Aenigma Regis

The torment had become routine.

Lucius no longer knew how many days had passed inside the Serious House. Perhaps days did not pass at all. Time was not marked by sunrise or sunset, but by repetition, the endless cycle of dream, ascent, collapse, and return.

Every night, the dreams came.

They wound themselves around his skull like burning coils, tightening until his breath fled from him, until thought dissolved into ash. Faces he loved, memories he despised, parts of his subconscious he never wanted to bear witness too again, all flickered and burned out, replaced by grotesque echoes. Mouths twisted into snarls, eyes hollowed black, screeches of laughter turned cruel. All of it warped into blades that pierced him, again and again and again.

And always, the stairs.

Mandukath’s spine of stone rose before him, three hundred and sixty five steps scraping against the heavens. The climb was always the same. His body staggered upward, chains biting into his wrists, his breath ragged as he held on to every bit. Each step heavier than the one before. The air thinned, the world blurred. Sometimes the stairs fractured beneath his feet, collapsing into bottomless chasms. Sometimes his chest tore open as if invisible hands reached inside and crushed his heart. Sometimes he simply fell to his knees, unable to rise, choking on the bitter taste of failure.

But the outcome never changed.

The air released from his lungs. The collapse. The void. The chains snapping him back into the chair. The feeling that he could never catch his breath, the continuous hunger for air that always remained.

Then came the House again, the endless torture. The red resonance seeping into his veins until his body shuddered with agony. His screams echoing against the walls until even they sounded foreign to his ears, just another layer of torment in the Serious House’s chorus.

The dream. The stairs. The collapse.

The cycle.

Lucius could not tell when one ended and the next began. His mind blurred them all together into a single, eternal existence. Xallarap hadn’t returned in a while, or at least, what felt like a while. Time did not exist in a place like this.

The worst of it was not the pain, but the certainty. The knowledge that tomorrow he would climb again, bleed again, collapse again, suffocate again. That there was no release, no escape.

Only the cycle.

Only the madness.

And it was eating him alive.

His previous attempt at the stairs had ended the same as countless ones before. His lungs still burned from the climb, his legs still twitched as if the steps of Mandukath were etched into his muscles. Only the pounding echo of failure remained, his mind too bleak to form any coherent thoughts.

He knew his breaking point was reaching near.

Can’t…breathe…

A flicker stirred in the corner of the room.

Mmmm…no…just another…hallucination

But the blur resolved, shaping into something human, cloaked, distinct.

“Lucius,” the figure whispered, a low pitched and urgent voice.

Lucius’s head jerked up. “...Caesar?”

The figure pulled back its hood. Caesar’s features flickered in and out, like a flame behind fog, Ultra’s handiwork struggling to maintain its disguise against the Serious House’s oppressive grip. His eyes darted around the chamber, gauging the corners as though expecting claws to tear through at any moment.

“I don’t have long. Listen to me. I can reach you here, but that’s the extent of what I can do. I can pull myself to you, but I can’t bring you out.” His tone cracked with frustration. “Ultra ran the calculations. If I tried to drag you through my Realm, your body would collapse. Your mind wouldn’t survive the crossing.”

Lucius shook against the chains. “Just…leave me. Let me rot…it’s what I deserve. There’s no point…in anything else.”

“Don’t talk like that, there is a point.” Caesar leaned closer, his form flickering like static. “We have the Gnomon, the fight isn’t over. But we need you Lucius, only you can activate its ability. Ultra’s working on a way to get you out, one that won’t scatter your mind in the process. Just hold on a little longer, I’m begging you. You’re not alone in this, Lucius. You hear me? You’re not alone.”

Lucius’s throat tightened. The words struck like sunlight against stone, but the weight of the House crushed down just as quickly. “Scatter my mind…heh…heh. How long?” he whispered.

Caesar’s mouth tightened. “I…I don’t know. Ultra’s trying to harness his resonance into a device, so next time we can heal you just enough for my Realm to carry you over. The rules are different in this place, we’re still trying to navigate it all. But you’ll get you out here, Lucius, I promise you that.”

