At The Sandman's Door

Rain.

Or shards.

Or glass.

It keeps falling.

The alley stretches endlessly, black brick walls slick with water that reflect a hundred fractured moons. Lucius presses against it, lungs burning, heart hammering like it would burst through his chest.

Voices, too many voices.

His mother?

No. Lain.

No. Both.

Their words crease in on themselves, a melody that pierces his head, softening it at the same time.

“Lucius, you’re okay. You’re okay.”

Hands. Silk. Gems. Blood. Light. He can’t tell the difference, can’t breathe through the weight of it all.

He looks up.

His father’s face, stern, gentle.

No. Surazal.

Towering, glowing with resonance that thrums in the air like a pulse through the city.

One heartbeat, then the next. They trade places.

Father. Surazal. Father. Surazal.

He reache, he lunges, but they slip through his fingers like smoke.

A knife flashes. A dark blade glimmers. The alley narrows, twisting, spiralling, until it becomes the Angiporium and not the alley, until the floor is fire and the walls bleed light.

Time fractures.

His mother clutches her necklace. Lain clutches her chest, light spilling out like molten gold. The pearls turn red. The dress turn red. Both collapsing. Both whispering.

“Be strong...”

“...stay strong...”

Their voices braid into one song, two rivers feeding the same ocean, dragging him under the heavy waves.

He tries to reach them. Child hands gripping knife hilt, slick with rain, resonance glowing faintly in his palm.

“Mommy, I’ll save you-”

“Lain, you’re going to be okay-”

But his hands are too small, his arms too weak. The knife slips. The resonance dimmers.

A man’s shadow steps forward. Hat pulled low, face half hidden in darkness.

But when Lucius blinks, it’s Iscarius, the same smile, the same contempt, shifting, twisting into both his attackers at once. Mocking, whispering in a voice that echoes through his skull.

“Who we are in the dark, that’s who we really are. That’s who you are, Lucius.”

His father’s throat opens beneath steel. Surazal falls under resonance, torn apart. His mother collapses in pearl and blood. Lain’s figure stains, crimson flowing out.

Lucius screams, but it’s muffled in rain, drowned in fire, lost in the endless loop of impossible moments that crash like waves for eternity.

He crawls.

To his mother’s body. To Lain’s body.

Fingers slipping on wet blood, on light, on memory that burns hotter than fire, on a tree that forever bleeds.

“I can fix this. I can save them.”

But the moment stretches too long. And the hands slip away. Every time he grabs, they vanish. Every time he holds, they turn to ash.

The man in the alley looms, laughing. Iscarius looms, smiling. Both. Neither.

Lucius claws for breath, choking on the smoke, rain, fire, and sorrow. And in the gaps of his vision, he sees it all, over and over, layered atop themselves, repeating until he can’t tell which is real.

The alley and the Angiporium cave into one another, time stutters, splits, stretches like slime. Red amber gems spill from necklaces and dim jaded flames, rolling across floors of rain and fire, each one a shard of guilt, a fragment of identity, a wound that would not close.

He reaches out. He gathers them. He presses them to his chest. But they slip through his fingers like water, like blood, like sand.

Lucius screams.

The rain becomes sirens. The sirens become screams. The screams become silence. The silence becomes rain.

And in the silence, Lain whispers. His mother whispers. Surazal’s hand on his shoulder. His father’s hand on his shoulder. Both gone. Both present.

Amber light spills across him, pooling and spiraling, twisting the memories until the worlds bend in, the colours collapse, and he drifts.

Lucius drifts into darkness.

And gasps awake.

The rain, the knife, the screams, all gone.

They’ve dissolved into white walls and iron straps. Drenched sweat beads on his cold skin, soaking the flower still pinned to his chest. The chair groaned when he tried to move, leather biting deeper into his wrists.

NO NO NO NO NO NO

But the dream still clung to him. The weight of blood. The amber glow. The voices echoing in his skull like ghosts that didn’t know they were dead.

It took all the energy he had left to catch his breath.

