“There is always something about illusions. Mind attacks are not always perfect. But to the normal human brain, they are.”

  Adam’s voice slithers through my skull. I hate it. Hate how clear it sounds, like he’s standing behind me again.

  “However, all of you have been given minds that can see beyond. The information your eyes send to the brain will always be accurate. Think of it as photographic memory… but faster.”

  The memory drops into me like a stone through water. Too vivid. Too close. As if it happened days ago, not years. We were in that sterile white classroom, all of us tiny, shivering in thin hospital gowns. Sitting obediently under fluorescent lights that buzzed like angry insects. Staring at the man we thought was our father. Our creator.

  He stands before us again in my mind with cold eyes softened by a smile he crafted in a mirror. The kind of smile that never reached the soul behind it.

  “Because of that, you are capable of noticing key flaws. Key flaws are the only way of escaping these illusions.”

  'Key flaws. That's it.'

  The words hit me like a shock.

  My gaze snaps to Nico. That smile again. Too neat, too rehearsed. Skin stretched just a little too tightly across his cheeks. His eyes don’t blink. They don’t even shine.

  A chill spreads across the room, though no one reacts.

  Before he says a word, I pull in a sharp breath and dive into the ether. The shift is instant. My skin heats, veins ignite. Sparks of electric-blue coil around my right hand while my fingers curl into a fist out of instinct, or out of the need to strike something real.

  I follow my instinct before thought can catch up. I launch at Nico, fist burning with ether. He doesn’t dodge. He lets me hit him.

  The impact is sickeningly real. I feel the bone, the muscle, the resistance. It's all real enough to fool anyone. Real enough to fool me, if I didn’t already know better.

  His body whips through the café’s entrance and crashes into a vehicle parked outside. Metal shrieks. Glass spiders out in fractures. The vehicle gives way before Nico does. Nexus-enhanced flesh outmatches steel.

  I stand there, chest rising and falling, and turn back.

  Silence.

  Every patron in the café is staring at me, but not like witnesses. Not like shocked civilians. But like observers. Their eyes track me in perfect unison. Each one of them is too calm, watching me with predatory evaluation.

  Just as I expected, the controller behind this illusion is confused.

  “A flaw,” I whisper.

  Outside, Nico pushes himself out of the mangled frame of the vehicle. Blood streaks down his cheek from a cut running dangerously close to his eye. The creepy calmness from before is gone, peeled away like a mask soaked off in rain. Something else trembles.

  It's his fear. Nico's fear.

  “What is the name of my sword?” I ask, voice steady. “I told you its name a few years ago.”

  He freezes. His jaw works, as if dragged between two commands. His lips part, and for a second, I see the real Nico, the one who tapped out warnings with shaking fingers.

  But the words that come out are wrong. Forced. “We’re still in the Spire, Astrid!”

  His voice cracks with pain.

  “The Spire?” I breathe.

  The café lights flicker. And the shadows bend when something presses in from all sides. Then, the world around us exhales, like it’s preparing to change.

  Nico nods. Barely. His jaw clenches so tight that I hear the faint crack of teeth grinding. His entire face trembles like he’s wrestling invisible shackles. “You have to… fight back.” Each word scrapes out of him like something sharp is tearing his throat from the inside.

  “Reject… the… illusion… system.”

  And then, like a switch. The struggle dies. Wiped clean. His expression smooths into something empty, hollow, and wrong. The warmth drains from his green eyes, leaving only a flat, glassy coldness.

  He then smiles. “Isn’t this the perfect world you’ve desired?” he asks in a chilling tone. “You know, for a pathetic race, you are so hard to please.”

  The air leaves my lungs in one hard, painful exhale. This isn’t Nico anymore, nor an illusion of Nico. This is the puppeteer wearing his shape, bending it like wet clay.

  “Who are you?” My voice cracks. I can't hide the fear that whatever is speaking to me is strong. Its presence pours through the illusion like black fog, heavy enough to pin my ribs in place.

  Every instinct screams run. But run where? I can feel the unseen, conceptless walls closing around me. Think of it as a cage with no bars. Or a prison disguised as comfort.

  “What have you done to Nico?”

  “Oh...” he pretends. “Nico is fine.” His head then tilts, and something in his neck pops. "He's in one of my illusions, experiencing the thrill of being a planetary explorer. It's his greatest desire, you see. Quite the fascinating young man. He will soon surrender his mind to me."

