For the first time in centuries, Lumeris slept without fear.
The skies no longer tore themselves open. The rivers no longer shimmered with chaotic energy. The people — both human and dream-born — worked side by side, rebuilding what was once lost.
And in the manor on the hill, Countess Eunha — now simply Eunha Jiheon's partner — woke each morning to birdsong instead of battle sirens.
She should've been happy.
But lately, the silence felt too perfect.
---
⚜️
Eunha sat in the study that overlooked the valley, ink-stained fingers tapping the edge of a journal filled with diagrams — sketches of the Crown of Origin.
It still pulsed faintly under the glass containment sigil Jiheon had built.
Once divine, now dormant.
Or so they thought.
She flipped through her notes — page after page of readings she'd taken over the last week. The energy levels were rising again. Subtly. Like a sleeping heart dreaming of motion.
> "That shouldn't be possible," she murmured. "I sealed the resonance completely."
From the doorway, Jiheon appeared, hair messy from sleep and half a smile on his lips.
> "You said that three times yesterday," he said. "And the day before that."
> "Because it keeps changing."
> "Eunha, it's been months. Maybe the readings are just environmental interference."
> "Then why does it whisper?"
That made him stop. "Whisper?"
She turned to him, eyes serious. "When I meditate near it… I hear things. Words. My own voice, but distorted. It's like it's calling me back."
Jiheon exhaled slowly. "Then we destroy it."
> "No," she said immediately. "It's not hostile. It's… remembering."
> "Objects don't remember."
> "This one does. Because I made it with memory."
He studied her — not with fear, but with the same analytical calm he always had. "Then let's find out what it remembers."
---
⚜️
They brought Rin into the fold again.
She had been wandering the fractured dream remnants, her wings gone, her divinity reduced to faint echoes.
When she saw the Crown, her expression hardened. "You should've buried that thing."
> "It's not a thing," Eunha said. "It's part of me."
> "Exactly my point."
But when the whispers began, Rin's cynicism faded.
They came like faint echoes through the crystal — a language that bent syntax itself, half-dream, half-song.
"…I am… I remember…"
The three of them stood in silence.
> "It's learning to speak," Eunha whispered.
> "Or something is using it to reach you," Rin countered.
> "Through me," Eunha added grimly. "Because my consciousness is still imprinted in its matrix."
---
⚜️
That night, Eunha couldn't sleep.
Every time she closed her eyes, she found herself standing in a void — a place of soft, infinite light where faint shadows of people drifted by like memories out of focus.
And always, in the distance, she saw the silhouette of the Crown.
Its voice came through clear this time.
> "You are incomplete."
> "No," she answered. "I chose to return."
> "Choice is illusion. You are the dream and the dream is never whole."
> "Then what are you?"
> "The part you left behind."
When she reached out, the world shattered into glass — and she woke up gasping.
---
⚜️
Jiheon found her at dawn, sitting on the balcony, arms wrapped around her knees.
> "You saw it again," he said quietly.
She nodded. "It's not just memory. It's sentient."
> "A copy of you?"
> "No. Worse. A piece that grew without me."
He frowned. "Like… a splintered consciousness?"
> "More like an echo evolving."
He sat beside her, silent for a long time. The sunrise painted gold across her face, soft and fragile.
> "You're afraid," he said finally.
> "Not for me. For what happens if it wakes fully."
> "What will happen?"
> "The boundary between dream and reality will collapse again — but not as before. It won't be chaos. It'll be unification. Permanent."
He blinked. "Isn't that what we wanted?"
She turned to him, eyes dark. "It means no one will ever wake again."
---
⚜️
Three days later, anomalies began.
The city's dream monitors registered impossible readings — shared hallucinations, simultaneous lucid overlaps, people speaking to reflections that spoke back.
Children dreamt of the same figure — a woman with silver eyes and a crown of glass.
When Eunha saw the sketches they made, her stomach turned to ice.
It was her.
Or rather, the other her.
---
⚜️
Rin stormed into the manor with data crystals from the Dream Archives.
> "It's feeding," she said, slamming one onto the table. "Every time someone dreams near the Crown, it absorbs fragments. It's building an identity."
Eunha's hands trembled. "A consciousness fractal… It's reconstructing itself through collective dreaming."
Jiheon's voice hardened. "Then we shut it down. Permanently."
> "You can't," Eunha said softly. "Destroying it would tear open everything again."
Rin folded her arms. "Then what's your plan? Negotiate with yourself?"
Eunha met her gaze. "Exactly that."
---
⚜️
The ritual chamber was rebuilt beneath the manor, the same place where the Crown once nearly destroyed the world.
Now, it pulsed faintly on the pedestal, like a sleeping animal dreaming of being awake.
Eunha sat before it, wearing a stabilizer that linked her directly to its core frequency. Jiheon stood beside her, Rin guarding the circle with drawn sigils.
> "If something goes wrong," Jiheon said, "I pull you out."
> "If something goes wrong," she corrected, "don't hesitate."
She smiled faintly. "You're too soft now."
> "Only for you."
He touched her forehead gently, then stepped back.
And she entered the dream.
---
⚜️
This time, there was no white field. No horizon.
Only a vast ocean of reflected stars, each one pulsing like a heartbeat.
In the center stood her double.
Identical face. Identical voice. But colder. Sharper. Infinite.
> "So you finally came," the echo said.
> "I had to."
> "You left me to rot in eternity."
> "I didn't leave you. I chose life."
> "And now your life unravels without me."
The echo raised her hand — and the stars bent around it, warping into a crown-shaped halo.
> "You think you can live human," it hissed. "But every dream that breathes your name is mine."
Eunha stepped forward. "Then take them. But leave the world."
> "No. The world is the dream, and I will make it whole."
The air fractured into streams of light.
Eunha closed her eyes — and whispered,
> "Then I'll show you what being human means."
---
⚜️
Outside the ritual chamber, alarms blared. The containment sigils failed one by one as energy surged through the floor. Jiheon rushed forward, stabilizer trembling in his hands.
> "Rin! She's merging with it again!"
> "No," Rin said, eyes widening. "She's splitting it — forcing individuality back into the core."
The ground trembled, and the Crown shattered — not in destruction, but division.
Two orbs of light rose — one gold, one silver — circling each other like twin suns.
Then silence.
When the light faded, Eunha collapsed into Jiheon's arms — breathing, but barely.
And floating above her body, translucent and glowing faintly, was her echo.
Alive.
Separate.
Smiling.
> "You gave me form," it whispered. "Now let's see which of us deserves to exist."