Head spinning, Rowena opened her eyes in the dark. She remembered something, but couldn't think of it as she stared into the infinite blackness above her, lit by a single, disproportionately large moon.

"Where am I?" It was too strange. What happened to her Brother and the others?

"This is a realm of the mind. I created it."

The voice she had heard so often, but never really gotten used to, suddenly reached her from her right. "...Pan? How?" How could he just stand there in front of her? "What's with Lodden? And wait, a realm of the mind?"

He wore the torn piece of black cloth loosely on his head again, hiding two thirds of his face from Rowena's sight as he helped her up.

"They are fine," he said, "I brought you here to protect you."

'They're fine, that's it?' Not that she didn't believe him, but it was all too confusing to take in at once. "Protect me from what?" she asked.

"Pain," her partner replied very nonchalantly, "the first time we made a contract, you fell asleep afterwards so that my heart could settle inside you and break down and rebuild your muscle structure."

In fact, most of her passive power was not only using his ember chains to some extent, but also having stronger muscle tissue. It only worked to a certain degree and depended on the muscles and bones that were there to begin with, but it strengthened them and gave them a whole new limit to how much they could grow.

One positive aspect was that the muscles were also compressed. A bodybuilder would suddenly look like a slender man, because big and bulky muscles hindered movement. It was a physical concept made for swift and strong melee fighting.

Of course, it ended with a lot of muscle pain after she woke up a few days later.

"But didn't I fall asleep?" She had lost consciousness right off the bat, embarrassingly.

"Your body, yes, but not your mind. You forced yourself to stay awake after the contract was finished, which made your soul unable to sleep."

"Ah," she said, as if everything was clear now, "I don't understand."

"You would have been trapped in a lucid dream, feeling every muscle in your body breaking down, and you wouldn't have been able to escape. So I took your soul."

"And that is safe?" She was definitely a bit skeptical.

"It's not something I can do any time. Your soul had already begun to separate from your flesh." Lucid dreaming meant that the soul had temporarily split off from the vessel, which meant that the mind was awake but couldn't control the body, so it appeared to be asleep while the remaining fully conscious. "It won't affect your health as long as the state is not prolonged."

If prolonged, the soul could break off completely, and the body would fall into a coma with no chance of waking up again.

"Why is it important to fall asleep? I could take morphine for the pain, I suppose."

"That would hardly help. You don't sleep to evade pain, it's about transitioning safely. You never know what might be lost if Karma and Mana don't have time to align in peace."

"You're saying more and more things I don't understand, you know that?" she said and sighed, eager to end this lecture, "Karma means things you get back when you fuck up, right?"

He sighed. "Karma is what we call Life Force. The vital energy is what makes up your body. When it is depleted, it falls to ashes."

"You had a different term for that?"

Pan paused for a second, as if considering something. "A Visitor seeks Karma. From the moment it solidifies its own shape as a soul by devouring another, Karma is what it needs to regain a physical form."

"Oh." Rowena scratched her head. "In that case, it makes more sense that Will'o'the Wisps look like light bubbles."

It was true. Not just for the Gradeless Visitors – until they were done, they looked more human with each step.

Rowena wasn't even shocked anymore how much Pan would tell her. She just assumed that he wouldn't say anything really important if he wasn't allowed to.

"Right. They accumulate Karma to gain a physical body, but in a world of the living, they won't be anything but a mere visitor who does not belong." He said it as if it didn't concern him.

"So, well, Mana and Life Force have to align?" Uncomfortably, she tried to go back to the previous topic to gloss over the slight awkwardness.

"Indeed. If a body had done the same procedure before, it wouldn't have a strong reaction again, but the first time has to happen slowly. This was your first contract as Rowena."

"True. So I guess I have to trust you." She said it as if it was sarcasm, but it was true that she had to trust him, and it wasn't strange for her to trust him either. "But then again, what is this mind realm?"

She still wanted to get out of this conversation, she was confused enough as it was. But there were things that had to be explained there.

