Before I could curse the position I had found myself in any further, a sharp knock at the door pulled me out of my thoughts.
Apprehension tightened through me at the thought of facing anyone while wearing the face of someone they believed was still alive.
I would have to fill in for Yun now that he was gone. That much, at least, I owed him, considering I was the one holding his body and everything he had left behind.
He had lived in a world entirely different from mine and still shared more with me than anyone should have, far more than merely the name. Some part of me had seen itself in him while looking through those memories, and that part wanted to honour whatever remained of his life.
The rest of me was not sure I was capable of it. Knowing what someone had lost was not the same as caring that they had lost it, and that was a horrible thing to realise while standing in their home, surrounded by people who had no idea they were already mourning him.
Some part of me simply could not give two shits.
Well, it was not as though I had another option. I had not asked for any of this, but the dead had an irritating habit of not caring what the living had asked for either.
"Come in," I called out, surprised at how calm my voice sounded despite everything inside me.
The door creaked open, and she stepped through quietly, her eyebrows already creased with worry.
Ressa.
She was the head maid of House Claiom and the person who had done more to raise Yun than anyone else in it. Her brown hair had begun greying around the edges after decades of service, and a black servant’s gown covered her thin frame, while her warm eyes settled on me with visible relief.
Yun had collapsed in the training grounds the day before. Ever since receiving his Mark a week ago, a weakness had grown through him day by day, accompanied by a cloudiness that settled behind his eyes and made even the simplest things feel distant.
He had hidden it until the weakness finally left him face-down in the dirt. To anyone watching, it would have looked like a frail boy exhausting himself before his first Trial, but I knew it had been the Mark itself, greedily drinking down everything that made him whole until nothing of Yun remained.
"You are awake, young master," Ressa said as the door clicked shut behind her.
I nodded, only to notice her attention drifting past me towards the open window, its curtains still shifting in the morning wind.
A small frown settled over her face.
"You opened the window?"
She said it almost beneath her breath, more to herself than to me. Yun had hated opening it because Crimson was the only thing he could realistically blame for his mother’s death.
The rest of the world blamed it for much the same reason. Crimson had appeared without warning hundreds of years ago, a blood-red stain hanging over the sky, and the Rifts had followed soon afterwards with everything that crawled through them. Humanity had long since decided that one had caused the other.
I was the one who had written both into existence, so I knew their beliefs were threaded through with lies, even if the people living inside those lies had no way of knowing it.
To Ressa, the boy who had kept that window shut almost like a ritual was now standing in front of it with the curtains drawn wide. I had no explanation worth offering her.
"Just needed some air," I muttered, failing to meet her eyes and cursing myself inwardly for it.
The words sounded hollow, and Ressa heard it, but she chose not to press.
"Should I have the healer sent up?" she asked instead. "Your hands were bleeding again when you passed out."
I looked down before I could stop myself. The skin along the base of my fingers was split and half-healed, reopened so many times that thick calluses had formed across palms no eighteen-year-old should have possessed.
"They are fine," I said.
Ressa’s frown deepened, making it clear that she did not believe me, but she let the lie pass.
"The lord asked for your presence once you woke. He waits for you in the hall."
I nodded and watched her bow before turning towards the door.
"Young master."
She paused without looking back.
"You do not have to go down there today. I can tell him you are still resting."
For a moment, I searched through Yun’s memories for whatever he might usually have said to her, but they offered nothing beyond the shape of their relationship and the certainty that this was not the first excuse she had offered on his behalf.
The selfish part of me wanted to accept immediately. I had no reason to face a man who meant nothing to me beyond being the father of the body I wore, but refusing now would only give Ressa another change in me to notice.
"I will go," I said at last.
Ressa waited for a moment, perhaps hoping I would reconsider, before giving a quiet nod and leaving.
The door clicked shut behind her, leaving me with one more problem.
Meeting his father.
The man they called the Waking Dream was the head of House Claiom, holder of the Domain of Dream, and one of the strongest people alive. Now I had to walk downstairs, pretend he was my father, and explain when I intended to risk my soul in a Trial I had no desire to take.
Never taking it was not an option. This world was too dangerous to survive without strength, and anyone who failed to become Touched was little more than dust waiting for someone stronger to step on them.
With a sigh, I pushed myself to my feet and entered the corridor. I had never walked through these halls myself, yet Yun’s memories guided every step as naturally as though they had always belonged to me.
