Liesette woke up with a startled gasp, as though she had just fallen from a dream she hadn't consented to. Her body rested on something too soft to be stone yet far too rough to be called a bed.
She blinked slowly, letting her vision adjust to the pale, hazy void above her, an empty sky with no stars, no moons, and certainly no Altherion.
It took a full minute for her brain to catch up with her breathing.
Where was she?
Where was he?
She sat up abruptly. "Altherion?" Her voice sounded small, swallowed by the thick air.
No answer. Just silence. Vast, dense silence. The kind that felt like it was listening.
Her heart pounded faster. She turned in place, scanning the endless gray that surrounded her. There was no architecture, no landmarks, not even a horizon. Just an endless nothingness that seemed to shift subtly when she wasn't looking at it.
"Okay," she said aloud, hugging her arms to her chest. "Don't panic. There's probably a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. Like... spatial distortion. Or dimensional rift. Maybe a magical artifact exploded. That sounds like something Arviel would accidentally do on purpose."
She forced herself to her feet. Her knees trembled slightly, but she stood. And then the memories tried to return, jagged flashes, incomplete pieces.
The temple.
Yes, the temple...
She remembered... light? A sound? Something overwhelming. Her hands shook.
"What happened?" she muttered to herself. "There was... Arviel, I think? A presence. Altherion said something, and then I-then I,
But the moment slipped away like a dream dissolving on waking.
Nothing. Just a blank slate.
Her chest tightened. "Why can't I remember? Did something take the memory? Did I block it out? Did I get hit on the head? Oh no... what if this is post-dimensional memory loss? What if I've been brainwashed? What if this is a test?"
Liesette spun in place, now fully engaged in a mental downward spiral. "Okay, Liesette, calm down. Assess the situation. Step one: you are alive. Probably. Step two: you are alone. Most definitely. Step three: your last known location was a creepy ancient temple with at least two unstable magical presences, and now you're in a blank void of despair. So... good news, you're still you, bad news, you're still you."
She clutched her head. "What if Altherion's gone? What if I failed something? What if this is like those myths where people wander into sacred spaces and get erased from history? What if I'm already erased and this is what nothingness feels like?"
A breeze soft but suddencwhispered past her cheek.
Her eyes widened.
"Okay, that was either atmospheric coincidence, or the void just told me to shut up."
There was no laughter, no echo. But the silence felt like it was mocking her.
"I need to find him," she said, regaining her footing. "Altherion wouldn't just leave me. He's many things, cryptic, brooding, allergic to smiling but not a deserter."
Her shoes squeaked slightly on the ground as she took her first cautious step. Whatever surface she was walking on seemed to shift between solid and soft, as though reality hadn't yet decided what it wanted to be.
"If I were a tall magical genius man," she muttered, "where would I be?"
A pause.
"Probably arguing with an ancient entity about ethics," she concluded, exasperated. "Or stuck in a riddle maze. Or worst case scenario merged with some ancient force because he thought it would be 'useful'."
She groaned and pressed her palm to her face.
Despite herself, a smile twitched at the corner of her lips. She started walking again, faster now.
"Okay, Altherion. Wherever you are, just hold on. Don't go getting existential without me."
And as she walked deeper into the blank unknown, Liesette carried with her a heart full of spiraling thoughts, a head full of missing pieces, and a soul stubborn enough to keep searching, because sometimes, even in a void, hope was louder than silence.
***
Liesette walked through streets that seemed to fold in on themselves, their geometry uncertain, untrustworthy as if reality here was more of a suggestion than a law.
The cobblestones beneath her feet clicked under her boots, though not always in the rhythm of her steps. Sometimes they clicked before she stepped. Sometimes after. Sometimes not at all.
There was no one around. No sound but the low hum of silence pressing against her ears like wool stuffed too tight in a pillow.
For a moment, panic rose up her throat like bile, raw and bitter. Her heart pounded like it wanted to punch through her ribs and make a break for it.
She wrapped her arms around herself. "Okay. Okay. You're fine. This is fine. You've woken up in weird places before. Remember that time with the festival? And the flying bathtub? And the goat cult?"
A beat passed.
"…Okay, maybe not fine, but not dead either. Not yet."
She looked around again, squinting at the crooked buildings whose windows blinked when she wasn't looking. Each structure seemed to change shape when not directly observed. A bakery that had once been on her left was suddenly on her right, now selling shoes instead of bread. The church bell rang from somewhere beneath her feet.
Then she heard it.
"Liesette..."
She froze. The voice was soft, breathy like wind through dead leaves. But more than that, it wasn't his voice. Not Altherion's.
She spun in place. Empty streets.
Her brows knitted together. "Great. Whispering walls. That's always a good sign."
She picked up the pace, her boots thudding irregularly against the ever-shifting ground. Her brain, however, had no interest in staying calm.
What if this is a trap? A siren-song dimension built to confuse and isolate me? What if it's trying to fracture my mind by simulating familiarity without coherence? Or worse what if it's mimicking my thoughts? What if I'm not even me right now? How do I know I'm not a simulation inside someone else's dying dream?
She slapped her own cheek. Not hard. Just enough to feel real. "Focus. You're not going down the spiral today."
But of course, her brain ignored her entirely.
"Liesette..."
There it was again. The same voice, from a different direction.