  “He doesn’t have the Silver Child, so his mind will break much faster than yours.” He pauses for a moment. And in that moment, I see a hint of frustration. “Yours, however… is a hassle."

  His smile widens, like a mask stretching.

  “Your greatest desire is death,” he whispers. “And I cannot allow that… little dragon.”

  The illusion around us shudders like the entire world is listening.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Why?” The word barely leaves my mouth. It feels stolen from my lungs.

  “Because he wants you alive,” the thing wearing Nico answers. “My job is to break you until you’re useful to him.”

  'Useful to him?'

  Suddenly, the purpose of the illusion slams into me like a falling star. This isn’t Beta 3. It hasn’t been two years since the Nexus Event. Crap! I shouldn't be sitting in a café. There shouldn’t be sunlight.

  There shouldn’t be still air. There shouldn’t be a Nico sipping coffee and tapping out warnings.

  Because we had just entered the Dragon Spire. None of this is real. None of it.

  My memory rips upward from the dark, clawing through the fog as a flood of my original memories pours into my mind. The first thing I feel is more fear. It's like a hand dragging its nails down the inside of my spine. I stagger back as the world tilts.

  We barely lasted ten minutes past the entrance. Tessia’s scream echoed through the stone halls. It was high, unnatural, more animal than human. Afterwards, the world cracked open. The psychic pressure hit like a tidal wave of blades, shredding my thoughts, collapsing my mind inward until I couldn’t even remember how to breathe.

  I remember falling. I remember the cracking light. I remember thinking, 'I’ll just die and restart. Easy.'

  I was wrong. So terribly wrong. I ended up here instead.

  “Useful… to who?” My voice trembles, but I force the words out.

  “I don’t want to answer that,” the creature says. “Anyway, onto the next desire.”

  He raises a hand casually, like flicking dust off his sleeve. “You won’t remember any of this.”

  “I will.”

  I act fast. My hand snaps to the nearest object—a table knife made from cheap stainless steel. Useless for cutting meat. Perfect for what I need. I hold down my breath, and ether bursts through my palm in a violent surge. The blade drinks it greedily, the silver drowning in electric-blue fire until it hums like a heartbeat.

  When I launch forward, the ground cracks. My boots punch fissures into the café tiles. The illusions jerk their heads toward me all at once. This is the strength of a Nexus Being. This is me, unshackled.

  I lunge with no hesitation, no breath between thought and motion. The table knife becomes a sword in my hand, driven forward with killing precision.

  Nico shifts. Just a single step to the right, taken a heartbeat before the blade kisses his ribs.

  I skid, stop, pivot my boot and slam into his gut. The impact forces him back half a meter, nothing more. He barely reacts. He’s stronger. Way stronger.

  That’s why I don’t give him a second to breathe when I hurl the knife. It spins, screeching through the dead air, and buries itself in his chest where it meets resistance. A hollow clang sounds when it strikes the suit hidden under his clothes.

  “Fuck. Shit. Crap.”

  “A strong, frail girl,” he rasps, amused. His voice scrapes like metal dragged on bone. “Didn’t Tessia warn you about me? Didn’t she tell you she tried to fight me?”

  He vanishes. There’s no blur, no wind, no transition. One moment he’s there, and the next he isn’t.

  What I feel next is absolute pain when a catastrophic force hits me from the side like a hammer blow made of pure speed.

  I’m airborne. Flying across the café, through shattering glass and splintered wood, then through the wall behind it. The impact knocks breath, thought, and sense out of me all at once. I skid across the floor of the next building, leaving a smear of red in my wake.

  When I open my eyes, everything is wrong.

  The world is sound and distortion, and there’s blood everywhere. Mine, theirs, I don’t know. Civilians scream, but their voices blend like a broken radio. The ringing in my skull is so sharp it feels like a blade stuck in my ear.

  I try to move, and every bone protests. The building around me warps at the edges, like the illusion is glitching under the violence. The walls breathe. The lights flicker between colours that shouldn’t exist.

  Chaos wraps around me like a living thing as the illusion shifts into something new. And this time, it doesn’t pretend to empower me. It strips me till all I feel is the weakness of a terrified human.

