The scent of blooming cindrelis filled the air, their crystalline petals shimmering in the morning light like frozen fire.
Inside the grand greenhouse nestled at the edge of the Imperial Archives, Eirik Halvardsen sat in silence. He was hunched slightly over a leather-bound notebook, his gloved fingers moving steadily across the pages with a fountain pen whose nib had long since been worn by use. The soft scratch of ink on parchment echoed faintly among the towering vines and rare flora.
He did not glance up when the double doors opened with a click.
"Apologies for the interruption, Lord Halvardsen," came a soft voice, formal yet serene.
A young woman glided across the tiled path,
Her posture was a perfect composition of grace and discipline. Her name was Claribel, with precision, she placed a silver tray of light refreshments upon the stone table before Eirik, then stepped back and bowed.
"A selection of hazelnut wafers and starlight tarts, as you requested," she said, folding her hands over her apron. "Is there anything else I may procure, my lord?"
Before Eirik could answer, another figure burst in behind her, or rather, shuffled in with hurried steps, the tray in his hands rattling with every motion.
Nox, a pale-haired butler who appeared no older than fourteen, with a mischievous grin and one fang slightly protruding when he smiled which was often.
Despite his youthful appearance, he was said to have been in the House of Halvardsen service for over fifty years.
"Tea! Hopefully not cold this time," Nox chirped, placing the teapot and porcelain cups down with a soft clink. "You know, if those automaton heaters weren't so picky about altitude, I wouldn't have to sprint up two flights of stairs every morning just to keep this warm. Really makes you appreciate gravity."
Claribel sighed softly through her nose but said nothing.
Nox plopped into the seat across from Eirik without waiting for permission though even in his insolence, there was a subtle thread of deference in his gaze.
He poured the tea with a surprisingly steady hand, then glanced up with one raised eyebrow.
"So? How was Daltheria?" he asked, as casually as if inquiring about the weather.
Eirik finally lifted his head. His sharp eyes, rimmed by faint shadows of sleepless nights, flicked to the boy. A slight smile curled one corner of his lips, almost imperceptible.
"It went smoothly," he replied.
Nox blinked. "That's all? 'Smoothly'? C'mon, you spent two whole nights in that cursed fog-ridden city and all I get is-"
Eirik raised one gloved finger.
Nox paused.
Claribel cleared her throat and stepped closer. "His Lordship is not obligated to share the details of his missions, Nox."
"I know, I know. Just figured he'd humor me while we sip tea surrounded by alien vines," Nox muttered, glancing up at the glowing plant above him. It responded by wriggling its luminescent tendrils ever so slightly.
Eirik did not elaborate further. He picked up the cup of tea with both hands, his eyes drifting back to the notebook. But he did not write.
Not yet.
Outside the greenhouse, the sun was rising higher over the majestic brass towers of Aurem, casting long shadows over gear-driven carriages and copper zeppelins drifting above the streets.
Somewhere in the distance, a clocktower chimed eight, a symphony of metal and magic echoing through the empire that had mastered both.
And in the silence that followed, Eirik took another sip of tea, the taste of bergamot and ash lingering on his tongue.
He just wasn't ready to say it aloud.
***
She wandered without direction.
There was no sun. No sky. No clock to mark the passage of time. Only the sound of her own footsteps echoing on a floor that refused to cast reflections.
The walls around her shifted texture at unpredictable intervals, sometimes polished marble, sometimes rusted iron, and sometimes something that looked like skin but felt like cold glass.
Liesette held her breath and tried to remember. How long had she been here?
She didn't know.
She didn't even know if she was still dreaming, or if she had woken up inside another dream. Sleep and waking no longer meant anything. Her body wasn't hungry, wasn't thirsty, but her mind… her mind had begun to fracture.
"I graduated from the Institute," she whispered to no one, her voice bouncing off unseen corners. "I know how space works. I know how time works."
But time didn't work here.
When she tried to turn back, the corridor she had come from was gone. In its place stood mirrors, tall, fogged, imperfect things that reflected not one self, but many. One smiled at her. One wept. One stared back with hollow eyes.
"Stop," she murmured, then screamed, slamming her fists into the nearest pane.
It did not shatter.
Instead, it rippled like water disturbed by a fingertip.
And from the center of that ripple, something stepped through.
He was tall. His movements slow, deliberate, as if he floated an inch above the floor, and where his face should have been, there was only shifting fog, obscured, as though censored by some unseen hand.
At times, the mist took on the vague impression of expression: a smile, a frown, a look of disapproval. But even those were fleeting. He rarely wore a face, and when he did, it never stayed for long.
He stood in front of her like a forgotten statue brought to life by silence. When he spoke, it was not as though he were speaking to her, but reciting something to the air, to the walls, to the echo of a memory that might not even be hers.
"The girl caught between moments," he said softly, his voice rustling like old parchment in a library with no readers. "A pulse that has lost its rhythm."
Liesette took a step back. "Who are you? Did you make this place?"