She turned sharply, only to see a long hallway that hadn't existed before. It stretched on forever, lined with doors that opened and closed on their own, as if sighing in sleep.
"Nope, not walking into that. Definitely not following ghost hallways calling my name."
She turned away.
"…Liesette…"
Closer. No echo this time.
She paused. "Oh, now you're right behind me, huh? Real original."
But there was nothing. Not even a shadow.
She continued walking, passing strange buildings and surreal sights. A fruit stand selling apples that whispered secrets. A statue of herself, faceless, standing in the center of a small courtyard with its hand raised in warning or greeting. Hard to tell.
She refused to stop and analyze that one.
"I'm not in the mood for symbolic horror, thank you," she grumbled, storming past.
And then came the thoughts.
What if this whole place is a manifestation of guilt? Or my fear of abandonment? Is that why Altherion isn't here? Did he disappear because I failed him? Or maybe I'm in a coma somewhere and this is my brain's last-ditch attempt at processing unresolved trauma. What if this is my punishment for lying in history class?
She covered her face with both hands. "Why am I like this?"
And yet she kept moving forward.
Eventually, her steps took her to what looked like a train station though the tracks floated in midair, curling in impossible directions. The benches levitated slowly from ground to ceiling and back again. A clock spun backwards and then inside-out.
The ticket booth glowed with an eerie light, displaying only the words: DESTINATION: PROBABLY.
Liesette sat down on a floating bench, which thankfully stayed still. For now.
She sighed. "Altherion, if you're watching from some rooftop, this is your cue to show up and say something annoyingly smug."
Silence.
She sat in it, wrapping it around herself like a damp cloak.
And then… something stirred.
A pressure in the air. A ripple in her chest. Like something just out of sight knew she was here.
And she knew, though she couldn't say how that Altherion was somewhere in this madness too.
She stood slowly.
"Alright, I'm coming to find you. Just... try not to be dead when I do."
Somewhere, the ground sighed beneath her.
And behind her, faint and impossible, the voice called again.
"Liesette…"
She didn't answer. But this time… she hesitated.
***
Liesette's steps were slower now.
Not because she was tired, though the weight of her thoughts alone could've anchored her to the shifting ground but because something about this city pressed down on her senses like a damp cloth smothering a flame.
Every street she turned onto looked like the last. Buildings twisted subtly when she wasn't looking, archways bent the wrong way, and windows watched her with the emptiness of forgotten eyes.
She tried not to think about it. That never helped.
But then, there it was.
A soft glow, like candlelight smothered in oil. It pulsed, distant at first, but insistent. Liesette moved toward it as if drawn by a thread.
In the middle of a crumbling courtyard stood a pedestal that hadn't been there a moment ago. Perched atop it hovered a lantern, ornate, foreign, and humming faintly with energy she could feel in her teeth.
Its flame danced unnaturally inside the glass, beginning as a rich violet before flaring into a searing blue, then darkening into black, like a void lit from within. Then without transition it returned to violet. Again. And again.
It was alive. Not metaphorically. The fire was alive.
Liesette took a step closer, her heart pounding. "Okay… sentient lantern. This is fine. This is totally fine. It's not like I'm trapped in a dying city with a shifting skyline and hallucinating voices."
She reached out, slow, deliberate. Her fingers trembled. Something about the flame seemed to notice her presence, responding to her nearness like a predator bristling at the scent of prey.
"I know this is a bad idea," she muttered, voice shaky. "But also, I have literally nothing else to go on."
Her fingertips brushed the lantern's handle.
And the world ignited.
The flame inside burst outward, not just light, not just heat, but a will a torrent of otherworldly fire that screamed in colors that had no names. It didn't burn her skin. No. It invaded it.
Crawled across her arm like sentient vines, tendrils of impossible hue digging beneath the surface without ever breaking it.
She gasped, stumbled back, clawing at the air. The flame coiled around her torso, searing her nerves with icy heat. Her muscles locked. Her vision shimmered.
Her scream caught in her throat.
Not from pain, but from the memory.
For the briefest instant, she saw herself not now, but elsewhere. Somewhere far from this decaying city. Somewhere warm. Safe. Laughing. With-
Gone.
The flame pressed into her chest like it meant to hollow her out.
She fell to her knees.
And then it vanished.
No trace. No embers. No smell of smoke. Only silence.
Liesette collapsed forward, her palms slapping cold stone. Her breath came in ragged bursts. Her heart beat against her ribs like it wanted to escape.
She slowly looked down at herself. No burns. No marks. Not even a smudge.
But she felt different. The kind of different that doesn't show on the outside, the kind that hums behind the ribs, like a secret left under the tongue too long.
She wiped sweat from her brow with a shaking hand.
"Okay," she whispered, trying to laugh. It came out strangled. "That was… normal. That was fine. I touched a cursed lantern and now I'm probably haunted. Amazing."
She glanced back at it.
The lantern remained where it was, flickering with innocent violet light. The pedestal beneath it now cracked, as though under too much pressure.
"I am not touching you again," she told it firmly, backing away. "Not even if you offer me answers on a silver plate and a map out of this fever-dream of a city."
But even as she turned to leave, she felt something inside her had been claimed.
Not entirely. Not fully.
But enough.
And the further she walked, the more she swore she could feel the flame watching her from within.