Chapter Text
The fall into Penacony didn’t feel like travel.
Travel had direction, had the reassuring logic of coordinates and hull plating and the dull ache of inertia. This felt like drowning slowly in someone else’s mind.
Blade opened his eyes to a sky that wasn’t a sky at all: a dome of black glass fractured into panes of color, each shard reflecting a slightly different version of the same city. Neon bled like fresh wounds across the darkness, streets warped and looped back on themselves in impossible spirals. Distant music played somewhere above and below him at once; every note hit with such perfect precision it felt less like sound and more like a scalpel.
He was still falling.
The sensation didn’t line up with his body—this was a dreamscape, where gravity was an opinion rather than a law—but it pulled at something deeper, somewhere in the hollow spaces the Abundance had left behind. Like he’d been dropped through the rib cage of the universe into a cavity carved out just for this kind of unreality.
He hit the ground without impact.
The dream caught him, absorbed him, let him stand as if the fall had just been a thought. Three steps to his left, a parade drifted past: glitter, smiles, masks too flawless to be real and confetti that dissolved midair into motes of gold. Where a building should have been, a carousel spun lazily, each painted horse moving with the same perfectly measured rise and fall. Children laughed in repeating patterns—same pitch, same rhythm, as if someone had copied and pasted the sound.
No one stumbled. No one bumped shoulders by accident. No one looked like they could.
“Penacony,” he muttered. The name tasted like sugar left too long in the sun, syrup rotting on his tongue.
He flexed his hand, fingers curling around the phantom memory of a blade that wasn’t fully here yet. The air clung to his skin, thick and cloying, the sweetness of festival sweets and perfumed drinks layered over something else—something that pulsed under the surface, a wrongness that thrummed in the same key as the scars etched through his bones.
The Stellaron.
It sat somewhere deep in the bones of this dream, not just infecting it but underwriting it, seeding the entire structure with contradictions. In one corner of his vision, a clock tower read midnight; two streets over, the same tower read noon. Here, guests strolled under lanterns shaped like stars; in a nearby reflection, they marched beneath cold IPC sigils. No one looked confused. They simply didn’t look.
His presence smudged the picture. Where he walked, the lacquered shine of the ground dulled by a fraction, colors dimming like they’d been drained through gauze before snapping back into place with the recoil of overstretched muscle. Passing guests shivered as if someone had cracked open a window in a sealed room. They didn’t slow down. They just smiled harder, expressions tightening by degrees too small for them to notice.
“Follow the script, Blade.”
Kafka’s voice slid through his memory uninvited, lazy and amused, from a briefing that hadn’t had the decency to age yet. Half-lit room, that faint chemical smell of projectors humming hot, Elio’s projections hanging in the air like constellations that someone had dissected. She’d lounged against nothing, as comfortable with gravity as she was with every line of a future she only half bothered to explain.
“Penacony is a stage,” she’d said, tapping one manicured finger against a cluster of light that represented the Dreamscape Terminal. “The IPC thinks they’re running the show. They’re not. The Stellaron is.”
He’d said nothing. He rarely did when she started reciting Elio’s script. There was no point arguing with an outcome already written.
“You’re not the only actor,” she’d gone on, flicking a strand of light aside—Penacony’s power grid, if he was remembering the data right. “There’s an… element of order here that thinks it can tame chaos. Try not to kill it too early, okay? We’ll need it to do a few tricks first.”
He was sure his expression hadn’t changed more than a millimeter. “I’m not here to play games.”
“Oh, I know.” She’d smiled that patient, razor-edged smile. “You’re here to die. Again. And again. And again. But until Elio writes your final curtain, we follow the script.”
Now, with artificial starlight scattered overhead like broken glass, he could feel it—the lattice of a script that was not his own, laid out beneath everything. Rules written over dreams, over people, over thought itself. Lines of force trying to sand down every jagged edge into something smooth and symmetrical.
His skin rebelled against it. Every cell that had ever been torn apart and stitched back together under the Abundance flared in instinctive refusal. The Path of Destruction did not sit well under chains.
