Gin appeared as he always did—smile first, body second—stretching into being with the lazy grace of a cat that had just decided the mice were worth noticing. His cloak swirled, tail-like, as he padded a slow circle around us.

"I'd HIGHLY and STRONGLY suggest against that," he purred, voice honeyed mischief. "None of you could stomach Alexander-boy's fountain. You'd drink and drown, burst open like grapes underfoot. He has an Archon for a manager for a reason, after all."

I blinked. "And the reason…is because this was foretold? That someone like me would come?"

His head tilted side to side, grin never faltering. "Yes. The cluster foresaw something dreadful slouching its way here. No. Prophecy does not crown you, little candle—it only promises the fire."

"So what's your opinion of their plan for my training?" I asked.

Gin's grin grew wider, as though my question were a bowl of cream placed just for him. "Oh, it's precious. It's laughable. It's like tossing babes into a wolf den and calling it a classroom." He twirled once on his heel, then stopped suddenly, eyes gleaming. "Which is why I proposed something else. Far more…educational. Bathe a book from another cluster in Morres's mana. You all take big dives inside. Learn. Break. Mend. All without feeding Danatallion's greedy library—or Vanitas's painted cupboards."

He crouched, hands hanging loose like claws ready to pounce. "Pros! It would gift each of you. A banquet of benefits. Cons?" His grin sharpened to a crescent moon. "While the tale runs, no skillcubes. Not for you. Not for any who follow. Just flesh, wit, and the raw teeth of your Artes."

A ripple of discontent ran through the others—scowls, narrowed eyes, heavy silence. I felt my own frown creep in. "…I was finally starting to get over my fear of skillcubes. Especially now, since I think I can…see into the formulae of my doorways. It's hard to explain, but I'm beginning to notice the threads. Angles. The way it's made."

Gin's purr of a laugh spilled out, delighted and cruel. He crouched lower still, grinning up at me with his golden eyes wide and unblinking. "Yes, yes—you're sniffing at the bones of your connections. Which means it's time to starve you of meat. Let you gnaw those bones until they splinter. Cruel? Oh, dreadfully so. But cruelty is kindness, little bookworm. Like a cat bringing bloodied mice to its kittens. Bloody little lessons. You'll thank me when you're not dead."

His tailcoat swished as he rose again, humming tunelessly as if the whole exchange had been nothing more than a game. The others turned to me, worry written plain on their faces. But Gin only swayed, grinning like a predator with all the time in the world.

"Tell us about this addendum to see if we like it any better. To me it sounds like we would still be entering a horror, but not a collection of them," Cordelia said. Her voice was steady, but the furrow of her brow betrayed her suspicion. She alone tried to keep conversations with Gin as transactions—clear and clean—but Gin was a creature who thrived on tangles.

Gin's grin widened. He clicked his tongue and wagged a finger. "Ah-ah-ah. Naughty girl. Do you know how rude it is to pry into other clusters? Taboo, taboo, taboo. Whole cathedrals burn down for less. Whole worlds spin the wrong way on their axes." He twirled, cloak flaring like a cat flicking its tail. "But since you asked so sweetly, I'll share a morsel. Something toothsome enough to chew on."

He leaned closer, eyes glinting gold in the lamplight. "Long ago, in a cluster not your own, the skyline was conquered by an orb. At first, the people thought it a moon, benign, bright, harmless. Until—snap!—the illusion broke, cruel as claws through silk. They realized their world was not beneath the orb at all. No, their world was merely one of the orb's moons."

Fallias's lips parted, her sharp features pinched in disbelief. "That's—ridiculous. You're saying a planet discovered it wasn't a planet?"

Gin purred. "I'm saying a world discovered it was a pebble clinging to the side of a colossus. And when their eyes turned downward, they saw what had been hiding all along: the great clockwork giant. Brass and steel, vast as eternity. Six titanic gears grinding together, dragging their heaven in slow circles."

He raised both hands, miming a wheel turning, his grin fox-sharp. "And naturally, people had to descend. Curiosity is the cruelest compulsion, mm? So they fell upon it like moths to a flame."

Alexander shifted uncomfortably. He hated when Gin's voice got like this—half-song, half-sneer, every word meant to lure. "What did they find?" he asked despite himself.

Gin dropped low, crouching until his head was tilted back at them, upside-down. His smile did not diminish. "Not land. Not seas. Clocks. Hundreds. Thousands. Each with an opening beneath. Each person, no matter their blood, no matter their crown or coin, was given nine. No more, no less. Nine clocks. Nine doors."

Cordelia's gaze sharpened. "And what lay behind them?"

"Ahhh," Gin breathed, drawing out the sound, savoring their anticipation. "A soul. Their own. Behind the first door, the ignition of a soul realm. Behind the second, another. And so on. Each door opened a new world, a new challenge, something faster, sharper than your dreary crawl upward. But so very lethal. Because every door was different. Not Otherrealms—worse. Whole worlds, stitched to the gears of the machine. Every one designed to gnaw intruders to marrow."

