Sleep in the Fairy Realm was different. Lighter. More aware, as if some part of me never fully descended, forever attuned to the hum of the crystal walls and the whisper of impossible gardens outside.

  That night, the difference didn’t matter.

  The dream began gently.

  I was walking.

  Through a forest I didn’t recognize but somehow knew. It was not the Fairy Realm’s twisted geometry, nor the honest pine woods of my village. Something in between, correct in form, wrong in essence.

  Trees stood patient and identical. The path was worn smooth by unseen feet. The light was a grey-gold, perpetually late afternoon.

  Ahead, a door.

  Wooden. Simple. Standing alone in the middle of the path with no wall, no frame, no reason.

  “That’s odd,” I thought with a dreamer’s logic. “Doors usually need houses.”

  I walked toward it. What else was there to do?

  The distance stretched. I walked and walked, yet the door never grew larger or nearer, like a detail painted on the air.

  “Maybe if I run?”

  I ran. Legs pumping, breath heaving, boots pounding the earth.

  The door hung in space, unmoving.

  Then, without transition, I stood before it.

  Close enough to touch the weathered oak, to see the tarnish on the brass handle.

  I reached. I turned.

  It opened.

  Beyond the door: another forest. Another path.

  Another door.

  “Well, that’s just poor planning.”

  I stepped through. The door shut behind me with a soft, final “click” that echoed too long and too loud.

  I was walking again. Toward the next door.

  Through trees that might have been the same trees. On a path that might have been the same path.

  Reach. Open. Step.

  Another forest. Another path. Another door.

  Reach. Open. Step.

  Again.

  Again.

  “How many doors? Five? Ten?”

  The count blurred. The motion became everything: reach, open, step, walk. A peaceful, eternal forest. Sunlight. Distant birdsong. A place where nothing changed and nothing hurt and nothing ever ended.

  “Wait.”

  The thought sliced through the haze.

  I stopped walking.

  The door waited ahead, patient.

  “When did I start walking again?”

  I looked down. My feet were moving. One in front of the other. Steady. Automatic. A wound clockwork toy.

  I tried to stop them.

  They kept walking.

  “Stop. STOP.”

  Step. Step. Step.

  My hand rose…not by my will, but its own. Fingers closed on the cold brass. Turned.

  “No. I don’t want to…”

  I stepped through.

  Another forest. Another path. Another door.

  And I understood, with the cold, suffocating horror unique to nightmares:

  I would never stop.

  I would open doors forever.

  Each leading only to another, and another, in a beautiful, terrible loop where nothing changed and I walked and walked and walked and…

  A scream clogged my throat, silent.

  My legs pistoned.

  The door waited, inevitable.

  “This is forever. This is what forever feels like.”

  Reach. Open. Step.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again.

  ***

  I woke gasping, clawing at the stillness.

  My chamber was dark, the walls glowing with eternal twilight. Peaceful. Unchanged.

  Just a dream. A nightmare of being trapped, of endless loops…

  My legs ached.

  Not a memory. A deep, bone-grinding fatigue, as if I had marched for miles.

  I kicked off the blanket. Looked down.

  My boots, placed neatly beside the bed before I slept, were caked with forest loam.

  Dirt that shouldn’t exist. Couldn’t exist.

  I stared, breath held.

  Not a dream.

  Or not “only” a dream.

  Something else. Something that left proof.

  I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest, and did not sleep again.

  When the false dawn finally glimmered through the crystal, I was still there, staring at the stained leather.

  Wondering whose footsteps, I had walked in.

  And why my body believed the journey was real.

  ***

  I couldn’t focus.

  The G-Pen trembled in my hand as I attempted the day’s exercise, a simple three-circle pattern, one I could have drawn blindfolded. It should have been automatic. Effortless.

  Instead, the first circle wavered. The second collapsed halfway through. The third never even formed.

  The Fairy King watched, silent as marble.

  “Again,” he said.

  I tried. My hand shook. The circles stuttered into being, held for a breath, and dissolved like mist.

