❂ Chapter 28: The Lady of Boundless Complexity
The door shut with a soft, deliberate click behind them — a sound too gentle to belong in a place so distant from time.
What opened before their eyes could hardly be called a "room" in the common sense. It had no walls, only endless fractals of frost spiraling outward like delicate spiderwebs, branching endlessly into themselves. The floor was clear and cold, like walking on frozen glass suspended over a starless void. Above, the sky wasn't sky at all, but a vast dome of colorless light, gently moving like the breath of a being too large to imagine.
And at the center of it all…
A chair.
A window.
A woman.
She reclined sideways on the chair with the grace of one who had nothing left to prove. The long folds of her silvery-blue dress shimmered like frozen moonlight, trailing off the seat like mist curling at the edges of forgotten dreams. Her hair, impossibly pale, tumbled over one shoulder, coiling like snow-laden vines. And she gazed, unmoving, through a wide open window that framed nothing but the terrifyingly vast complexity of all creation — a swirl of equations, emotions, colors, ruins, stars, births, ends — all layered over each other, never touching, always one.
She didn't acknowledge them.
Jio took a step forward, but Havella's arm blocked his chest. Not forceful. Not rough. Just there. Solid.
"Is this really what you want?" she asked, still facing forward.
He blinked. "What?"
"To keep walking behind me. Following just because you don't have anywhere else to go."
The question stung. Not because it was wrong. But because it was far too close to the truth.
"I'm not walking behind you," he said after a moment. "I'm just walking… because it feels like I should."
"That's not an answer," she replied.
Vexi, standing near the edge of the frozen floor, said nothing. She was watching the First Fairie with a quiet intensity, arms crossed, back slightly arched — not in awe, but in understanding. Like one ghost recognizing another across a mirror.
Jio ran a hand through his hair. "Maybe I don't know what I want yet. But you do. And… it's better than staying stuck back there."
Havella finally looked at him. Her expression wasn't angry. It wasn't even disappointed. Just real.
"I don't want you to rot next to me," she said. "That's all."
"Then don't," he said. "Walk beside me. Not ahead."
The First Fairie shifted — not her body, but something else. The air around her seemed to still. Her eyes remained on the window, but one of her fingers tapped the armrest once, lazily.
The silence that followed was so immense it felt sacred.
Jio and Havella turned toward the woman.
And then… she spoke.
"Three beings enter. One knows why. One thinks they know. One is about to learn."
Her voice was like snow — not the chill of it, but the sound snow makes when it falls in silence.
"I didn't call you," she added softly. "You came. Which means… you are ready to break."
She smiled, just barely.
And the window behind her shattered — not into glass, but into realities.
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End of Chapter 28
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