No one spoke at first. Even Ten, usually quick to snort or scoff, was frowning, arms folded tight across her chest. Wallace's hand rested heavy on his shield, though there was nothing to fight.

Gin rocked back onto his heels, eyes narrowing in mock impatience. "You want the point, don't you? Mortals are so greedy. Never let me have my fun." He sighed dramatically. "Fine. My plan is not to toss you into the clockwork giant itself. That would be… deliciously fatal. No, I'd put you into a book that details all its known realms. Every page, a world. Every world, a gear. Advancement there would be alien, foreign. No cubes to lean on. Just a whole new clock ticking away, waiting to swallow you."

He spread his arms wide as if bestowing a gift. "So. What say you, my little mice? Do you fancy running this new maze?"

The room went quiet after Gin's story. Not the peaceful kind of quiet, either. The sort that sat heavy, like wet ash in the lungs. Everyone was waiting for someone else to be the first fool to speak.

V obliged. Of course he did. His voice was calm, deliberate, but I could hear the shimmer of excitement underneath it. "A catalog of realms within a catalog of a realm. It's… neat. Structured. Predictable in an unpredictable way. I like maps. I like knowing there are boundaries—even if they kill you."

Fallias turned on him with a glare that could've flayed him alive if eyes were knives. "Boundaries? He just said there aren't any rules. That's not a map, it's a butcher's block."

Fractal tilted her head, brow scrunched, trying to puzzle it out. "But if it's all written down in a book… doesn't that make it safer? Books can't hurt you, right?"

Everyone groaned. Myself included.

"Little sister," I told her gently, "you know that's not true."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Her cheeks puffed up, defiant. "I like books."

Gin's laugh slithered out of him, bubbling and gleeful, like a cat that's just trapped a mouse under its paw. "Oh, she's not wrong. Books are such gentle things. They only eat the hands that dare open them."

Wallace cut through the tension with his steady rumble, his voice like stone dragged across stone. "This proposal would leave us without cubes. You all know what that means. No fallback. No support. Just raw Artes and whatever strange laws that book demands. We are not prepared for that."

Cordelia's nod was slow, careful, her words colder still. "And if advancement requires abandoning everything we know… then we're trading certainty for chaos. I don't like unknown costs. Not when they touch the soul."

Ten spat on the floor, a sharp sound in the hush. "Better than the current plan. You want him draining himself dry? You want to see what happens when Alexander taps the wrong library one too many times? I've seen men burn their brains out trying weaker stunts than that." She jabbed a cuffed wrist at Gin. "For once, I agree with the cat. This is the lesser nightmare."

Meanwhile Sven's pen was scribbling furiously, scratching across his notebook like claws against bark. His eyes gleamed, his lips moving faster than sense. "Clockwork giant… six gears… nine doors per soul… a book acting as a filter for the original structure… no cube access. The data could be unprecedented. Do you realize what we could learn about soul mechanics? We'd be writing formulae no one has ever touched."

I rubbed my temples, headache already blooming. "Sven, you sound like you're volunteering us for dissection."

He didn't look up. "If the dissection is illuminating, why fear it?"

Fallias nearly hissed, voice sharp enough to slice. "Because people die in dissections, you lunatic!"

Gin chuckled, tail-flick playful, voice curling with mockery. "Oh, he's not wrong either. Pain is knowledge. Death is instruction. You're all so timid, scurrying from fangs you've not even seen."

Cordelia's gaze snapped toward him, sharp and cutting. "And what do you gain from this, Gin?"

He pressed one hand dramatically to his chest, the other fluttering as if wounded. "Me? I offer gifts out of love."

"You're incapable of love," she said flatly.

"Ohhh," he purred, circling behind her like a shadow, "and yet here I am, guiding you toward survival. Cruelty is kindness, sweet bloom. A housecat hunts not because it must, but because it teaches."

Cordelia stiffened but refused to give him the satisfaction of turning.

I forced my voice to stay even. "You said… advancement there would be different. What happens if we fail to understand it?"

Gin's grin flashed, wicked as a slit of moonlight on glass. "Then the book closes. And so do you."

Fractal whimpered.

Wallace's jaw tightened, his shoulders squared like a man bracing for an axe. "That's not a risk I'd take lightly. We've seen enough traps. At least here we know how to fight."

"But what if fighting isn't the answer?" V murmured, almost to himself. "What if the point is to… adapt? To learn a new language of survival? If every door is a challenge, then perhaps it isn't meant to be brute-forced. Perhaps it's… elegance."

Ten let out a bark of laughter, no humor in it. "Oh yes, elegance. Nothing more elegant than being ground into gear-teeth."

"Better than bleeding ourselves dry," V replied smoothly, unshaken.

I looked between them all, the heat building tight in my chest. Gin's grin made it worse, that infuriating way he lapped up our discord like cream from a bowl.

Finally, I said it. "So… we vote. We decide if this book is worth the gamble. But don't forget what it means: no cubes. Not until it's over."

The group's glances ricocheted between one another. The silence grew thick, dense with unspoken fears.

Gin clapped his hands together, delighted. "A vote! Oh, how democratic. Nothing like watching the herd pick its own cliff." He leaned back, eyes gleaming with anticipation. "Shall we tally the mews, then?"