  I had hit the ground hard, dust exploding around me in a choking cloud. When I try to move, something tears inside me. A metal rod has gone straight through my stomach. Pinning me to the shattered floor like an insect on a collector’s board.

  Pain lances through my body. Not sharp, but deep. The kind that steals breath and makes thought dissolve.

  “Help…” The word is a whimper. “…somebody help me…”

  I keep crying out. Minutes blur into each other. Maybe an hour passes.

  My throat dries until it feels flayed. No more sound comes out.

  Above, the screams never stop.

  Human screams. Agonised, wet, desperate. And layered beneath them are roars. Not animal roars. Something Hungrier. Monsters are tearing people apart. I hear bones break, hear flesh rip, hear the gurgled last breaths of strangers dying just meters away.

  I’m shaking. I’m cold. I can’t breathe.

  ‘Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me. Please don’t find me.’

  I want to live. God, I want to live. That’s the point, isn’t it?

  But wait, that’s what it wants. This illusion… It’s designed to keep me alive by filling me with terror until survival becomes my religion.

  When Nico finally appears at the top of the stairs, he is spotless. Not a drop of blood on him. Still dressed in the polished military uniform of the Blood Monarch’s elite.

  He descends with steps too slow. Too deliberate. His smile is wrong. Plastic curved lips stretched over an empty skull.

  “Astrid,” he says, voice too calm for this nightmare. “This is known as the First Day.”

  His boots click on the concrete. Step. By step. By step.

  “On this day, man saw God,” he continues, tone slipping into something reverent and rotten. “It was His love that saved humanity from near extinction.”

  He stops beside me, tilts his head, and the smile widens, skin creaking. “Do you feel it yet?” he whispers. “This is the day humans learned to FEAR their salvation.”

  “What is the point?” The words scrape out of me. “You think fear of dying will break me? Or the pain? You want to turn me into a demon?”

  He chuckles softly. Wrongly. Like someone wearing an emotion they don’t understand.

  “Yes… and no.” He steps closer, boots crunching on broken glass.

  “You are the last silver-haired human,” he says, as if reading a scripture written in blood. “The last servant of the Dragon Monarch. That makes you the perfect vessel to inherit the Pathway of the Dragon.”

  He crouches beside me, his shadow swallowing half my vision.

  “But that also means a human would rise as a new Dragon Monarch.” His grin widens. “And that…that tarnishes everything dragons stand for.”

  He wraps his fingers around the metal rod skewering me.

  “Nico…” My voice breaks. “Don’t”

  He yanks it out without hesitation or mercy.

  The metal drags through me like fire made solid. The sound I make isn’t human. Warm tears gush down my face as my fingers claw helplessly at the floor. I bite down on my own wrist to silence the scream, because the monsters above are still devouring the last survivors, and if they hear me. I’ll die faster.

  And I can’t heal. I can’t feel a spark of ether. It’s like the system ripped it all out of me.

  I’m helpless again.

  Nico lets the rod clatter to the ground beside me. “Survive the First Day,” he says softly, “or surrender to me.”

  His voice folds around me like a noose.

  “You’ve always hated yourself, Astrid. So tell me, what makes you think the world man has crafted is any different from your little hell back in Bloodhaul?” He leans in, whispering near my ear. “Men are selfish. They burn their own blood for a handful of credits. The people who funded your creation? Humans. The same humans who rule the world you dream of walking into.”

  His breath is cold on my neck. “What makes you think you can survive in that world?” His words tighten, each one a blade. “A small, nameless girl with no family. No lineage. No protection.”

  He taps my cheek with two fingers, almost affectionately. “The power of a Monarch needs resources to grow. Do you have those resources?”

  He straightens, looking down at me like a failed experiment.

  I don’t respond. After seeing my brainwashed friends, you could say I have gained some insight into what the world outside looks like. However, I've also become more stubborn than before.

  Resources? I will think about that when I am a monarch. Now, I will survive this nightmare.

  "If I can face death a few times. What makes you think I won't survive the first day? Even in a body with no powers, I will prove to you that I am something you can't just understand, you pathetic being."

  "Hehe..." He laughs. "Okay...if you survive the first day, I will free you and this meat sack. Your friends broke so easily. Sasha was interesting...Dan even more. The other one. Well, he gave me an interesting proposal. Do you agree to this?"

  Does it look like I have a choice?