Ray could go to them, could descend into their pit and add her strength to theirs.

  The pressure against her dome pulsed again, brick and mortar from a sprouting building evaporating as they hit. They made her Light flicker.

  Stirleo. If he loses control completely, the Monastery will not survive.

  If they combined their strength, they might hold him long enough to stabilize the structures in some areas. With her down there, the dome below would double in reach.

  Triple, perhaps.

  For a moment, she almost stepped toward it.

  No. It is pointless if I leave the cause untouched.

  Demoa had woken first. That was the start. Something had struck the valley before it struck the Abbot. Suppressing the effect would not end the cause.

  Ray drew in a slow breath. White light gathered above her skin. It brightened at her palms and feet first, then ran in sharp lines down her arms and legs. The air around her got hotter. Stirleo’s unstable Lucidity struck her barrier again.

  Her dome did not falter, but thickened and expanded.

  A second layer formed over the first, denser, brighter. The distortions outside it hit mless sharply now, now only sliding around her instead of trying to push through.

  Dust and splinters crashed into the boundary and skidded away. Inside the dome, the air calmed down.

  Ray finally stood alone in a pocket of order. Her order. It felt good.

  But that would not help her long term, she had to find the source.

  Her gaze rose toward the pit with the others, which had shifted again. It now hung above her at an angle. More Disciples had gathered within it. They clung to their own feeble dome, sandals and boots braced against stone that no longer knew which way was down.

  Her heartbeat was still too fast, so she forced it slower.

  If she wasted strength leaping blindly through distortion, she would arrive drained, wherever she had to go. And if she arrived drained, she would fail.

  Failure is not an option, not again. Not afer I failed to save Elga. Not after I failed saving Demoa. I am hotheaded. Always hotheaded in situations like this, never calm. Demoa knew. Elga too. I can not let others calm me anymore. I need to do it myself.

  The hatred in her chest grew clearer, more heavy. She focsued only on that. It worked, the calm came, but it was cold. She would use it.

  Whatever did this, or whoever, you will not escape me.

  She almost smiled, saw everything clear again. There was just one way, finding the source. So she would do so.

  Then she looked at the trees. A shiver ran through her spine. At first they had seemed like copies, yet they were not.

  The new trunks were pale, as if washed of pigment. Their bark lacked depth. Grooves that should have caught shadow were smooth. Leaves formed in flat clusters, too symmetrical, too simple.

  A branch split. The split did not produce an organic fork. It produced a mirrored duplicate, rigid and colorless.

  Ray turned her head, a ghasp escaping her lips. The towers were changing too.

  Reliefs slid from the walls as if sanded away. Mortar lines vanished. Stained glass dulled from red and blue to gray. Hairline cracks spread across the panes. Columns that had once been fluted became featureless cylinders. Statues lost their fingers first. Then their faces blurred into blank stone.

  Detail was being erased. Not shattered, not forced apart, but losing itself to meaninglessness.

  Above her, the refuge hole tore open wider.

  A Disciple ran toward it and finally jumped. He missed the protective dome by inches. His body struck a jutting spire that had erupted from a wall. The impact drove some of his guts out of his back. A burst of white light tore free from his chest as his feeble fortification failed him and he unraveled in the air, taken by the paterns and twists of waking, accompanied by the terrible sound that siglnaled his departure from the Dream.

  Another Disciple made it. She hit the outer layer of the Scholar’s dome.

  The barrier rippled. Light thickened where she struck and absorbed the force, aiding her. She slid through its curved surface and dropped safely inside.

  Two more leapt and RAy stood still, observing.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  One was smashed midair by a column that grew upward without warning. The stone punched through him and continued rising. His form fractured into shimmering waves before the column finished extending. The other, again, made it.

  The dome held. She turned away. it was no use helping. She had to completely stop this.

  More holes opened across the landscape. The Monastery was not simply twisting anymore, it was thinning. It lost its color, its shape, it meaning, its beauty.

  Ray watched the degradation spread across surfaces that had once felt eternal, prisitne and holy.

  “Ray, come on, we have to join forces!” Tise suddenly shouted. She had broken through a tower and now landed beside Ray’s dome, surrounded by her own sphere, slightly smaller.

  “I… That won’t work, we can never stand against the abbot!” Ray shouted back, staggering as the ground shifted and a section of trees collapsed downward between them.

  “We don’t have to! We just have to get far enough away!” Tise yelled, louder now as the widening gap pulled her farther from Ray.

  “How are we even supposed to know where to go? He’s everywhere!”

  “We have to try! Ray, we need you! With you, we might be able to extend far enough, all of us together!”

  She looked to the refugeees again. Was tempted once more. But the hatred allowed her to focus her thoughts.

  “No. That’s useless. Something caused this, and as long as we don’t fight the cause itself, the same thing could happen to all of us as to the abbot. I will destroy it!”

