Each step up the staircase was an assault on my perception. The lights burned and bent, cascading in white and gold ribbons that bled into the walls, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. For a moment, I thought I was ascending through the Halls again—the familiar static hum of their wards whispering at the edges of my hearing—but then the world buckled inward, folded like paper creasing beneath unseen hands.

When it straightened again, I was no longer in Danatallion's domain.

I was in Marr.

The air smelled of rain-soaked stone and incense. The light through the temple skylight had that same reddish hue that I could never quite decide was dawn or dusk. My boots struck marble, echoing in soft, ritual cadence. My pulse slowed, only for confusion to take its place.

It felt so damn similar. It sounded similar. It smelled similar. Everything about it gave the illusion that I was climbing the Temple of the Last Ward—even down to the acoustics of my breath, bouncing faintly between the stairwell walls.

Even the words that came next felt pulled from memory, stitched into my throat.

"Okay," I muttered under my breath. "You can do this. Just… one… more… step."

The sentence didn't sound like something I was saying now—it sounded like something recorded and played back to me. The tone. The inflection. Everything aligned too perfectly with the day I'd first climbed this temple, when my Arte had awakened.

I reached to wipe the sweat from my brow, and froze.

The hand I saw wasn't mine. The fingers were fur-covered, a coarse brown-gray, the wrist narrow, sinewed with something animal. When I raised it to my face, the movement brushed against a spiraling horn that protruded from my forehead—long, ridged, polished to a sheen.

I felt dizzy, disoriented, as though my reflection had been replaced but my thoughts left intact.

"Alexander. Buddy. Pal."

The voice ahead was familiar, too familiar.

Caroline. Or rather—something trying very hard to be her.

"You've been saying that for twenty minutes," she teased, glancing back over her shoulder. Her hair shimmered red-gold in the temple light, and the way she smiled—wide, sure, just this side of mischievous—was perfect. Too perfect.

My throat tightened. "Car-Car…"

The name slipped out before I could stop it. The last time I'd used that nickname, we were both still students—before the exam, before she'd earned her title, before she'd become a Knight of Marr.

That knowledge anchored me. Caroline was fine. She was alive. And if what Dantalion said was true, she'd taken the path that should have been mine. It explained the silence, the distance. I was proud of her. Genuinely.

And yet, the ache that came with it was unbearable.

"I guess in many ways," I muttered under my breath, "we both became royalty."

She didn't answer. The illusion didn't need to.

The scene continued its performance—the echo of our laughter, the smell of wax and salt, the flicker of the temple's blue fires—all replayed with impossible accuracy. Every step, every word, every gesture moved in perfect imitation of that day.

I tried to deviate. I tried to move wrong, to skip a step, to change the script. But my body refused. The temple resisted.

Each time I acted against the pattern, the world snapped me back like a taut string.

Everything played identical.

Everything—except for what waited at the top.

When I reached the final stair, Fellkeep Giles was not there. The spot where he'd once stood—the man who'd handed me the paper that changed my life—was now occupied by someone else.

An old man.

He was dressed in silks of blue and black that shimmered like oil on water. The scent of his pipe drifted lazily between us, sweet and spicy, the kind of tobacco that clings to memory. He stood with his back to me, gazing through the great open archway at the two moons, glowing pale and watchful in the late afternoon sky.

He exhaled smoke in the shape of letters. They hung briefly in the air before dissolving.

"Greetings, Alexander Duarte-Alizade," he said without turning. His voice was deep, deliberate, too calm for a man of flesh. "The Paper Walker. The Star-Writer. He Who Must Make Choices. He Who Denies Himself."

He finally turned, and I saw that his eyes were ink-black, flecked with tiny, shifting runes.

"I am Assistant Charazade."

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He bowed deeply, pipe still in hand.

The world rippled as Caroline—no, the illusion of her—burst into a coil of smoke and vanished, her laughter dissolving like mist.

"Of course," I muttered, rubbing my face. "Figures."

I should've been startled, maybe even defensive, but exhaustion dulled everything to a flat calm. My head throbbed with too many questions, all of them leading to the same answer: I was still being tested.

So I folded my arms and stared the old man down. "Let me guess. One of those things I'm denying is how I'm still scared of magic?"

A faint smirk tugged at his lips.

"Trust me," I continued, waving a hand. "I know. I'm scared to eat artifacts and let the hydra inside me win. I'm scared to use the Millennium and end up lost in those hallways of doors, unable to find home. And don't you dare counter by saying I'm not scared of using a bow or trapping myself and an enemy in a labyrinth, because I know that too."

I sighed. "It's not logical. I get it."

Charazade chuckled softly, a low, musical sound.

