The estate was in chaos.
Servants wandered the halls with blank eyes, their movements mechanical, their faces empty. Guards stood at their posts but did not react when Kaelen and Lysander passed. The air was thick, heavy, pressed against their lungs like water.
"Brainwashed," Lysander said, his voice low. "You caused this fix it."
"Incase you forgot I was also one of them."
"Since the anchor collapsed," lysander said. "You should be able to kill her at her weakest."
They reached the dining hall. The doors were closed, but light spilled through the gaps.
Kaelen pushed the doors open.
The hall was empty. Just the long table, the tall windows, and at the far end, a figure standing in the shadows.
Her hair was matted, her clothes still torn from the dungeon clearly she was able to be clean so this must be her choice of clothing. Her eyes were different, no longer purple. Now they were the color of something else, something that shifted when Kaelen tried to look directly at them.
"Why do you keep spoiling my plans, " she said. Her voice was soft, almost sad. "It was peaceful, wasn't it? You got your brother, your family love you."
The scene changed and illusion shimmered at its edges, a perfect meadow beneath a perfect sun. In the distance, a younger version of his brother waved from the porch of their childhood home. Their mother's laughter drifted on a wind that smelled of clean linen and the servants baking bread.
His heart clenched it was the same feeling of another's emotions. He turned away from it all to face her. His own voice was rough, but not unkind.
"It was peaceful," he admitted, he could feel nostalgia from the Original owner's memory. " It was peaceful. Seeing a happy father, hearing Mother's real laugh, not the echo from old memories." He paused, his throat tightening, he disliked this feeling of being not able to control his emotions. "But you don't understand. That's the most cruel part of it."
She tilted her head, the softness in her eyes hardening into something desperate. "Cruel? I gave you back everything you lost."
"You gave me a painting of everything I lost," he said. He took a step closer, and she didn't retreat. "My brother in that world ids not the same. My mother never once looked at me with that tired worry she carried after father left. You know why? Because in your 'peace,' I never had to earn their love. It was just… there. A gift with no cost. A wound with no scar."
Her composure cracked. For a moment, she looked less like a keeper of dreams and more like a lonely child. "And that's worse than the truth? The truth where she died angry at you? Where your family's love is fickle and conditional?"
That hurt him, in the memories, he did argue with his mother before her passing.
"Yes," he whispered. "Because the truth is mine. That anger my brother felt? I was going to earn his forgiveness. That guilt with my mother I was learning to be someone who could finally soothe it." He gestured to the melting perfection behind them. "This place… i dont need it. I like this world its seen both the best and worst of me not just a perfect picture."
Her lower lip trembled. She closed her fists at her sides. "You think I don't know that?" she said, her soft voice breaking into something raw. "You think I built this because I don't understand pain? I built it because I do. Because I woke up in the dark for a thousand years, alone, and no one came. No one chose me. So I learned to build a sun that never sets. A love that never has to try."
She looked at him. "Is it so wrong? To want a cage that fits?"
Is it wrong to want a cage that fits?
He once asked the same question what was he told.
'If a prison feels like home, does that make it less of a prison?,'
"A beautiful cage is still a cage," he said.
A single tear slipped down her cheek. She didn't wipe it away.
"And if I fall apart out there?" she asked, voice barely a breath. "I really like my cage.?"
For a long moment, he didn't answer. The perfect meadow behind them began to flicker, the edges curling like paper over a flame.
"That's how you learn,"
"You're a fool," she said.
Kaelen moved forward, his hand on his blade, he still did not trust her. "You're the Gatebound, how did you escape."
She tilted her head. "I had a name once. Before they chained me beneath the city and used me as a seal for the beast." Her eyes flicked to Lysander. "He knows. His family built the chains. His bloodline has been feeding on me for centuries."
Lysander's expression did not change, but the bond pulsed with something cold.
Kaelen then remembered that after the assessment the protagonist first storyline was resealing the beast that had had broken out of the chain and killed people.
"I made them happy." Her voice cracked. "I gave them what they wanted. Your brother he wanted to be respected. Your father he wanted to be free of the guilt. The servants they wanted to serve a house that wasn't falling apart." She stepped closer. "I gave them peace. The same peace I tried to give you."
"It was a lie."
"All peace is a lie," she said. "But it's a kind lie. Kinder than the truth."
"Let them go," Lysander said. "Break the illusion. Give them back their minds."
She was silent for a long moment. Then she smiled a sad, broken thing.
"I can't," she said. "The dream is all that's keeping me alive. If I let it go, I'll fade. I'll become nothing. Just another ghost beneath the city."
Lysander stepped forward. "Long time in an illusion leads to maddness. If you don't let them go they loose their souls"
His eyes glowed with warning. "will you do it ar do you want me to do it for you."
The girl paused then sighed.
"I'll break the illusion," she said without looking back. "Not because you asked. But because I'm tired. So very tired."
She vanished. And around them, the world began to shift.
---
"Shes gone?" Kaelen asked.
The duke lifted a small glass tin where a small beast was shouting it kept shape shifting into various things.
[Gatebound Entity: Status — Fading. Not destroyed.]
[Probability of Return: 33%]
[Note: Her master severed ties with her.]
"Master?" he mummured.
"The academy will love this?"
Kaelen blinked then remembered the crazed look of scientists and researchers whenever he brought them something new to study and felt bad for the beast.
"Do you have to...
He paused caused the duke looked at him with an odd expression on his face.
"You did not believe the nonsense it was spouting did you?"
Kaelen blinked then realized that this beast was capable of not only illusion but confusion.
He coughed. "Of course not, why would I believe that."
"Stupid."