  Ray closed her eyes briefly and looked inward. The cold hatred radiated from the circle in her Inner World, reminding her that she could not run. That helping would be of no use. That she had to attack.

  “Why? If we don’t group together—” Tise shouted, now almost impossible to hear.

  “Demoa WOKE! IT AWAKENED DEMOA!” Ray suddenly screamed.

  She barely noticed that her Lucidity amplified her voice, or that small tears streamed down her trembling cheeks. She cursed herself for weeping them.

  Not now. Deal with the problem, grieve later!

  She saw Tise recoil in shock and sorrow, simply staring at her as the ground beneath her feet curved away from Ray. Above, the hole and the sphere with the others were no longer visible.

  She was alone.

  Demoa is gone… She is gone and I never got to tell her I am sorry… That I was wrong about her and Rad…

  Though she still stood on a solid piece of land, protected by her dome of radiant Lucidity, it felt as if the ground were being pulled from beneath her feet.

  What if it was Rad… What if I was right, if he truly—

  And somewhere deep inside, Ray found herself wishing that she had been right. That another human had been responsible, not a Nightmare. That there was someone she could hold accountable.

  In the distance, screams echoed. Flashes of light erupted everywhere now as a deep rumbling swelled through the air and she heard the echoes of more Disciples waking up.

  Where do I go? Where can I go? Where is the pond? Damn it… shit. FUCK, Ray screamed inwardly, looking around wildly.

  But everywhere there were only fading trees, buildings, paved and overgrown ground, and blue sky, all mixed together in distorted curves. She would have followed the Sun, yet there were so many suns. Wherever the sky appeared within the swirling chaos, they were there, mocking. Above her, to her right, to her left.

  Are those even the same Sun? Does nothing make sense anymore?

  Her legs trembled and finally gave out. She fell onto the damp grass at her feet, but her dome extended further, anger now mixing into her hatred. The Light around her grew colder as well. Her skin tingled and she got ghoosebumps.

  If not even the Sun can tell me where I am… how am I ever supposed to find the pond?

  Her emotions began to surge, forcing their way back into her thoughts, and she could no longer hold them at bay. Before her inner eye, she saw Demoa smiling at her. Dancing. Feeding the plainhoppers.

  From the depths of her soul rose a scream. She pounded her fists against the ground and slammed her forehead into the earth. A boom echoed as light ate away everything around her, leaving her standing on only a pillar of solitude.

  This has to stop! Why can it not be as it was this morning? When the worst thing in the Dream was a trivial argument between two friends?

  Then she forced herself together and everything started to be distante. Only one thing mttered now.

  Somewhere. Somewhere there is a Nightmare. Or worse, a person who did this... Somewhere…

  I will find you.

  She stood up. The pillar she was on now was eaten by pagodas that multiplied at its base, slowly making their way up. They finally crashed into Ray's Lucidity and evaporated.

  Demoa, Demoa, I am so sorry… I wanted to tell you, I wanted to… What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do…

  A deep rumbling reached her ears. Her helplessness slowly ebbed, and she looked up in confusion. In the distance shone a radiant light, colorful and iridescent.

  Ray turned, shivering in awe.

  The Dream around her was suddenly normal again. She sat beside a pagoda, artfully decorated, enthroned upon a piece of the slope, adorned with golden and silver reliefs that radiated noble beauty. It was the same one that had just sent its duplicates towards her. Farther behind it stood the great hall from which she had rushed out so hastily, and inside it Stirleo and Nobea must still be with the others. If any of them were still with them.

  Ray held her breath when she saw that half the roof had been blasted away. Shimmering bands coiled out from within like the tendrils of a colossal plant, growing upward and ending in a small, radiant sphere that shone with light of every color.

  Around the hall, contorted landscapes, proliferating buildings, and screaming people still remained. Yet between Ray and the Light, there was calm, as if an invisible path connected her to the glowing object. And within herself she felt that light now as well, an encouraging yet unyielding warmth.

  Nobea.

  Her doubts and her helplessness evaporated in the shimmering colors that now lived not only above the hall in that sphere, in that small star, but also through her connection with Nobea, new as it was, awakening fresh resolve within her.

  Then came a suspicion, a hope that quickly solidified into certainty: When Ray turned around, she saw that not only the space between her and the brightly glowing star had returned to normal. Behind her, too, a path had appeared, winding down the hill as it always had, bordered on both sides by grounded, stable landscape.

  The path was normal. So was the shimmering pond at its end, and the meadow that reached toward a tree which, together with its immediate surroundings, was burning in black flames that licked darkly and malevolently in the evening light.

  In the distance, Ray saw a figure near the flames. From the posture alone she could read shock at the sudden exposure. Rad was barely recognizable, yet Ray knew he had seen her, because he suddenly began to run, confirming all she had feared... and hoped.

  A smile forced itself onto her lips. In her mind, cold hatred shone down upon her as she received the confirmation she had been seeking.

  It was him.

  She leapt forward.

  He would not escape her.