A nearby loudspeaker crackled—or rather, the dream decided there was such a thing as a speaker, and so there was—and a voice, warm and measured, poured into the air.
“Dear guests,” it said, every syllable wrapped in hospitality so gentle it felt padded. “May your hearts find peace in the harmony of Penacony’s night. Let your worries slip away. Here, within the embrace of order, nothing can harm you.”
The crowd stilled as one. Heads tilted up like flowers to the sun. Blade stopped walking.
The voice went on, speaking of sanctuary and safety, of rules as kindness and structure as love. It sounded like a prayer disguised as an announcement, like doctrine that never had to call itself doctrine because it was built into the scenery. Beneath the words was faith—absolute, unflinching—that curdled the longer he listened.
He glanced around. No visible speakers. Of course there weren’t. The sound came from the dream itself, resonating through the geometry of doorways and windows, humming in the perfect spacing of streetlamps.
Sunday.
The name surfaced from the dossier Kafka had skimmed aloud with half her attention: Penacony’s bright host, the IPC’s cherished "saint," beloved caretaker of this little haven. A man who believed in order so thoroughly that the dream listened when he spoke.
Blade listened until the last word faded and the silence inhaled. The crowd exhaled together, then resumed as if someone had pressed play: laughter, footsteps, the shuffling rhythm of carefully curated joy, all perfectly spaced like notes in a score.
He felt an almost pleasant urge to put his sword through the sky and see what fell out.
He didn’t. Not yet.
Yanqing arrived in Penacony like a blade sheathed in velvet.
The transition from steel and glass to dream was so smooth it made his instincts twitch. One heartbeat he was lying back in the reclined chair the IPC attendant indicated, the faint pinch of the interface brushing his consciousness; the next, he was standing in a wide avenue under a sky painted in festival lights and impossible architecture.
Penacony greeted him with flawless streets and a breeze that carried a carefully measured mix of scents—flowers, citrus, something sweet and expensive. Banners fluttered overhead, some emblazoned with the IPC emblem, others marked with intricate sigils he didn’t recognize at a glance. He didn’t need to know them to recognize the intention: comfort, prosperity, order.
He recognized discipline when he saw it.
Guards in pristine uniforms moved with synchronized precision, posture straight but not rigid, eyes scanning and yet never lingering long enough to seem hostile. Their smiles were warm, professional, and almost eerily identical. The kind of uniformity you only got when both training and something else—something unseen—pushed from behind.
His hand dropped briefly to the sword at his hip, reassuringly solid in a place where very little else qualified as real.
“This is the Dreamscape Terminal’s primary plaza,” the IPC escort beside him said. Her customer-service smile could have been carved from soft light. “We are honored to have the Xianzhou Luofu’s young general—acting general—here as our esteemed guest.”
“Representative,” Yanqing corrected, more out of habit than pride. “I’m here as a security liaison, not as a general.”
“Of course,” she replied smoothly, tone unchanged. “Still, Lord Sunday speaks very highly of your nation’s martial virtues. He believes your presence will greatly contribute to maintaining order during this delicate period.”
“Lord… Sunday.” The title sat oddly on his tongue.
Jing Yuan’s voice resurfaced in his memory, wrapped in the lazy cadence the general used when the topic was anything but simple. They’d been in his office, tea cooling between them while reports on Penacony floated in the air.
“The IPC is very proud of their ‘saint’ of Penacony,” Jing Yuan had remarked, watching steam curl rather than looking at him. “Young, courteous, almost painfully polite from what I’ve heard. But remember, Yanqing—no one rises that high in an organization like the IPC by being harmless.”
“Do you suspect him?” Yanqing had asked. It hadn’t been a challenge. Just an honest question.
“I suspect any institution that insists it’s nothing but a blessing,” Jing Yuan had said, lips quirking faintly. “Keep your eyes open. And if you meet Stellaron Hunters, don’t fight unless you must. Especially one named Blade. You remember him.”
He remembered.