"Sounds like you already know this dance," he said, stepping closer, his silks whispering against the marble. "And you've been rehearsing your answers for quite some time. But no—those are not the fears you deny."

Before I could respond, the silks began to shift. The blue and black threads liquefied, reforming into a tailored suit—modern, sharp, clean. A white dress shirt, a blue tie with white stripes. The pipe in his hand turned into a cigarette, glowing faintly between his fingers.

He sat down on the steps, patting the spot beside him.

"Sit, Tome-Walker."

I hesitated, then sat. The marble was cold, grounding.

Charazade tilted his head, studying me the way an archivist might study a rare book. "You say you are afraid of X and Y," he said. "But you do not ask yourself why you are afraid. You treat your fears as facts, not as dialogues. That is the denial I speak of."

I looked at him warily. "You sound like Dantalion."

He smiled faintly. "That is because we have read from the same pages."

His gaze drifted to the temple doors, half open, revealing the city beyond. "Fear, Alexander, is not your enemy. It is the ink that outlines your choices. What you deny is not the feeling—it is the authorship. You refuse to write why you fear what you do. And so, your story writes itself without you."

I clenched my jaw. "That's poetic, but it's not helpful."

"Then make it practical," he said simply. "Tell me—why are you afraid of magic?"

The question hit harder than I expected.

Because I'd seen what magic could do. Because I'd watched it rewrite people—erase them, remake them. Because every Arte I'd ever known came with a cost written in blood or memory or both.

Because I'd seen what my own could become.

"It doesn't feel like creation," I said quietly. "It feels like imitation. Like every time I use it, something older and hungrier uses me in return."

Charazade nodded, as though that was the answer he'd been waiting for. "And yet, you continue to climb."

"Because stopping would mean it wins."

"Then you do not deny fear," he said. "You deny surrender."

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The smoke from his cigarette spiraled upward, forming symbols that flickered like constellations. "That is your paradox. You define freedom by resistance, and in doing so, you bind yourself to the very thing you resist."

I exhaled slowly. "So what—you're saying I should just stop fighting?"

"I am saying," Charazade replied, "that perhaps your enemy is not the hydra, nor the Millennium, nor the halls. Perhaps it is the mirror."

He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small object—a folded scrap of paper. With a flick of his wrist, it unfolded into a mirror made of script, every word etched in motion.

In its surface, I saw not my reflection but versions of me. One wearing armor of ink, another cloaked in pages, another standing before a blank expanse of parchment that bled light.

Each version moved independently, as if deciding whether to look back at me or continue forward.

"They are all you," he said softly. "Every denial, every admission, every unwritten chapter. The staircase you climb is not toward heaven or escape—it is toward comprehension."

I stared into the mirror until my head ached. "And what happens when I reach the top?"

Charazade smiled. "Then you write the next stair yourself."

The world flickered again. The temple began to warp, its walls shifting into shelves, its skylight into a swirling aperture of script and stars.

I realized I was no longer in Marr. I was somewhere between memory and page—between what I'd lived and what had been recorded.

Charazade stood, brushing off the imaginary dust from his suit. "Our conversation is nearly done. But before you go—understand this: Dantalion watches, as he always has. The Codex tests not to punish, but to measure. You are being written and rewritten, Alexander Duarte. The ink is not yet dry."

He extended his hand.

Reluctantly, I took it. His palm was warm, but his touch felt like paper turning.

"Then tell me, Assistant," I said. "What happens if I fail the test?"

His expression softened, almost pitying. "Then your story ends here."

"And if I pass?"

"Then you will remember who authored you."

A tremor passed through the world. The temple's light bent inward, collapsing into lines of script that streamed upward like a reverse waterfall.

I blinked—and Charazade was gone.

Only the cigarette remained, burning silently on the marble step beside me, its smoke curling into faint letters.

I reached out to touch it, but before my fingers made contact, everything went white.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the staircase—the real one, the one that led through the Codex's endless spirals.

Somewhere in the dark above, I could hear Dantalion's voice, faint but distinct, curling through the corridors like a whisper of ink on parchment.

"He's climbing," Yallas said. "Yes," Dantalion answered. "And the staircase will test every version of him that has ever existed. Let us see which one reaches the top."

The lights around me dimmed to a soft, unreal glow.

And though I could not see him, I could almost feel his gaze on me, heavy with both pride and apprehension.

"Pray, Yallas," he murmured, "that he does not find the version that writes in my tongue. If he does…"

The air rippled. The staircase quivered beneath my feet.

I looked up into the void, and saw words forming from the darkness—sentences twisting like constellations.

"…then even the Grandis will have to rewrite its laws."

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