The rest of her day passed quietly. Since she didn’t need to buy anything else, and was still tired from her night activities, Velvet simply went back home after dealing with Tristan’s issues.

“Something is touching my webs inside the hut.” Hyde said, just before she reached the building.

She simply couldn’t enjoy a nice nap without issues, couldn’t she?

Stopping to look at the windows, she asked, “Which ones?” Wanting to pinpoint the intruder’s location.

“It started with the kitchen ones, but it’s moving. It’s something small and hairy, two legged.” Hyde made a pause, checking the web movements. “It’s not breaking them, just brushing or something…”

Velvet interrupted him, her thoughts connecting, a guess forming in her mind, based on her experiences, and a book she read not long ago. “Like cleaning them?”

“... Yes.”

When dealing with fairies, the summoner could unwillingly make their presence (and house), appealing for some fairies species to move in, like brownies.

And, unlike their summoned counterparts, those were a bit difficult to expel. At least not without suffering the faerie cursequence of being a bad host.

But, if the fairy was cleaning her house for free, she wasn’t going to complain.

If anything, she would start buying milk and leaving it on top of the fireplace.

No longer hesitating, Velvet entered her house with confidence, without searching for the fairy. She simply treated it as if it’s presence was a normal thing.

The hut was cleaner, though. Even when Velvet took care of cleaning it regularly, the fairy did a more meticulous job than her.

Of course, it ignored the zones where iron objects or furniture parts stood, but Velvet wasn’t going to complain about it.

Leaving her new hutmate matters alone, she went to her room, throwing herself on the bed to get a needed and deserved rest.

…

Once she fell asleep, she didn’t find the void waiting for her, nor the Chained Man. Instead, a forest full of brambles welcomed her, with an old, abandoned path going deeper.

Velvet looked down at herself. Her clothes were her own, same as any details that made her, her, not someone else, like the dream at the temple, where she was a priestess.

That priestess looked similar to her though, just not similar enough for them to share the same exact appearance.

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Lowering her hands, Velvet walked down the path, looking around.

She had never seen those types of brambles, nor the blue roses growing on them.

They were big, bigger than her open palm, which made sense, seeing the thickness of the branches, whose stems were comparable to the trees surrounding her hut. A dark grayish green color, which only made the blue roses pop out even more, and a hard, almost stone cold texture composed them.

The ‘forest’ was humid, with water droplets resting over the flowers, reflecting the little lights coming from the moon between the branc-

The moon was fake.

It didn’t take too much work for Velvet to notice. Unlike the normal moon, who had small craters on its surface, this one was a plain circle, with barely any details.

Just like the fake moons and suns that hung on pocket dimensions. That basically meant that the dream location was inside one.

It was a meaningless detail currently, but a detail nonetheless.

These flowers must be homemade. No wonder I’ve never seen any sort of flower like this, not even on Coris. And they had almost any kind of flower there. Velvet thought, still walking down the path, waiting for the moment something changed inside the dream.

And, eventually, something changed in the distance. The branches started clearing, giving an opening to a strange building.

A broad, big but short stone staircase welcomed her, with a rectangular stone old building.

Velvet didn’t know how to describe it exactly, never having seen something similar.

The entrance was an imposing wooden door, more than four meters tall. Over it, several windows, one round, and two rectangular, made from sticking different colored glass shards reflected the moonlight, dyeing it in a myriad of tones.

The roof was pointy, the tiles brown.

Velvet hesitated for a bit, even when she was aware that it was a dream, and it probably was unable to permanently harm her.

Some of the brambles crawled over the floor, reaching the walls and burrowing themselves inside. They didn’t open any hole or tear any wall, not allowing Velvet to see inside the strange building.

So, taking a deep breath, she steadied herself, walking over the stairs, towards the immense door.

Two heavy rings as handles rested on each side. Velvet grabbed one, assuming that she should use all her strength to pull the door open. But that soon was proven incorrect, when the door easily moved under her hands, not making a single noise.

The insides of the building were even more mesmerizing than the outsides.

The floor was made of porcelain tiles, gray in color, which didn’t matter, since the colorful lights coming from above complemented their dullness. On the sides of the room there were rows of wooden benches, all of them positioned so that the people that sat looked at the end.

And, at the end, there was an altar, and, at the altar, there was a coffin.

Peerless white in color, except for the intricate silver details that adorned it, and the now thinner brambles that creeped towards its interior, their texture now having become glass, translucid, reflecting the boreal like lights.

As if under a spell, Velvet walked down the aisle towards it, wanting to know what, or who was inside.

If they were dead, or alive.

Her shoes clacked on the floor as she moved, avoiding the thorns, who were in the process of changing the material that composed them, from stone to glass.

Maybe it wasn’t even glass, just like it wasn’t even stone.

The roses hanging on the coffin didn’t look completely solid, their petals moving under the nonexistent wind, the humidity droplets still on them.

Slowly, Velvet reached the coffin, leaning over it.

Inside, there was a guy.

Dressed in white, long pale hair tied up over the neck zone, and fair features, with his chest moving up and down slowly, which signaled that he was alive.

It was Dianthus, sleeping or unconscious, and, by seeing how the brambles curled around him, Velvet assumed the second option.

Is this a dream, or a vision? Velvet asked herself. And, if it's a vision, is it from the present or the future?

She didn’t touch him, not him and not the roses, instead looking at what he was holding.

Because Dianthus looked the same as she remembered, except the strange object that was on his hands, folded over his chest.

Since Dianthus was grabbing it with both hands, and it was a small object, Velvet only saw a part of it, a golden piece.

Should I try to steal it? She didn’t know if the object was dangerous, but the dream wasn’t over yet, which meant that she needed to do something more.

She reached slowly for it, glancing at Dianthus, who silently stared back at her.

“Yes,” He said. “It can work.”

Velvet retracted her hand instantly, but the dream was already ending, whatever she needed to be done was done.

The building got quickly swallowed by the void, the brambles, benches and glass windows getting shrouded in darkness before disappearing.

Velvet took a deep breath, her heart beating fast. Dianthus' sudden awakening had surprised her.

No, not Dianthus’. Dianthus' eyes were golden, not blue.