I knew the moment the dream slipped.

  I had been running loops for what felt like hours or days or lifetimes, tearing through cssrooms, corridors, bs, bedrooms that no longer existed. The scenery kept shifting under my feet, yanking me from one memory to the next before I could breathe.

  But somewhere along the way, the monsters changed.

  The green glow around one figure softened into the outline of a battered cloak. The dripping red edges of the other resolved into hair that fell in bright, familiar waves. Their hands, once cws, became human. Their eyes were no longer hollow with nightmare-light.

  I recognized them.

  That was the problem.

  The dream did not turn them back into their own shapes for my comfort. It did it because something in me had already cracked. Because my mind knew, even if I never turned to face them, exactly who was chasing me.

  Rocher. Seraphine.

  They had seen everything. Every ugly scene I thought I had buried. Every failure. Every room I had tried to leave behind in another life. And rather than wake up or pull free, they followed me into the one pce I would rather have died than let them see.

  So I kept running. Not from them. Not even from the memories.

  I was running from the truth.

  I was running because there was no way back after this. Not when they had seen the real me, the ungraceful, unlovable version. Not when they had watched a boy who looked nothing like Cire de Lune break under a teacher's disappointment, a parent's expectations, a doctor's frown. Running was all I had left.

  The hospital corridor lurched beneath me. I crashed through the double doors, heart pounding hard enough to blur the room. The bed waited there like a trap. The bnket was the same cheap weave. The IV pole stood ready, cold and familiar. My body curled up on the sheets, small and wan in a way I had prayed they would never witness.

  My old self. As good as naked, stripped of everything I'd built since.

  No. No, I did not want them to see this.

  I spun toward the door, ready to push through to the next memory, the next loop, anything—

  It did not move.

  The world held still.

  Everything froze: the hum of the fluorescent lights, the muted city noise, even the distant beep of machines. Time tightened, like the entire room had been put inside a vice.

  I turned around.

  Seraphine stood by the bedside, her breath ragged, her hands lowered but trembling with the strain of holding the dream in pce. She had forced the nightmare to stop shifting, locked it down with her will alone.

  She met my gaze, eyes dark with worry and absolute resolve.

  "Finally figured the damn thing out," she said, panting. "Enough running."

  Rocher stepped in behind her.

  He walked toward me with no sword, no armor, no fire, just quiet determination. His shape was normal now; the dream had given him back his body fully. No monstrous edge remained. No distortion.

  I tried to pull away anyway.

  The bed caught the back of my knees. My legs folded, and I ended up sitting exactly where the dream wanted me: beside a version of myself I no longer inhabited, frail and exhausted and undeniably real.

  I dropped my eyes, heat crawling up my throat.

  They had seen not only the memories, but the worst of me—the weakness I had hidden under smiles and bravado, the small and lonely pieces I had buried under sharpness.

  My voice scraped out. Barely sound.

  "Just go."

  Neither moved.

  Seraphine came to my side, kneeling so she could look me in the eyes without towering. She hesitated before touching my arm, as if asking for permission without words. I did not pull away.

  The dream shimmered faintly around her fingers, bending obediently.

  "Cire," she said gently. "You're not trapped anymore. Come with us. You don't need to relive this."

  I ughed once, a dry, broken sound.

  "How can I? After everything you've seen?"

  Rocher stopped in front of me.

  He crouched, one knee sinking into the hospital floor, lowering himself until his face was steady with mine. There was no pity there. No disgust. Only a stubborn softness that made something crack open in my chest.

  "Cire," he said. "Look at me."

  I tried and failed.

  He reached out, slow, giving me every chance to refuse. His hand settled lightly on my shoulder.

  "You don't owe us some perfect version of yourself," he said quietly. "You don't have to pretend with us. Not here. Not ever again."

  I clenched my jaw until it ached.

  Seraphine added, her voice tight, "You ran because you thought this would make us turn away. But we've already seen it. And we're still here, aren't we?"

  I buried my head in my arms. "I don't know how I'm supposed to face either of you after this."

  Rocher exhaled, breath warm and steady despite the cold dreamlight around us.

  "Then let's figure it out," he said. "Together."

  I finally looked up.

  His expression was unbearably earnest. A little raw. Entirely him.

  "Now, are you ready to come home?"

  The room went quiet.

  The dream stuttered. The boy in the bed blurred and dissolved into light. The scene trembled like a thread cut free.

  For the first time since falling asleep, I felt my heart reach for something other than escape.

  I nodded, small and shaky.

  Rocher's fingers tightened around mine.

  "Then come home, Cire," he said. "Let's get you out of here."

