Chapter 32: The Paradox Engine

The mansion seemed alive. Not in the restless, ominous way Caelum had come to expect, but in a manner both exhilarating and terrifying. Walls pulsed faintly, like veins carrying some intangible essence through the architecture. The ceilings rippled with constellations that morphed into fractal spirals, collapsing and expanding in infinite loops.

This wasn’t just a place anymore; it was a question. A riddle. An accusation.

“Do you feel it?” Dante’s voice—both Dantes speaking in unison, a dreadful harmony—cut through the dense atmosphere.

Caelum turned, locking eyes with the one Dante who stood closer, the mirage-like shimmer between them fading. “Feel what?”

“The weight of what you’ve made. What we’ve made.” Dante’s face contorted, a painful mix of guilt and triumph. “Do you know the difference between a creator and a destroyer?”

Caelum hesitated. “Control,” he said, though the word felt flimsy, hollow.

Dante stepped closer, the lines of his face sharp yet fluid, as though the very concept of identity was at war within him. “Control is an illusion. Power is an illusion. The mansion—the mind—it doesn’t belong to you. It never did.”

The other Dante, standing at the edge of the Hall of Reflections, spoke with eerie calm. “You’re fighting something that’s already won. But you can still choose how it ends.”

The room they entered wasn’t like the others. Its dimensions were impossible to discern, expanding and contracting like a heartbeat. In the center stood the Paradox Engine, a massive, mechanical construct that defied physics. Gears spun in opposite directions simultaneously, and a clock ticked backward while its hands moved forward.

The air was thick with the scent of ozone and something else—like burning paper. The mansion’s whispers crescendoed into a symphony of incoherent voices, a cacophony that made Caelum clutch his head.

“This is it,” said the nearer Dante, his voice almost reverent. “The heart of the mansion.”

“The heart of you,” added the other, his tone colder, accusatory.

Caelum staggered toward the machine. It radiated warmth and a subtle pull, as though it were alive. Etched into its surface were symbols he didn’t recognize, yet they felt intimately familiar—fragments of dreams, memories, and fears.

“What does it do?” Caelum asked, his voice barely audible over the machine’s hum.

“It decides,” both Dantes said simultaneously.

The Dantes stepped forward, one on either side of Caelum. The first Dante, the one who seemed more human, placed a hand on his shoulder. “This machine will show you the truth. About the mansion. About yourself.”

The other Dante, colder and more rigid, circled him like a predator. “But truth comes at a cost. Are you ready to pay it?”

Caelum’s gaze darted between them. “Why are you both here? Why do you even exist?”

The first Dante smiled sadly. “We’re reflections of choices you never made.”

“Failures you tried to forget,” the second added.

Caelum clenched his fists. “You’re saying I created you?”

“Not just us,” the second Dante said, gesturing to the mansion around them. “This. All of it.”

The first Dante’s voice softened. “The mansion isn’t a prison, Caelum. It’s a mirror. Every room, every corridor—it’s you. Your fears, your regrets, your desires.”

Caelum approached the Paradox Engine, his reflection in its gleaming surface fractured and distorted. The symbols on its surface began to glow, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. The room darkened, the mansion seeming to hold its breath.

“Once you start it,” the first Dante said, “there’s no going back.”

The second Dante’s voice was a knife. “But if you don’t, you’ll stay here forever. Trapped.”

Caelum hesitated. Every instinct screamed at him to stop, to run, but something deeper—an aching need for answers—drove him forward. He placed his hand on the engine.

The machine roared to life. Images flashed before him, not on the engine but in his mind—memories he had buried, truths he had denied. He saw himself as a child, standing in a room eerily similar to the mansion’s library, staring at a book that wrote itself as he read. He saw two figures—his parents?—arguing, their faces obscured. He saw himself older, isolated, his thoughts spiraling into chaos.

And then he saw the Dantes, not as they were now but as parts of himself, fragmented and desperate.

The room shook, the mansion groaning as though in pain. The engine’s hum turned into a deafening roar, and Caelum felt himself being pulled apart, his very essence unraveling.

When the noise stopped, Caelum found himself on the floor, gasping for air. The Dantes were gone. The room was silent, the engine dormant.

But something had changed. The mansion felt different—not less oppressive, but... clearer, as though the layers of obfuscation had been stripped away.

Caelum stood, his legs trembling. In the distance, he heard a familiar voice—not the Dantes, but the whisper that had haunted him since the beginning.

“Do you understand now?”

He didn’t answer. Not yet. But as he walked out of the room, the mansion seemed to shift around him, the corridors aligning into a path.

He wasn’t sure where it led, but for the first time, he felt ready to follow.