Sven raised his hand, palm flat like a schoolboy waiting his turn. His pen stilled mid-scratch. "No votes yet," he said, clear, sharp, almost teacherly. "Let's discuss. Let's debate. Otherwise this will be theater without substance."

Gin clapped softly, like he'd just witnessed a kitten paw at a knife. "Oh, how I do adore a scholar with sense. Very well. Debate away. Let's see how each of you wrestles with the leash I've set before you."

His words made my stomach knot tighter. I hated when he sounded smug—mostly because he was usually right.

Sven tucked his notebook under his arm, straightening. "I'll start then. This… construct—the clockwork planet, the nine doors, the book that records them—it's not just myth. It's structure. Patterns. Systems. If we engage it, we could uncover something fundamental about how realms shape the soul. Advancement here is brutal and slow. Advancement there might be systematic, elegant. We could grow faster." His eyes flicked toward me. "Safer for Alexander, too. No more gambling with cursed ink until his head splits."

I swallowed hard. He wasn't wrong about the gambling part.

But Fallias cut in, his voice sharp, brittle, like glass under strain. "You say systematic. I say trap. We've all seen how 'patterns' become cages. Doors don't mean freedom. They mean containment. Every step chosen for you, every risk calculated to grind you down. And if the cost of failure is the book shutting—then that's extinction. No cubes, no fallback, no second chances."

Cordelia's lips pursed, her arms folded tightly across her chest. "Fallias has a point. I'm not eager to trade the pain we know for the pain we can't predict. And Gin… you're too eager to usher us into this. That alone makes me suspicious. Your interests rarely align with ours."

Gin pressed his hand to his chest in mock offense, bowing low. "Suspicious? I am hurt. I am a guide, a shepherd, a lantern in your little abyss." He straightened with a grin sharp as a blade. "Besides, would you not prefer a new kind of torment? Variety is the spice of survival."

"Shut it," Ten snapped, rattling her cuffs. "You'd sell us to wolves and laugh when we got chewed. But." She jabbed her chin toward me. "The cube-plan's worse. Watching Alexander bleed himself out every damn mission just to keep us alive? That's a fast road to a shallow grave. I've broken bones, snapped chains, crushed skulls—but I've never watched someone wear themselves into the dirt like that. If this book offers a way out, even if it's just a maybe, I'll take it."

Fractal fidgeted, hugging her knees up to her chest. "I… I like the idea of doors," she murmured. "One at a time. Step by step. It feels… safer than the big halls where everything comes at once. If there's a door in front of you, at least you know where the danger is. And books…" Her voice dropped small and hopeful. "Books are supposed to be about learning. Maybe this one is, too."

Her optimism stabbed deeper than cynicism ever could.

Wallace shook his head, slow and grim. "Naïve. Both of you. Doors don't make danger smaller—they make it tighter. Traps in boxes. Predators in cages. Worse than open fields. And without cubes, we lose the one edge we can count on. We fight bare, and we die bare. That's no plan."

V tapped his chin thoughtfully, calm as ever, but his eyes gleamed like a gambler seeing the first card turned. "But there's beauty in structure. Chaos that pretends to be order is still a kind of order. Nine doors, nine challenges. That's more predictable than wandering halls where horror stacks upon horror. I prefer knowing the limits of the board, even if the game pieces bite."

Cordelia's frown deepened. "You'd risk all of us for aesthetics?"

"Aesthetics," V corrected smoothly, "are survival. You see patterns, you exploit them. You exploit them, you win. The clockwork world offers patterns. Halls offer only noise."

The air grew heavier. Every voice sharpened the edges of the choice until it felt like a knife at my throat. And every time Gin's grin widened, I hated it more.

I finally spoke, cutting through the noise. "Everyone's making this about safety or beauty or knowledge. But the truth is, neither path is safe. One burns me out. The other swallows us in doors we don't understand. Both stink of risk. The question isn't which hurts less. It's which we can control more."

Sven nodded once, scribbling again. "Well said. So let's debate control, not fear."

Ten leaned back against the wall, chains clinking. "Control, huh? Then book it is. At least with doors, you know the rules going in. You fail, you're done. With cubes, it's all luck of the draw, and Alexander bleeding for every mistake."

Fallias snarled, low and dangerous. "Rules written by a monster-planet aren't rules. They're chains."

"Chains can be broken," Ten shot back.

"Not if the lock is your soul."

Cordelia raised a hand for silence. "Enough. We're circling. Each of us must state it plainly. Which is better, and why. No hedging. Then we vote."

I exhaled slowly, bracing myself.

Gin purred, settling back with glee. "Yes, yes. Plain words. Naked truth. Strip yourselves down to choice. Let's see what shape your souls take when pressed."

The group shifted. The debate wasn't over, but the lines were hardening. I felt it in my bones, the storm before the break.

One by one, we would have to speak. Lay down our truths. And when the last word was spent, we'd lift our hands for the vote that would bind us all.

And I couldn't shake the dread that whatever path we chose, Gin had already won.

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