Not just the debriefings or the reports sanitized for official archives, but the feel of that fight, the way Blade moved with a disregard for his own body that rattled something fundamental in Yanqing’s sense of swordplay. A man who died and got up again without the usual grace of the Reignbow Arbiter’s miracles, who clung to existence through the Abundance’s twisted kindness. A weapon on two legs.
“You’ve crossed blades before,” Jing Yuan had added, gaze sharpening at last. “That familiarity is an advantage—but only if you don’t let your pride decide the rematch.”
The escort’s voice pulled him back to the present. “Unprecedented fluctuations have been observed in the dreamspace,” she was saying. “Irregular nightmares, sudden emotional spikes. The IPC is confident these are temporary anomalies, but Lord Sunday insisted we cooperate with the Xianzhou to ensure the safety of all guests.”
Anomalies. Stellaron. Dreamscape.
Yanqing nodded once. “I’ll need access to your logs,” he said. “And to observe your security responses in person.” If a Stellaron was involved, the Luofu’s duty didn’t end at polite observation.
“Of course, of course.” Her smile didn’t budge. “Everything is at your disposal—as long as it does not disturb the peace our guests enjoy.”
As if on cue, a discordant note brushed his awareness.
Two voices, sharp with anger, cut through the curated murmur of the plaza. A man and a woman near a ticket booth, faces tight, gestures chopping through the air. Their words were too far for him to make out clearly, but the emotion was obvious. Frustration, resentment, the kind of mundane argument that sprouted anywhere people gathered.
Except here, that simple, human noise felt like a stone thrown into still water.
Yanqing watched the way the surrounding crowd began to glance over, discomfort rippling outward. Discipline taught him a lot about visible tension—how it looked on a soldier’s shoulders, how it sounded in breath. This wasn’t that. This was… friction in a machine that wasn’t supposed to have any.
Then, very suddenly, it stopped.
No guard intervened. No attendant stepped in. The couple’s bodies simply… slackened. Shoulders dropped in perfect sync. The woman’s mouth, still shaped around an angry word, smoothed into a thin, practiced smile. She placed a hand on the man’s arm with a gentleness that felt wrong in its timing. The man chuckled, the sound too even, too polished.
“We shouldn’t fight here,” he said. “It’s such a peaceful place.”
“Of course,” she replied promptly. “Penacony is our blessing.”
Their eyes stayed glassy for one breath too long.
Yanqing’s fingers tightened around his hilt. He’d seen discipline enforced. He knew what it was to swallow anger because a superior was watching, to bow because doctrine demanded reflection and apology. He knew the feel of a will checking itself.
This was different.
Something had reached in and folded their feelings away like you might fold a letter and slip it into a drawer.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, looking sidelong at his escort.
She had watched the entire scene. Her smile never wavered.
“Of course,” she said. “The Dreamscape encourages peace and harmony. Sometimes guests simply remember the joy they came here to find.”
He held her gaze for a moment, but there was nothing to push against; her eyes were calm, polite, and opaque.
“Lord Sunday has blessed Penacony with order,” she added gently, almost reproachfully. “Chaos cannot take root where his guidance reaches.”
Order again.
Yanqing let it go outwardly, but the scene slotted neatly into the compartment in his mind where he kept things Jing Yuan would want to hear about later. Guidance that shut emotions like closing doors, order that didn’t leave room for friction.
They walked on. As the crowd thickened, the pressure changed. It wasn’t physical—no one brushed too close, no one jostled—but there was a sense of… expectation in the air. A script humming under the surface of every laugh, every gesture. Yanqing had grown up under doctrine; the Cloud Knights’ codes were as familiar to him as his own name. He knew what it was to align himself to a Path.
But this didn’t feel like duty freely accepted. It felt like invisible hands gently nudging everyone toward the same smile, the same pace, the same bland contentment.
He didn’t like it.
Music swelled from ahead, drawing them into an even larger plaza ringed by architecture that had abandoned practical physics for aesthetics. Towers curled into arches that supported nothing, bridges hung from nowhere over nothing. Above, a glassy sky showed constellations that shifted with suspicious smoothness, like someone was editing the stars in real time.