Velimir tilted his head, though his face remained a blur of drifting smoke.
"You ask whether this is dream or waking. But tell me, does it matter, if the fear feels the same in both?"
"I want to leave," she said, her voice cracking. "I want to know what time it is. I want to know if I'm still… me."
Velimir's form drifted closer, not walking so much as being carried by an unseen current.
"Do you truly wish to know?"
The question hit deeper than she had expected. Her lips parted, but no answer came.
"Is lost time more painful than returned memory?" he continued. "Is it easier to be one who forgets, or one who remembers that she has built her life from carefully layered lies?"
"You're not helping!" she shouted.
The mist that passed for his face swirled, perhaps a smile, perhaps not.
"I exist to ask. Because answers sought are answers that endure. But answers given… tend to fade like breath on glass."
A corridor unfolded behind him like the petals of a flower, each wall a mirror into impossible versions of herself. Liesette crowned in gold. Liesette cradling bloodied hands. Liesette laughing alone in a white void.
Velimir stepped backward into the darkness.
His final words, barely audible, curled into her ears like smoke:
"If all your truths are lies… then who remains when the lies fall away?"
Liesette fell to her knees.
She did not cry.
She couldn't.
She stayed there for a long time, kneeling beneath the weight of questions that had no edges, only spirals.
But silence offered no comfort.
And so, eventually, she stood.
Her legs trembled as if unused to holding her weight, but she forced them forward. Step by step, she moved through the endless hallway of mirrors, avoiding their gazes, refusing to see the truths they tried to reflect.
That annoying man had vanished, and with him, the disorienting logic of this place shifted again. The mirrors began to fade, replaced by empty stone cracked and uneven, as if the world was growing tired of pretending to be coherent.
Her footsteps echoed, each one swallowed by the unfeeling silence of that dream-warped corridor.
She walked without knowing where the path led, only that stopping would mean surrender, and she wasn't ready for that. Not yet.
Liesette kept one hand on the wall, tracing the cold stone as if it could anchor her in reality. But what was real anymore? The mirrors had lied.
Annoying man had vanished like mist. Time was an unfamiliar rhythm here. Days might have passed or perhaps it had only been minutes. There was no sky, no sun, no shadow to mark the hours. Only her thoughts remained, raw and jagged.
Am I still dreaming? she wondered.
Or worse... have I fallen out of the waking world entirely?
She tried to recall the sound of bells in Daltheria. The warmth of sunlight through stained glass.
The scent of cinnamon bread from street vendors. But those memories slipped through her grasp like silk soaked in oil, too smooth, too distorted, too perfect. The more she reached, the less certain she became if any of them were ever real.
What if I'm already gone?
The question clung to her.
What if she had died back there, in the moment between panic and surrender, and now wandered this place a soul unclaimed?
The thought gripped her throat.
Could she go back? Or was that door already closed, locked by a logic she would never understand?
She was so tired. Her legs ached. Her lungs burned. But her mind… her mind screamed the loudest.
I don't want to die here. Not here. Not like this. Not forgotten in a place that doesn't even remember its own shape.
She stumbled. Caught herself. Stood up again.
And kept walking.
Until-
She stopped.
Something had changed.
The air felt… softer. There was a warmth ahead, faint but unmistakable, like the last breath of a dying ember. Her eyes narrowed, straining through the fog and then she saw it.
A silhouette.
A figure walking toward her, framed by a dull, pulsing glow.
For a moment, she dared not breathe. Her heart slammed against her ribs.
The man moved slowly, almost aimlessly, as if unsure of each step. But there was something radiant about him, not in light, but in presence. In contrast to the emptiness around her, he burned like a candle untouched by the wind.
It couldn't be-
No.
It was.
The curve of his shoulders. The way his coat swayed as he moved. That unmistakable silver hair, tousled and uneven, like he'd fought his way through the storm of some unseen war.
"Altherion…?" she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.
Hope and disbelief waged war in her chest.
She took a step forward.
Then another.
And before she knew it, she was running, heart roaring, breath quick and ragged, tears she hadn't known were there now stinging her eyes.
"Altherion!"
He looked up, just barely.
Then, without a word, his body crumpled.
He collapsed into the stone floor with a hollow sound, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Liesette screamed.
"No!"
She dropped beside him, hands already on his shoulders, shaking him, calling his name over and over again.
"Altherion, no, don't you dare! Not now, not now! Wake up!"
His skin was cold. His breath shallow.
She touched his face, fingers trembling. "Don't do this to me," she whispered, pressing her forehead to his. "I just found you. You can't disappear too."
The world was still.
For the first time since this nightmare began, Liesette prayed not to the gods of Virevia, not to the twisted forces that ruled this place, but to whatever remained beyond the veil of sense and madness.
Please, she thought. Give me back something real.
And in that moment, even in stillness, Altherion's presence felt more grounding than anything she had touched since this nightmare began.
Like a lighthouse caught in the last storm.
Like a memory that refused to die.
Like hope fragile, flickering, but still burning.