for me to make a decision.

I wasn't going to give her one.

Not yet.

If the Queen thought she could bait me with what I wanted most, she'd forgotten something vital: I'd already lived too long without it.

And I'd learned how to survive without permission.

The air in the room shifted. The whispers grew sharper, insistent. I could feel the dream tightening again, the false realm trying to reshape itself, to drag me back into motion.

Not yet. Not until I understood what it wanted me to see next.

I straightened, wiped blood—or ink, or both—from the corner of my mouth, and whispered to the dark:

"Fine. Let's see what story you're trying to sell me this time."

The floor rippled in answer.

And somewhere beyond the walls, the laughter started again.

The door behind me exploded before I could move.

I threw myself forward as the frame detonated into splinters, a chain whistling past my ear. It hit the wall and buried itself in the stone like a spear. Ten's laughter followed, deep and sharp, the sound of someone enjoying the chase.

I rolled and kept moving.

The hallway ahead twisted sharply downward, no stairs, just a slope that bent gravity the wrong way. I let it carry me, sliding on my side as fragments of chain raked sparks from the walls above.

Every heartbeat, the dream shifted. The floors changed texture—stone to glass to something that felt like breathing parchment. Each step tried to swallow me.

"Alexander." The voice came from everywhere. Wallace's. But lower, wet, metallic. "You're out of formation."

A pillar fell across my path, molten steel glowing through its cracks. Wallace dropped after it, half his body encased in fused armor, his eyes two furnaces. He brought his mace down, and the ground screamed.

I dove left. The shockwave threw me sideways into a mirror—one of Cordelia's.

Glass shattered and something floral hit my senses. The scent was thick, cloying, narcotic.

Petals brushed against my skin. Every contact pulsed with heat.

"Do you ever stop running?" Cordelia's voice whispered. "You could just sleep, Alex. Let it end."

The petals turned to teeth. I tore free and bolted through the shards, blood streaking my arm where they'd bitten deep.

The corridor ahead split into three, then five, then folded back into one. I chose the one that looked least real—the one flickering between light and shadow—hoping the dream's logic would hesitate.

It didn't.

Gunfire erupted behind me. Sven's rhythm. Three shots—always three—triplicated by his Arte. Even here, the pattern held. The first volley tore through the air beside my head, leaving thin trails of heat.

The second volley hit a wall and tripled again, rebounding in impossible angles.

"Seriously?" I hissed, ducking behind a column that wasn't there a moment ago. The bullets tore through it anyway.

I sprinted again, boots hitting surfaces that changed mid-step. Sometimes wood, sometimes water. The sky flickered overhead—now a ceiling, now open void.

Everything was wrong but consistently wrong, which made it worse.

Fractal's crystals sang from behind me, a metallic hum rising to a shriek as they split the air. I threw myself into a side passage, felt the edge of one graze my shoulder. It burned like frostbite, searing cold instead of heat.

The shards struck the walls and stayed there, vibrating. They began to multiply, each one fracturing into dozens of smaller blades that floated, trembling, waiting.

A trap.

I skidded to a halt, spun, and sprinted the other way just as they converged, the entire tunnel erupting into a rain of color and noise.

My lungs burned. My legs ached. The dream didn't care. It had no fatigue limit, but I did.

I needed distance—needed time to think.

Another corner. Another intersection.

Fallias landed in front of me.

Not fell—landed, like she'd been waiting. Her eyes were molten gold, her wings flaring wide, each scale reflecting some version of me running, dying, breaking.

"Move," I warned, voice low.

She tilted her head, smiling that same grotesque smile. "You should have stayed with us, Alexander. We believed in you."

"Cute." I clenched my fists. "You're not her."

The walls behind her warped as if agreeing, reality melting at the edges. She took a single step forward. The air rippled around her claws.

I turned and ran again.

Her roar chased me—half dragon, half storm. The corridor shattered under the force of it, pieces of the world flying apart like torn paper.

Something grabbed my ankle. I kicked—one of Ten's chains had found me, looping tight. I slammed into the ground, sliding across burning stone. The chain yanked hard, dragging me backward.

"Come on, Alex," her voice purred. "Don't make this harder."

I twisted, grabbed the nearest loose brick, and slammed it against the chain. Nothing. I did it again—again—until the link cracked. The moment it loosened, I tore free and kept running, ignoring the skin it stripped from my ankle.

I couldn't think about pain. Not here. Pain meant focus, and focus was how the dream found purchase.

A corridor opened into a plaza—wide, circular, lined with floating spires. Light drifted upward from cracks in the floor, illuminating shapes that looked like statues.

Except the statues breathed.

Each one wore the face of someone I'd lost. Not just my team. My family. My siblings. My father. Even—

No. I shut the thought down before it could take shape.

The statues' eyes opened.

"Alexander," they whispered together, voices blending into one endless drone. "Stay."

The word hit me physically, pressing on my chest like gravity. My knees buckled.

No.

I forced air into my lungs and stumbled forward. The ground tilted. The statues' mouths opened wider, their faces splitting like cracked porcelain, and the drone became a scream.

I ran through it.

Each step shattered something beneath me—stone, glass, maybe time itself. The light dimmed.

Ahead, the plaza narrowed into a single bridge stretching over darkness.

Of course it did. The dream wanted drama.

I took the bridge.

Halfway across, I heard wings.

Fallias again, descending like judgment. Her claws gouged deep scars into the bridge, each one glowing orange.

Behind me, the others emerged from the darkness—Fractal's blades, Wallace's molten bulk, Cordelia's flowers, Ten's chains—all converging.

I didn't slow.

If they were reflections drawn from my mind, then the bridge, the fall, even death itself—none of it was real unless I accepted it.

So I focused on movement. On not stopping. On every motion meaning survival.

Fractal's shards screamed past me, slicing lines through the air. I ducked beneath one, vaulted another. Fallias's claws caught the edge of my coat, tearing fabric, grazing skin.

The bridge cracked under Wallace's weight. Segments fell into the abyss.

"Keep running," I muttered, voice raw. "You don't get to stop here."

Cordelia's vines lashed from above, trying to snag me by the throat. I dove and rolled, the motion smooth, practiced. Muscle memory carried me where magic couldn't.

Ten's chains slammed into the bridge ahead, sparking. She was close enough that I could hear her breathing now—ragged, mechanical.

I jumped.

The bridge ended. The abyss swallowed everything.

For a moment, I was weightless. The dream tried to decide what to do with me—whether to let me fall or rebuild gravity.

I chose for it.

Midair, I twisted, found the faintest glimmer of a ledge far below, and aimed for it.

When I hit, pain tore through my ribs, but the world held. I was still alive.

Above me, the echoes screamed, but none of them dared follow.

I lay there, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling—or sky, or whatever passed for either here. The darkness pulsed faintly, watching.

"Still running," I whispered, and forced myself to stand.

Because as long as I was moving, it wasn't finished.

If only I could say the same.

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