In the dense crowd, someone moved against the grain.
At first he couldn’t say why the figure snagged his attention. A tall man, cloak in muted, almost colorless tones amid Penacony’s saturated palette. The space around him felt… thinner, like the dream itself was failing to maintain its resolution where he stood. Lights flickered fractionally as he passed; the timing of surrounding smiles stuttered by a beat.
Yanqing’s hand found his sword before the thought finished forming.
The escort followed his gaze—and went pale.
“Is there a problem?” Yanqing asked, his voice low but already bracing.
“That man…” she whispered. “I believe that is—”
“Blade,” Yanqing finished for her, the name landing with the cold clarity of memory.
Reports could give a man a title. Battle gave him weight. Blade of the Stellaron Hunters. The Abundance’s aberrant miracle, a man who died and did not stay dead. On the Luofu, even Cloud Knights who should have known better repeated the stories in quiet corners.
Yanqing had fought him with his own hands.
He remembered the way Blade’s swordsmanship had disregarded self-preservation, the way he tore through formations like he was inviting injury, welcoming it, using pain as fuel instead of a deterrent. He remembered how his own blade had bitten into flesh that refused to stay broken, the way his mind had tried to fit that horror into the framework of Xianzhou’s understanding of life and failed.
Not all things that would not die were blessings.
He stepped away from the escort without quite meaning to. “Stay here,” he said.
“Sir Yanqing, it may be safer to alert—”
He was already moving, drawn forward by duty, by curiosity, and by a younger, more stubborn part of him that still remembered the humiliation of watching an enemy slip from the Luofu’s grasp.
Blade felt the boy’s attention before he saw him.
In a city sewn together from a thousand gazes—adoring, placid, anesthetized—this one cut through like the point of a sword. Steady, wary, bright with the kind of purpose that wasn’t dream-deep but bone-deep.
He turned.
Yanqing walked straight toward him through the crowd, posture almost painfully textbook: back straight, shoulders relaxed but aligned, hand resting near his hilt with disciplined awareness. The sword at his side gleamed with the weight of Xianzhou craftsmanship even in this unreal light.
Not a dream-echo. Not some ordinary guest who’d wandered too far from their fantasies.
A weapon, just like him—only forged by doctrine instead of twisted miracles.
“Blade of the Stellaron Hunters,” Yanqing said when he was close enough, voice clear but not loud, the way a soldier addressed a dangerous anomaly with half a dozen witnesses nearby. There was a brief flicker of something like surprise in his eyes, but not the kind that said I’ve only heard of you. It was the sharper, more grounded recognition of I remember how you move. “I didn’t expect to meet you this quickly.”
The plaza thrummed on around them, oblivious. Laughter and music wrapped the moment in insulation, like the dream wanted to pretend none of this mattered.
Blade studied him. Taller than the last time they’d crossed swords, maybe, but that might have just been the angle; time felt strange around someone whose body reset itself on a schedule written by Elio. The important things were the same: the strict poise that never quite managed to hide the youth in his face, the sun-bright steadiness in his gaze.
“You knew I was here,” Blade said. It didn’t need a question mark.
“The whole cosmos knows when Stellaron Hunters move,” Yanqing replied. “Especially you.” He said it like he was reciting from a dossier, but underneath there was the memory of their previous fight: the way Blade kept getting back up, the way Yanqing had had to talk himself down from chasing a battle he could not win cleanly.
“Xianzhou,” Blade murmured, letting the word roll over his tongue like an old bruise. “They sent a child again. Running low on elders?”
He watched the way Yanqing’s jaw tightened, pride pricked exactly where expected. Some things didn’t change between loops.
“I didn’t come here to fight you,” Yanqing answered, forcing his tone to stay level. “Penacony is unstable enough. I’m here as a security liaison—to cooperate with the IPC and investigate a potential Stellaron threat. If you’re here for the same reason, our goals may align.”
Cooperate. Align. Words people liked to use when they wanted to pretend their paths could run side by side without someone eventually drawing blood.