  The dream was a stain on my consciousness. The memory of walking, endlessly walking, legs moving without my will, doors opening onto more doors onto more walking onto…

  “Elsbeth.”

  His voice severed the spiral. Not harsh. Concerned.

  I lowered the pen. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just… I can’t.”

  “What troubles you?”

  The question opened a door I’d been holding shut.

  “I had a dream,” I said, the words fraying at the edges. “I was walking through a forest. Opening doors that led to more forests, more doors. I couldn’t stop. It just… went on and on.”

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  I stopped. Swallowed. Tried to sound less like I was coming apart.

  “When I woke, my boots were covered in dirt. Forest dirt. As if I’d actually been there.”

  Something shifted in the Fairy King’s expression. Not surprise, recognition. A faint tightening along his jaw.

  “When did you have this dream?”

  “Last night. Why?” My pulse picked up, drumming in my throat. “Does it mean something?”

  He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he turned to the window, gazing out with an intensity that seemed to press the air from the room.

  “Describe it to me,” he said, his voice low. “Every detail. Omit nothing.”

  So I did. The patient, identical trees. The lone door in the path. The way space stretched and snapped. The horror of my own autonomy slipping away, the mechanical reach, open, step. The beautiful, eternal forest that became a prison through sheer repetition.

  He listened without a word. When I finished, the silence lingered so long I nearly broke it myself.

  “Was it real?” I finally whispered. “Was I actually somewhere, or…”

  “The realm is permeable,” he said, gently cutting me off. “To a certain state of consciousness. When you sleep here, your mind exists between presence and absence. It can… brush against other minds. Other experiences. Especially those that are intense. Desperate. Loud with feeling.”

  The meaning settled over me slowly, cold and certain.

  “I felt someone else’s nightmare,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Whose?”

  He paused again, longer this time. Then:

  “Someone who entered the realm last night. Uninvited. Someone who is still here, but not arriving.”

  My stomach turned to stone. “What does that mean?”

  The Fairy King turned from the window. His eyes, swirling constellations, dying stars, held something new.

  Regret.

  “Walk with me,” he said. “I will show you.”

  He led me through corridors of the Spire I had never seen. The crystal here was darker, more opaque, as if light were afraid to linger. We descended, not by stairs, but along a slow, spiraling incline that felt like walking into the heart of a mountain.

  We stopped before a wall no different from any other.

  “What you are about to see,” the Fairy King said, his voice grave, “is the consequence of protection. The price paid by those who would threaten what I shelter.”

  He didn’t ask if I wanted to proceed. He simply placed his hand upon the crystal.

  The wall…

  It didn’t open. It showed.

  A window appeared—not in the wall, but through it, as if the crystal had become a lens focusing on a memory. Through it, I saw a forest. A path. A horror I knew in my bones.

  And a man, walking.

  He wore dark, travel-stained leathers. A blade hung useless at his side. His face was gaunt, hollowed out by an exhaustion that went beyond the physical.

  His eyes were fixed ahead. Empty.

  On a door. Wooden. Simple. Standing alone.

  My breath caught. “That’s…”

  “Yes,” the Fairy King said softly. “It is.”

  The man reached the door. Without hope, without even a change in expression, he opened it. Stepped through.

  Another forest. Another path. Another door.

  “How long?” My voice was a thread.

  “Fourteen hours. He believes he has covered miles. In truth, he has moved nowhere.”

  I watched. Ten steps. Twenty. The scenery did not change. The path was a perfect, unending replica.

  He did not slow. His jaw was set with a grim, terrible determination.

  “He knows,” I whispered, the horror dawning. “He knows it’s a loop. But he keeps walking.”

  “What else can he do? The mind will choose forward motion, even when forward is an illusion. It is more bearable than surrender.”

  The man paused. He looked over his shoulder.

  The path behind him stretched into a mist of identical trees, a mirror of the path ahead.

  For one fractured moment, his resolve shattered. His face didn’t crumple into tears, it collapsed into understanding. The pure, soul-crushing comprehension of his eternity.

  Then he turned forward.

  And kept walking.

  Because what else was there to do?