Dark wood and polished stone lined the manor, ornate designs running across ceilings high enough to make everything on Earth feel temporary by comparison. This was the medieval world I had written, stripped of the technology and science I had grown up with, although humanity had compensated with the one thing Earth never possessed.
Ichor.
The energy had appeared after Crimson and become the reason humanity survived the Rifts, powering what ordinary hands could not and reaching the rare few it named Marked before opening their path towards becoming Touched.
Humanity understood enough of Ichor to build its world around it, but almost everything else they believed was threaded through with lies.
Lies I had written myself.
My steps slowed near the stairwell when I noticed the painting covering most of the wall beside it, its brushwork so precise that the light seemed to settle within the paint and each face looked almost ready to move.
Four people stared back at me.
His family, and now, apparently, mine.
Harren stood in the centre, moonlit silver hair cropped short above violet eyes that held a gentleness Yun had rarely seen outside this painting. He had once loved his wife fiercely and doted on both his children, before her death broke something inside him and drove him so deeply into his work that he seemed to forget those children still needed raising.
Rhea stood beside him, warm and ordinary in every way he was not, with dark eyes and matching hair worn loosely around her shoulders. She had come from House Urhas, the family that oversaw the Domain of Death, making their marriage an unusual one for both houses.
Aela stood beside them, Yun’s elder sister and the person he had spent most of his life trying to become. She had inherited Harren’s features and awakened a formidable Aspect, both of which made it easy for the house to accept her as one of its own.
Yun had inherited his mother’s dark hair and pale skin instead, along with a sickly frailty no amount of effort had ever managed to change. Then there were the grey eyes that came from neither parent, standing out sharply enough that the house had decided long ago he simply was not Claiom enough.
They were wrong about him. His body had never been strong, but years spent training alone while the rest of the house mocked him had sharpened his technique and agility beyond most people his age. Harren had simply never defended him, never once telling the house that its judgement of his son was wrong.
Yet the family’s cruelty was not what disturbed me most.
In the novel I had written, this painting would have contained three faces instead of four.
I forced the thought from my mind only to realise that I had already reached a pair of wooden doors towering over me.
"Enter."
Harren’s voice passed through the doors as clearly as if he had spoken beside me. Of course. A Claimed had no need to wait for a knock.
Taking a breath, I pushed the doors open.
The hall stretched beneath a high ceiling lined with glowing Ichor orbs, their light spilling across a polished floor and a long wooden table occupying most of the room. Two places had been prepared near the hearth at its far end, where a fire crackled against the morning chill.
Cavell stood near the head of the table, his back straight beneath a dark fitted coat. The household steward’s thin eyes settled on me with their usual calm, although the faint warmth beneath it suggested he had been worried too.
"Young master."
He bowed before glancing briefly towards the empty chair beside Harren. It was a small movement, but Yun’s memories recognised it as Cavell’s quiet way of reminding him where he belonged.
I crossed the room and sat before I could think too hard about what that meant, then finally looked towards the man beside me.
My father.
The word felt foreign in my head. I had not called anyone that in years, and now I was supposed to use it for a man who was not my father at all, only another existence I had written into this world.
Harren’s frame filled the high-backed chair, one arm resting along the table while the other guided a knife through roasted meat and dark bread. For several seconds, he did not acknowledge me at all.
Then his eyes lifted, and violet met grey.
Everything around me softened. The edges of the hall blurred until the room began losing its shape, while the crackle of the fire stretched into a distant whisper and my thoughts slipped from my grasp one by one. Even remembering why I had entered the room started to feel like something happening far away.
I knew what was happening.
The Waking Dream radiated from the man beside me, pressing against my mind with a weight I could barely understand and had no hope of resisting. Harren was one of the strongest people alive; if he wished, he could probably kill me before I managed to rise from the chair.
My arms trembled beneath the table, my pulse hammering somewhere in my throat, but I knew what this man despised more than anything.
Weakness.
This fucking bastard was doing this to his own son, and Yun had probably spent his entire life pretending it did not frighten him.
So I did the same, holding myself still and keeping my eyes locked with Harren’s while I refused to let any sign of what he was doing reach my face.
His attention eventually returned to his plate. The pressure vanished with it, and the breath I had not realised I was holding finally escaped as I tried to stop my hands from shaking beneath the table.