Before Blade could decide how much to bother arguing, the dream shuddered.
It started as a hairline crack in the air above the plaza, a faint crystalline ringing like a glass left too close to the edge of a table. Light stretched thin, colors running like wet paint, then snapped into jagged fragments. People stopped mid-step, mouths open around unfinished laughter.
Then the screaming began.
Not everywhere—just a cluster on the far side of the square where the air had gone wrong. Their faces twisted, filling in all the emotional range Penacony had been smoothing over. Terror tore free of the script and into raw sound. The ground beneath them shifted; for a second, the plaza’s clean stone became something else entirely—nighttime landscapes from other worlds, the outlined teeth of impossible beasts, sky suffocating under crawling black vines.
A nightmare, breaking through the painted surface.
The Stellaron pulsed.
Blade felt it lance through his skull, a spike of familiar chaos. For a heartbeat, the dream remembered what true ruin looked like and tried, desperately, to imitate it.
Then the world folded.
Silence slammed down over the plaza like a soft, heavy blanket. Sound didn’t fade; it stopped, cleanly severed. The screaming cut off mid‑breath. In the same instant, the warped ground smoothed out, nightmare imagery snapping back into polished metal and decorative mosaics as if someone had dragged a slider from "horror" back to "holiday".
The people who had been screaming now stood quietly. No tears, no sweat, no ragged breathing. Their eyes were vacant for a fraction of a second, then focused again, their expressions slipping into something approximating calm.
A pressure settled over the square, subtle but suffocating, like a hand pressed gently over a mouth—not to harm, just to hush.
“Please, remain calm.”
The voice rose out of that pressure, smooth and bright, carrying itself without needing any visible source. The crowd parted without fully realizing they were moving, making space as a figure walked through them as if they were water.
Blade had seen priests before. Preachers, commanders, fanatics. Men and women who stood before crowds and claimed every wound they inflicted was for someone’s good.
This was something else.
Sunday stepped into the open plaza with the unhurried confidence of someone who didn’t just own the space, but the idea of space. He wore white traced with precise lines of gold, the cut severe without ever tipping into cruelty. Light clung to him in a way that didn’t belong entirely to the environment, softening edges, making him look as though he’d been painted into the scene with a brush that refused to smear.
His expression was gentle. His eyes were calm.
As he passed, the dream reacted. Streetlamps shifted by imperceptible degrees into perfectly symmetrical pairs. Stray confetti from earlier festivities slowed in their descent, spiraling into a halo-like ring around him before dissolving. The rhythm of the crowd’s breathing synchronized; Blade could hear it if he listened, every inhale and exhale falling into the same quiet cadence.
“An unexpected fluctuation,” Sunday said, his voice amplifying cleanly. “My apologies, dear guests. Sometimes, even the most carefully tuned dreams encounter static.”
People laughed, some nervously, some with the relieved eagerness of those who desperately wanted to believe what they were told.
“It is all right,” he went on. “You are safe. Penacony remains your haven of rest, your sanctuary from the storms of the cosmos. As long as we walk together within the embrace of order, no darkness can truly touch you.”
The words settled over the plaza like a blessing, or a net.
Yanqing stood very still.
So this was Lord Sunday.
Up close, the warmth in his tone didn’t ring false. That was what unsettled Yanqing most. It was easier to guard against hypocrisy than against someone who genuinely believed order was mercy and control was kindness. He felt a reflexive flicker of recognition—another person shaped by a Path—but where his own discipline had always held room for choice, for self-reflection under Jing Yuan’s gaze, this felt like faith hammered into something rigid enough to cage an entire world.
Sunday’s gaze swept over the plaza, taking in the aftermath as if it were just another line item on a report. Then it found Yanqing.
His smile brightened by a fraction. “Sir Yanqing of the Xianzhou Luofu,” he said, as though greeting an old acquaintance rather than a foreign officer he’d only read about. “Welcome. Penacony is humbled to host one so dedicated to justice and discipline.”
The escort beside Yanqing exhaled, bowing her head with palpable relief.