Before Lucius could respond, the air shifted.

The temperature dropped, shadows stretched unnaturally along the walls. Caesar’s eyes widened. “Something’s coming...”

The shadow condensed into the familiar, inverted form of Xallarap. Its many eyed glare swept the chamber, flaring as if hunting for prey.

Caesar’s eyes darted to Lucius, giving him a concerned final look. With a ripple of Ender Realm, his body blurred and dissolved into the air, gone in an instant.

Xallarap’s voice was honey wrapped around thorns.

“Hmm, the air smells…different. What an interesting scent…” It leaned closer, a sharpened grin forming like blackened blades. “Oh, it doesn’t matter, none of it does. The Amber King has decided, your trials must intensify. The stairs will steep higher. The coils will burn hotter. Every attempt will scrape away what’s left of you.”

Lucius trembled, but he raised his head, Caesar’s words still echoing in him, giving him just enough to go on.

“Break me…all you want,” Lucius rasped, voice raw. “I’ll keep climbing.”

Xallarap tilted its head, mock amusement gleaming in its eyes. “Good. That is exactly what he desires, for you to complete the riddle of the King.”

The shadows folded back into the walls, leaving Lucius to his silence.

But silence in the Serious House was never kind. It was only the breath before the next dawn, the next torment.

And so the darkness claimed him again.

***

The air tore open like ripped fabric.

Caesar stumbled through the breach, breath ragged, the Ender Realm spitting him back into the Sanctum’s cold light.

Ultra was waiting. Standing tall, arms folded, he looked like he hadn’t moved since Caesar left.

Umbra had joined her brother, sitting perched on one of the consoles, her apricot hair falling around her face like a curtain. She looked up, worry flashing in her eyes.

“Well?” Ultra’s voice was sharp, stripped of patience.

Caesar ripped his hood back, the exhaustion written across his face. “I found him. He’s alive...if you can call it that.”

Umbra’s grip tightened on the edge of the console. “What did you see?”

“Nightmares. He’s being broken down in cycles, torture, failure, again and again. He’s climbing those stairs every day, Ultra, just like you said. I saw the door. Three hundred and sixty five steps, in one damn breath. His body...” Caesar’s voice faltered, his jaw tightening. “He doesn’t look good. I don’t know how much longer he can hold out.”

Ultra’s face remained unreadable, but his hands had curled into fists. “Did you tell him?”

“Yes. That we have the Gnomon. That you know about the House. That we’re working on a way out. It gave him something to cling to.” Caesar’s voice dropped, almost breaking. “But it’s not enough. He’s running out of time.”

Umbra slid down from the console, stepping closer. “What are you suggesting?”

Caesar looked between them, desperation in his eyes. “We should risk pulling him through my Ender Realm right now. Even if it kills him. At least that way he doesn’t rot in that chair, doesn’t get crushed down until nothing’s left.”

The Sanctum went silent, except for the low hum of its machinery.

Finally, Ultra spoke slowly. “You think I haven’t calculated that? You think I haven’t run the simulations? Your Ender Realm won’t just kill him, Caesar, it will obliterate him. His body, mind, resonance, nothing will remain.” His gaze burned with rage for Lucius’s sake. “That is not salvation. That is annihilation.”

Caesar’s fists trembled. “Then what? We just wait around while he’s tortured into the dirt?”

Umbra’s voice cut through the tension. “No, you both are right. We don’t have many options left. But every hour Lucius holds on is another hour we can use to finish the Essence Box, it’s almost complete. If the box is fully charged by all of us, we can collapse the House from the inside out. That’s our only definite chance to bring him out in one piece.”

Caesar pressed a hand to his temple, exhaling hard. “And if he doesn’t make it that long?”

Ultra finally stepped forward, his hand resting on Caesar’s shoulder. “Then we make sure his suffering isn’t wasted. But until that moment, we won't throw him away.”

Caesar closed his eyes. The last thing he remembered was Lucius’s trembling voice, the words that came from the shell of his friend.

But in his gut, the words tasted hollow.