From the far corner, the shadows thickened, swallowing the hum of the lights. Xallarap peeled free of the dark, its figure unfurling like smoke given shape.

“You saw it,” it said, voice layered, too many voices. “Not memory. Not fantasy. Both. The Serious House will do that to you.”

Lucius shuddered, blinking hard. “It…it felt so real.”

“It always does.” Xallarap drifted closer. “The house feeds you your own fractures. Past, future, dream, guilt. It makes no distinction, doesn’t care either way.”

Lucius struggled against the straps, his chest heaving. “Why? Why show me this?”

“I didn’t show you anything,” Xallarap whispered, shadows brushing over the chair like tendrils. “Your visions are yours alone, your dreams yours to bear. The choice to cling to meaning, to cause, to order, is only your own. I cannot choose what you see. My purpose is only to act as an usher, as an advisor. The red resonance that flows into you, that is what awakens the essence that resides within your soul. Until you understand.”

Lucius’s eyes burned. “Understand what?”

Xallarap leaned in, its outline flickering like a dying flame. “That you cannot escape yourself, that you cannot escape your guilt. You must break yourself apart, and bind yourself back together, into something stronger, something worth saving. Only then can you be reborn.”

A low groan filled the chamber. The battered door at the far end of the room shuddered, swinging open to a corridor of blinding white.

At the same time, the straps around Lucius’s wrists and ankles loosened, uncoiling like snakes retreating to their nest.

Xallarap straightened. “It seems to be the hour already. Your path to freedom awaits.”

Lucius stared at the open door, throat tight. “Freedom?”

“Of course, it is as I mentioned. Every day the chance is offered. Step outside this room, and you may climb to the peak of Mandukath. Three hundred and sixty five steps. All must be taken in a single breath. Do so, reach the top, and the House releases you. You have my sincerest word.”

Lucius pushed himself up, his body weak and trembling.

Freedom…freedom…

But the word burned in him like a coal. He staggered forward, out into the blinding light beyond the door.

The room dissolved.

He stood at the base of Mandukath. The mountain was a stairwell carved into the heavens, steps that vanished into the clouds. Each riser seemed taller than the last, edges sharper than blades. The air here was thinner than glass, impossible to breathe, ut he forced the air deep into his lungs and began his ascent.

One step.

Another.

Another.

The numbers blurred, each step burning through his body like fire. His chest tightened, vision flickered. He pressed on, desperate, dragging himself higher, higher…

Keep going, keep going, keep go-

Until the breath tore out of him, ragged and defeated, an eternal distance away from the unseen peak.

The instant the air left his body, the mountain vanished beneath his feet.

Lucius slammed back into the chair, straps snapping shut around his wrists again as if they had never left. His chest heaved, lungs refusing to draw full breath.

Xallarap’s hollow voice filled the room. “You failed. As you will fail again. But the door will open tomorrow. It always opens.”

“You’re playing with me, all of this is just a sadistic game! What do you want with me!?”

“Oh, Lucius,” Xallarap leaned close, its shadowed face inches from Lucius’s own. “There is no game here. The whole world is counting on you, do not let them down.”

Xallarap lingered for just a moment, then began to unravel, leaving only the echo of his words.

Silence.

Then, the red resonance stirred once more. It seeped from the corners of the room like liquid light, winding toward Lucius. It pulsed slowly before pressing into his body and flooding his veins with heat.

Lucius’s head rolled back, the ceiling above him beginning to blur.

No! Don’t let it in! Stay out! Out! Out!

He tried to fight it, to keep something of himself intact.

Wait, I remember…

The message. Ultra’s voice, sharp and grounding, that cut through the haze.

‘...do not give up your fight’

His hand twitched against the restraints, his will clawing for focus as he attempted to send out a reply.

Ultra…are you out there…can you hear me…is anyone out there…

His thoughts scrambled into incoherence, unsure if his message would even be transmitted, if the line was even still open. A fragment of himself thrown across the void before the toxin overtook him entirely.

Then, once again, the red folded in.