Yanqing inclined his own, because etiquette was armor too. “Lord Sunday. I appreciate your hospitality. I arrived to… an interesting scene.”
“A minor disturbance,” Sunday replied, dismissing the rupture of reality the way one might dismiss a flickering lantern. “Nothing the grace of order cannot mend. Still, I apologize for any unease it caused.”
His gaze moved on, settling on Blade.
The smile didn’t falter.
Up close, Blade could see it now—the thing beneath the politeness. Not malice. Not even calculated hypocrisy. Conviction, laid out in rings upon rings like the sigils embroidered into his sleeves.
“And you,” Sunday said softly. “Guest of a more… tempestuous kind.” He didn’t speak Blade’s name, but recognition hung in the space between them all the same. IPC files, Elio’s predictions, Sunday’s own observations—whatever the source, he knew exactly what stood in front of him.
Blade’s fingers twitched where his sword would materialize if he willed it. In here, Destruction hummed just under his skin, hungry and watchful.
“You put on quite a show,” Blade said, letting the contempt bleed into his voice without bothering to hide it. “Is this how you fix everything? Edit it until it fits your picture?”
A murmur rippled through the nearest onlookers. It wasn’t every day someone spoke to Penacony’s saint that plainly.
Sunday’s eyes did not leave his. “Would you rather the guests had remained in terror?” he asked with genuine curiosity, as if this were a philosophical debate instead of a confrontation. “Chaos is cruel, Mr. Blade. It tears at the mind and soul without purpose. If it is within my power to shield people from that, is it wrong to do so?”
Yanqing looked between them, tension settling in his shoulders. That "Mr. Blade" carried no personal warmth; it sounded like a label, like the way a record would mark a hazardous item.
“Terror is honest,” Blade answered. “Your smiles aren’t.”
“Honesty without hope is only despair,” Sunday replied. “I would not leave people there.” His gaze softened, almost pitying, as if Blade’s refusal to accept this gentle order were a wound he wished he could treat.
Under that softness, Blade could feel it: something in the dream tracing his outline, mapping where the Path of Destruction had bitten deep into his existence. Measuring, weighing, testing how far it could push before something snapped.
“Penacony extends its welcome to all,” Sunday continued. “Even those who walk amidst stellaron-born ruin.” His eyes slid briefly toward Yanqing. “And to those who stand guard over order in their own heavens.”
Yanqing straightened despite himself, spine reacting to the acknowledgment before his thoughts could catch up.
“The Luofu is honored to cooperate,” he said, defaulting to diplomacy while his mind ran through contingencies. “But I would like a full report on these ‘minor disturbances,’ Lord Sunday. If a Stellaron is involved, it is no small matter, even within a dream.”
“Of course.” Sunday spread his hands, palms open. “Transparency is a virtue, is it not? Our records, our security logs—everything you require shall be made available.”
His attention returned to Blade.
“As for you,” he said, the politeness in his tone taking on a faint, steel thread, “you carry a… unique resonance. I would very much like to ensure that your presence here does not disrupt the delicate balance we maintain for our guests.”
“Try,” Blade said.
Yanqing shot him a sharp look. “Blade—” Meridian memories of their last clash flickered behind his eyes; the last thing Penacony needed was a rematch in the middle of a crowded plaza.
Sunday only smiled.
“Why would I try to restrain you?” he asked mildly. “For now, we stand on the same side. You seek to neutralize the Stellaron; I seek to preserve order. Our Paths may differ in method, but in this moment, our goals align.”
Kafka’s words came back, quiet and annoyingly accurate. Try not to kill it too early.
Power hummed in the air around Sunday, pressing against the borders of the dream. It wasn’t Destruction’s howl or Abundance’s suffocating growth. It was structure, settling like an invisible framework, coaxing reality back into the lines he preferred.
He took a step closer.
Up close, the embroidery on his clothes resolved into faint sigils—circles within circles, intersecting lines that hinted at geometries which made Blade’s eyes throb if he looked directly at them for too long. Symbols of order, yes—but also of constraint. Chains wrapped into halos.
