As expected, time passed, and Hermes continued the monotonous race through the seemingly endless corridors. Everything indicated that Apolo's subconscious was delving deeper into the dream, and this was evident in the fact that the dream's coherence gradually faded over time.
At first, there were subtle changes like abnormally long corridors, corridors without doors, corridors without windows, and corridors with blue carpets. Then the changes became subtly less coherent. For instance, if you counted, they had already climbed 100 floors. However, no one dreaming would worry about whether it was really possible to find such a tall castle in the real world. Other less subtle inconsistencies included corridors with two doors stuck together, too many doors, or the corridor being lit with no visible windows or glass.
However, all of the above still held a certain logic and could not be distinguished unless one really focused on the details. But it was just a few minutes ago that things became too distorted to doubt the lack of coherence: the corridors were now filled with stairs everywhere, with corridors endlessly crossing each other, and doors placed where there clearly could be no connection. Everything seemed to have distorted to the point where it no longer looked like a castle but appeared to be an infinite maze, where one could walk in any direction and position. At this point, it was no longer strange for Hermes that the servant and "Apolo" started running on the walls, descended the stairs backward, or even climbed them on the ceiling, ignoring the steps, showing that gravity hardly mattered in this confusing dream.
As things continued to distort, Hermes silently went with the flow of the dream, wondering when Apolo would finally wake up once and for all. Considering his previous experiences with this type of dream, the teenager knew that luckily, the dream shouldn't have much time left to finish. So Hermes began to wonder why the servant and Apolo showed no sign of reaching their father's party. Would they never reach the party, and would the dream end abruptly?
The harsh reality was that Hermes didn't know the answer to that question. All he knew was that he never crossed paths with another person during the infernal race to nowhere. So he hadn't had the opportunity to ask anyone else. But if we consider that the two servants Hermes encountered acted exactly the same way when they found Apolo, it didn't give the teenager much hope of finding someone who could make sense of this dream. Leading Hermes to resign himself to the idea that this entire fantasy would ultimately end up being a grand digression of Apolo about running towards nothingness.
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The child, the servant, and the teenager continued to run along the increasingly bizarre path until finally, the sight on the horizon prompted Hermes to ask:
—Is the party behind that door?
—...—However, the other two runners remained silent and continued running monotonously.
—Let's hope so...—Murmured Hermes, looking at the door getting closer and closer. At the end of the long straight hallway that the trio of runners was traveling, there was only an old wooden door full of cracks and visible stains of bluish mold. This excited the teenager because he realized that the other two runners had finally entered a dead-end path. Therefore, the dream must be about to end!
The child, the servant, and the teenager ran toward the door in silence, while Hermes prayed in his mind that these two idiots wouldn't turn around just as they reached the door and run all the way back. By now, the teenager had already gotten his hopes up, and the worst thing they could do to him was to destroy his hopes of ending his boredom. But fortunately, the door was getting closer and closer, and the silence of the two "guides" implied that Apolo might be about to wake up.
The distance between the group and the door decreased, allowing Hermes to see that under the strange door was an unusual object that caught his attention.
The object itself was not particularly unusual, and in fact, it could be quite common to see in many everyday places. But the problem that caught Hermes's attention was the context in which he saw this object. This dream had only developed in two places: the training room and the castle corridors. In both places, you would never find this object, so it was breaking another barrier in the levels of dream logic. For an ordinary person, this might be normal in a dream, but for Hermes, it only meant a terrible sign: the dream could continue further!
With desperation, Hermes continued to approach the door until he was finally a few steps away. Upon arrival, strangely, both Apolo and the servant completely ignored the object lying on the door and instead opened the door, revealing a path that led through the middle of the Black Forest, seemingly extending to the top of a hill. Without stopping, Apolo and the servant continued running, but Hermes couldn't do the same because the object lying next to the door was also not something you would find in the Black Forest. Therefore, this object had caught the bored teenager's attention enough for him to stop and look at it.
Without haste, Hermes picked up the object from the ground, and immediately, he felt the warmth emanating from it, almost as if the object had just been rescued from a fire, and its appearance indicated the same since the object in question was partially charred. Nevertheless, it could still be seen that the object was a doll whose clothes and face had been burned. It was none other than Princess Lorena!