  The nightmare cracked open like an eggshell.

  And the light rushed in.

  Waking was not gentle.

  The dream spat me out like I had been caught in a riptide and finally thrown onto shore. Air hit my lungs in a shudder. Cold bark pressed into my palms. The steady thrum of the Great Tree vibrated through the roots beneath me, deep and ancient and real.

  I was back.

  I rolled my injured shoulder; miraculously, it had been fixed, along with the burn scars on my hands and wrists. I supposed that clearing the Forest Guardian's trial acted like a panacea—healing more than just corruption.

  Rocher and Seraphine were on either side of me, kneeling close, both breathing hard like they had followed me all the way through the dream's jaws. The forest glowed faintly around us, protective and watchful.

  For a moment none of us spoke.

  Rocher's hand was still wrapped around mine. Seraphine's fingers hovered near my shoulder, as if afraid that touching me too soon might shatter something that had only just been mended.

  I forced a breath in. Another out.

  "I'm... sorry," I whispered. "For running. For all of that."

  Rocher lowered his head a little. "You don't have to apologize."

  "You scared us," Seraphine added, voice hoarse. "But you needn't say sorry for being scared yourself."

  He smiled softly. "I'm just gd you came back to us at all."

  I swallowed. The words had sat in me so long they felt like part of me.

  To hold them any longer was to betray the trust behind the resolve they just showed.

  "There's more," I said quietly. "A lot more. And you won't understand any of it unless I start from the beginning."

  They both tensed slightly. Not from fear—just bracing.

  My chest tightened.

  "I've been lying to you," I said. "Both of you. Since the day we met."

  Silence.

  Rocher's grip on my hand didn't shift. He didn't squeeze, didn't pull away. He just held on.

  Seraphine's eyes narrowed—not in anger, but in attention. "What kind of lie?"

  I exhaled shakily.

  "This world," I said. "All of it... I knew what would happen. Or what should have happened."

  Rocher frowned. "How?"

  "Because I've seen it before," I said. "Pyed it, actually."

  Their expressions flickered before settling into incomprehension.

  I pressed on.

  "Where I come from, this world exists as a... story. A game people py for fun. The quests. The csses. The dungeons. The political routes. Even the people." My voice cracked. "Even you."

  Rocher froze. Seraphine's mouth parted in a breathless silence.

  I looked down at the roots. "I knew things I shouldn't know. I could predict events before they happened. I could remember dialogue choices, plot branches, failure states. I used it. I used all of it."

  Rocher's voice was soft. "And you were trying to hold it together by yourself."

  "Yes." Heat burned behind my eyes. "Because it made me special. Because for once, I wasn't the useless one. I had information. I had purpose. I mattered. And I—" My voice fractured. "I didn't want to lose that."

  Seraphine inhaled sharply, but she didn't interrupt.

  "I was terrified of breaking you," I whispered, "Of telling you that your lives might be scripted. That your futures were already written. I thought if I said it out loud, your world would fall apart."

  Rocher blinked once. Slowly. "You thought the truth would make us stop being ourselves."

  "Yes," I admitted.

  "And yet," Seraphine murmured, "it looks like you were the one being crushed by it."

  My breath shook. "I kept paying for it quietly. But the cost got bigger every time."

  The clearing was very quiet.

  Rocher was the one who spoke first.

  "Cire," he said, and my name sounded steadier in his mouth than it did in my own mind. "Everything you just said... I'm not sure I understand all of it. Not yet. But I understand this much."

  He leaned in, eyes locking onto mine with a seriousness I had never seen directed entirely at me before.

  "You are not special because of what you knew, or how perfectly you tried to save us," he said. "You are special because you are you."

  Seraphine exhaled sharply, a sound halfway between agreement and relief. "And because you keep choosing us, even when you should've been running for your life."

  "I wasn't choosing you," I whispered. "I was trying to control things. Trying to alter outcomes. Trying to save everyone from a story I thought I already knew."

  "Stories change," Seraphine said. "They've already changed. You know that."

  Rocher nodded. "Choices change people, too. Yours already have."

  My vision blurred.

  I tried to speak, but emotion choked the words. I managed only one.

  "Sorry," I whispered. For everything.

  Rocher shook his head. "No. Thank you for telling us."

  Seraphine reached out fully this time, her hand warm against mine. "We can't unsee what we saw in that dream. And we can't unhear what you just told us. But we are not going anywhere."

  The forest wind stirred as if in agreement, brushing over us like a sigh of relief.

  I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of earth and leaves and safety.

  For the first time since waking in this world, the truth didn't feel like a weight.

  It felt like release.