  I looked from the window back to the King. "What did you do to him?" My voice was small, dwarfed by the horror.

  "I did nothing."

  "Nothing? He's trapped in an endless loop because of nothing?"

  "The realm perceived hostile intent. It responded. I did not design this defense; it simply is. Those who enter with malice never arrive at their destination."

  "By being killed?"

  "By being forgotten."

  He gestured. The view through the crystal shifted, pulling back to reveal the forest's true nature.

  It wasn't a forest.

  It was a moment. The single moment between "entering" and "arriving," stretched into eternity. The space between the threshold and the destination, pulled thin and endless. A pathway that led nowhere because 'nowhere' was its only possible end.

  "The realm does not kill him," the King said. "It merely never lets him finish the journey. He walks the space between spaces. Forever approaching. Never arriving."

  I couldn't speak. The horror was too vast.

  "That's worse," I finally whispered. "That's so much worse than killing him."

  "Yes." No apology. Only stark truth. "It is also necessary."

  "Necessary?"

  He turned fully to me. In the depths of his eyes, I saw something ancient and unyielding.

  "He is a threat, Elsbeth. His intention is malice. The realm's response is not cruelty. It is finality."

  "But he'll still die. Of thirst, exhaustion, despair…"

  "In three to five days, yes. When he does, the realm will permit his body to arrive here. Empty. A spent vessel. A message."

  "A message?"

  "That finding you is possible." His voice was like stone. "Reaching you is not."

  I had to look away from the window. From the man and his beautiful, terrible eternity.

  But the image was seared into me. The forest. The doors. The endless, automatic walking. My dream.

  "I felt it," I said, my voice hollow. "In my sleep. The doors. The walking. The moment you understand it will never, ever end."

  The Fairy King's expression shifted. A flicker of something that might have been regret.

  "Your consciousness brushed against his in the permeable space of sleep. You felt an echo of his prison. A shadow of it." His tone softened, almost imperceptibly. "I am sorry. I did not foresee that connection. Mortals are not meant to sense such things. But you are..."

  "Colorless. A lens." The words tasted bitter. "So I got to feel a man slowly dying in your infinite hallway."

  "Yes. And for that, I am truly sorry."

  I looked down at my boots. The forest dirt was still there, real and accusing.

  "He's dying..."

  "He is dying because he entered a realm that protects what is entrusted to it."

  "That's not the same thing."

  "No," the Fairy King agreed, his voice quiet. "It is not."

  We stood in silence. The window still showed the intruder, a silent, ceaseless pendulum.

  "Can you stop it?" I finally asked. "Just… end it quickly? Instead of making him…"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Because the message would be incomplete." His voice hardened. "A clean death is an act of mercy. Mercy implies acknowledgement. It says, 'I saw you. I judged you. I chose to end you.'"

  He leaned forward, and I saw the true shape of his anger in those swirling eyes.

  "But if he dies from the realm's passive defense, from exhaustion, despair, and the simple, terrible physics of walking forever? The message is: 'You were not even worth my notice. The realm itself rejects you.' It is a far stronger deterrent."

  "So he suffers longer for… politics?"

  "He suffers longer because a swift end invites more danger. To you. To this realm. To the future you hold." The anger cooled into something more chilling. "I do not relish his pain, Elsbeth. But I will not shorten it if it means leaving us vulnerable. That is the arithmetic of protection."

  "That's monstrous."

  "Yes. It is also necessary. Welcome to the weight of guarding something precious. Welcome to the choices that will haunt your quiet hours."

  I wanted to argue. To insist there must be another way. To deny that power required this cold calculus.

  But my mind was blank of alternatives.

  And that silence, more than anything, made me sick.

  The Fairy King waved his hand. The window dissolved back to a view of floating gardens.

  But the other forest was still there, burned onto the back of my eyes. The man. The doors.

  "You needed to see this," he said, his voice shifting back into its teaching cadence. "Not to frighten you, or to showcase power. But to understand the true cost of what you are learning."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The G-Pen. The Reality Editor. The ability to rewrite 'what is'… These are not tools. They are weapons of cosmic significance. And weapons," he gestured to where the window had been, "have consequences. Not just for your target, but for the periphery. The innocent. The guilty. Everyone."