Yet beneath the fear, some part of me felt almost ecstatic.
So this was the power I had written.
Holy fuck, that was amazing.
"Good morning, Father."
My voice remained steady, although the corner of my mouth twitched slightly around the unfamiliar word.
Harren gave me a curt nod and continued eating.
Did he seriously call me down here merely to watch him finish breakfast?
I reached for the cutlery instead, my attention catching on the closed eye inked across the back of his hand, lashes running along the top with a single line drawn through its centre.
His Mark.
I had only taken a few bites when Harren finally spoke.
"I heard you collapsed."
His voice was barely a murmur, yet it felt as though he had spoken directly into my ear. Yun’s memories supplied the reassurance Harren would expect, but trying to fill a place that did not belong to me left something hard sitting behind my ribs.
"Yes, Father," I said, keeping my voice even. "I had been pushing too hard since I got the Mark."
When I turned towards him, his eyes were already on me.
"It will not happen again."
He watched me for a second longer than was comfortable before returning to his meal.
I was almost ready to relax when his attention shifted towards the grey lines disappearing beneath my sleeves.
Well, here it came.
"When do you plan to take the Trial?"
It had been a week since Yun received his Mark, so the question was hardly unreasonable. Most people expected the Marked to face their first Trial quickly, although they only knew one side of the danger.
The elite had hidden the fact that remaining dormant for too long carried risks of its own. What everyone understood instead was what could happen if someone entered the Trial and failed.
A Soul Trial took place within the soul itself, leaving the body behind for hours while nobody outside could reach the person, speak to them, or know what they were facing. If they succeeded, they became Touched.
If they failed, they became a Fissure.
The Mark turned against them, warping into something made to consume rather than aid, while the Ledger erased them from its record forever. Their emotion and reason disappeared with everything else that had made them human, leaving behind the hunger and monstrosity that had always hidden somewhere within them.
Some retained fragments of memory, enough to know that they had once been human but never enough to justify what they had become. It was a fate most people considered worse than death.
I had written all of that while sitting in a chair with a cup of coffee, hoping the consequences would be severe enough to balance the power someone gained by succeeding.
Now I was sitting in front of those consequences myself.
You reap what you sow, they said.
Well, I had sown this entire fucking world.
"Tomorrow, Father."
The answer came out faster than I intended. Harren looked at me questioningly, and I continued before he could ask why.
I had already decided that I would meet the protagonist before risking my soul.
"I wish to visit the Temple of Dream before I take my Trial."
I almost hated the words as they left me, but I needed a reason to travel towards the protagonist’s village, and claiming a sudden desire for spiritual guidance was the best lie I had managed to find.
Besides, what harm could a little false devotion do? The gods were already dead, and unlike the rest of this world, I knew it because I was the one who had written them that way.
Harren’s expression remained calm, but a faint trace of surprise slipped through it.
"You have never once set foot in that temple."
"I know."
He watched me for several seconds before returning his attention to the table.
"So be it. I will have Cavell ready your departure."
I nodded. A Claiom visiting the Temple of Dream was hardly unusual, but Yun had never gone there before, carrying too much resentment towards everything connected to the gods and what had happened to his mother. Harren clearly remembered that too.
A few seconds later, he rose from his chair and moved away from the table.
He passed behind my chair without stopping, but his voice reached me before he reached the door.
"You take it the moment you return. Aela will oversee it."
Wait, what? What the hell was wrong with him?
The implication struck me only as the doors closed behind him. If I failed the Trial and became a Fissure, Aela would have to stand inside that room with her sword ready and make certain I never left it alive.
Harren had chosen his own daughter to kill her brother, to cut down the same body she had loved, cared for, and worried over for her entire life.
Then another thought found me, and somehow it was worse.
It would not even be her brother she killed.
Her brother had died last night in a room down the hall, and nobody in this house knew it except me. Whatever Aela cut down would be a stranger wearing his face, while she carried the guilt for the rest of her life believing she had killed him.
Some part of me hated myself for that.
Not because I had brought this possibility upon her, but because, even after understanding exactly what it would do to her, some part of me still could not care enough for it to matter.
I remained in the chair for a long time afterwards, the fire crackling while Cavell waited silently behind me.
"Shall I have your sister informed, young master?"
"Please."
He bowed and left, leaving me with my hands resting on the table as I stared down at the grey lines running along my forearms.