“I would like to invite both of you,” Sunday said, including Yanqing with a slight turn of his head, “to a more private part of Penacony’s administration sector. We can discuss the Stellaron, share what we know, and coordinate our efforts. It is safer to speak of such matters away from the joy of our guests.”
Around them, the crowd was already forgetting the nightmare. Laughter resumed, voices smoothing out, expressions falling back into easy contentment. Sunday’s presence worked like a balm—and like a solvent, dissolving anything that didn’t fit.
Yanqing hesitated.
He needed information. He didn’t trust the IPC. Stellaron Hunters had their own agenda, written in prophecies he’d never see. And standing this close to Sunday, watching how cleanly he erased fear and reshaped hearts, it was obvious that if a Stellaron was involved, Penacony’s saint was already wrapped tightly around it.
“I accept,” he said finally. “On the condition that the Xianzhou retains the right to conduct its own investigation.”
“But of course,” Sunday agreed at once. “I would expect nothing less from the Luofu.”
His gaze went back to Blade. “And you?”
Elio’s script uncoiled behind Blade’s eyes like old ink heating back to visibility. Pathways, outcomes, futures where he walked away now and chased the Stellaron alone, futures where he drew his sword here and now and painted this dream in ruin, futures where he refused to follow anyone’s lead but his own. They all dead-ended, one by one.
All except the one where he played along—for now.
He exhaled, irritation scraping at his ribs. “You’re in my way,” he said. “If going with you gets you out of it faster, fine.”
Sunday’s smile softened, almost fond. “I assure you,” he said, “if I stand in your way, Mr. Blade, it will be for a reason.”
He turned, and the dream adjusted its seams around his movement.
Yanqing fell into step a half‑pace behind Sunday, as protocol and instinct both dictated. Blade walked slightly off to the side, just outside the symmetry, like a crack the dream couldn’t quite plaster over.
As they moved away from the plaza, the scenery shifted in subtle gradients. The chaotic charm of the festival bled out into cleaner lines and cooler palettes. Streets straightened. Buildings snapped into more regular arrangements. Illuminations spaced themselves at even intervals, erasing the previous scattershot liveliness.
Yanqing’s eyes moved constantly, cataloguing exits, vantage points, the flow of dream-constructed "civilians." Somewhere beneath the discipline, a younger, pricklier part of him bristled at having to walk in step with Blade again—this time not as combatants but as… what? Temporary allies? Guests under the same host? The idea sat uneasily next to the memory of steel meeting steel.
Blade watched Sunday’s back, the weight around his ribs settling into something that felt unpleasantly familiar.
This was a cage.
Not steel bars or prison seals, but conviction and geometry. Different walls, same purpose.
Somewhere beyond the glass sky, behind layers of stained light and ornament, something pulsed. A diseased star beating in slow, heavy rhythms. The Stellaron’s dream leaked through the seams of Penacony’s elaborate order, threads of chaos woven so tightly with law that it was hard to see where one ended and the other began.
For a moment, the reflected city in the sky warped. In that warped pane, three figures stood together—Sunday, Yanqing, Blade—each wrapped in glimmering restraints. Rings of script, bands of light, chains of order looped around them.
In the ordinary sky, nothing changed.
Blade still looked up. Old habits didn’t die, even when he didn’t either.
Along the back of his neck, a chill crawled.
He’d thought he understood what prison felt like. The Abundance’s laboratories. The Luofu’s restraints. The inexorable pull of Elio’s script.
Then he heard Sunday murmur a quiet blessing under his breath, too soft for anyone but those walking closest to catch.
“May order guide our steps,” Sunday whispered, words almost lost in the hum of the dream. “And may even those born of ruin find their place within it.”
Yanqing’s shoulders tightened by a hair’s breadth. Born of ruin. His grip on his sword shifted, the title of "miracle child" echoing somewhere he didn’t like to look too closely.
Blade’s hand closed around the ghost weight of his weapon. If this was what guidance felt like, then he knew exactly what he wanted to do with it.
Break it.