  He knelt, bringing his star-filled gaze level with mine.

  "One day, perhaps soon, you will face a choice. Use your power to save one, knowing others will suffer. Or withhold it, and allow suffering you could have prevented. There will be no right answer. No clean path. Only the terrible weight of the choice itself."

  "Like you chose to let him walk."

  "Exactly. And when that day comes, you will remember this. You will remember the intruder in his beautiful prison. And you will ask yourself: 'Can I bear the weight of this choice?'"

  "And if I can't?"

  His expression darkened.

  "Then you become what Grigory became. One who chooses not to bear the weight, but to spread it. To make the whole world share the pain, rather than carrying a portion alone."

  The name slithered through me. The failed Creator. His unfinished story.

  "I don't want to be like that."

  "Good. Then keep asking these questions. Keep being troubled by suffering, even an enemy's. The moment it becomes easy, the moment the weight no longer registers…" He stood, his form once again towering. "That is the moment you have lost what makes you different from the Demon Lord. That is the moment you become a force of entropy, not creation."

  ***

  That night, I lay in bed, afraid to close my eyes.

  What if I dream of the doors again? What if I feel him, still walking?

  The rational part of me knew the connection had been a fluke, a one-time brush of consciousness in the vulnerable space between waking and sleep.

  The rest of me didn’t care about rational.

  Exhaustion won, as it always does. Sleep came, shallow and uneasy.

  And in the dream, I walked.

  Not through his forest this time. Through my village.

  Through silent streets, past houses I knew, their windows dark. I called for my mother, my father, my brother.

  No one answered.

  I opened door after door, searching.

  Every room was empty. Just more doors. More hollow spaces. More walking through a place that should have been home but had become another beautiful, terrible loop.

  I woke with tears on my cheeks.

  The boots beside my bed were clean.

  But my legs still ached, a deep, phantom fatigue, as if I’d walked for miles in search of something I could never find.

  And somewhere, in a forest made of a single stretched moment, the intruder continued his endless journey toward a destination that did not exist.

  I thought about getting up. Finding the Fairy King. Asking to see the window again, to confirm the man was still walking, still suffering.

  But I didn’t move.

  What would it change?

  He would still be walking.

  I would still be safe.

  And that safety would still be built on the foundation of his slow, solitary unraveling.

  I pulled the blanket to my chin and stared at the crystal ceiling until the false dawn seeped through.

  Training would resume tomorrow. Circles would be drawn. Power would be practiced. The Fairy King would be patient, precise, and unmoved by my silent turmoil.

  Because this was the lesson beneath all the others:

  Power protects.

  But protection demands payment.

  And the bill is never sent to the one who is kept safe.

  ***

  Three days later, I answered a knock to find Caelan at my chamber door, his leaf-hair rustling with unusual agitation.

  “The King requests your presence. In the outer gardens. There is…” He paused, selecting the words with visible care. “A conclusion you should witness.”

  I followed him through corridors and across bridges of woven light, further than I had ever ventured, to where the Spire’s cultivated beauty gave way to a stark, purposeful borderland.

  The Fairy King stood waiting, a solemn silhouette against the eternal twilight.

  At his feet lay a body.

  The intruder.

  He was a husk, aged decades beyond his years. His skin was parched and cracked like drought-stricken earth, his eyes hollow sockets fixed on a horizon only he could see. One hand was still clenched, frozen in the act of turning a handle that did not exist.

  Finally, after three days of walking, he had arrived.

  I turned my face away, my throat tight.

  “He will be returned through a portal to those who sent him,” the Fairy King said, his voice low and even.

  “Will they stop…?”

  “Some. Others will see it as a challenge. A puzzle to be solved.” He gazed down at the spent vessel. “The forest will receive them all the same.”

  I forced myself to look one last time. At the man who had walked an eternity in a single moment. Who had died not in battle, but in the slow, crushing silence of infinite steps.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. The words were for no one but the air, and for the part of me that needed to say them.