"A Visitor of higher evolution will sometimes lose itself in its memories," he said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, "places it had seen once or twice. If they liked it, they could escape there with their mind. And I sometimes revisit this place. As we cannot interact with anyone else, it often remains the only thing we can do to pass time."

Numbered could travel from world to world freely from their own space, their own Subdimension, in which time and space were null and void. Yet absolute freedom can also become a prison.

"Then, where is this place?"

If it was a true memory, it couldn't be from Celia's world – or Rowena's. The moon was too big and there were hardly any stars in the sky.

In fact, many things one would expect were missing. Life forms, plants... anything at all. All there was was an old tree. A huge trunk with empty branches, charred black. In front of it was a statue.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

She remembered that certain stories were passed from one world to the next by souls that carried them around, but it was still strange to see this statue that looked a bit like a pop cultural Grim Reaper.

Truth be told, it not only looked "a bit" like him, but seemed to be the classic "Death" - a skeleton in a large cowl with a scythe in his hand. Only there was a woman between him and the blade, sitting on her knees, yet with a glimmer of hope on her features.

A young boy was in her arms, both being protected. Down below, the foot of the statue held an inscription carved directly into the stone. It was large and wordy, but the problem was... she couldn't read any of it.

"I can't even say that I've seen this script before. What is that, Cyrillic?"

She heard a sigh behind her as she realized she had stepped closer to the monument while studying it. Stepping back, she watched as he came closer and crouched down in front it, placing a hand in the air, vaguely where his heart would be.

"It says, 'Because we are his flesh and blood, he will watch over us. As father, brother, and friend, he shall wait and be for us forever, until we follow him and sleep eternally, in the shade cast by the moon.' It's a promise made by the people who once lived here."

She took another long look, there was only one more thing of interest. A door built into a high rock formation next to the two of them. Above it was a plaque with words, just like the ones on the statue.

"And what does that read?"

"'Silence in an Eternal Night.'"

"Sounds cheesy."

"You asked."

"Well, because I couldn't read it." She had to ask if she didn't know, right?

Now that she thought about it, they didn't actually speak the exact same languages in every world, but they were pretty similar. Still, she couldn't remember this particular language, it didn't even look like runic writing.

On the other hand, Rowena hadn't been able to speak or read every language in her old world, let alone her current one.

How was she able to understand everyone around her when she arrived? The language differed slightly, she knew, but couldn't truly make out the differences either. As if she had forgotten her mother's tongue to some degree.

Was it perhaps similar to her muscle memory? It would be interesting to think about it later.

But Sentinels or Numbered never seemed to have a problem understanding humans, no matter where they came from.

In the end, thinking about it made her mind race from one end to the other, considering both sides far too much and leaving her more confused than before.

"How can we understand every Visitor, but I can't read what's written on this monument?" In the end, she was a bit salty about the unfair treatment.

"It is we who speak your tongue, not the other way around," he said dryly, and Rowena couldn't help but feel a little offended by the way he made it sound, "and that is a very old language, one that precedes anything you know. A language as forgotten as the time and place it originated from."

That sounded ominous. "What is it called?"

She couldn't tell if he was surprised, but he cocked his head as he looked at her in confusion. "What?"

"The language - what do you call it?" The noble lady repeated her question.

But he just turned back to his sanctuary with a blank look. "Why should it have a name?"

Now it was she who was confused - admittedly, this happened to her more often than to him. "Why shouldn't it have a name?" she replied, "I mean, names are important. It would be sad not to have one, wouldn't it?"

She knew she was not making sense, even before saying it out loud. However, there was something about her own words that made her feel heavier than before, so she said it anyway.

Like an old friend, her hand touched a small piece of silver around her neck, feeling letters written in a beautifully flowing script. Where did this necklace come from?

At that moment he turned around again. "It is but a language. It does not care about a name. No more than this world does," was all he said before falling silent again and studying the rock in front of him that he must have seen a hundred times before.

Nevertheless, from behind, he seemed as mesmerized as if it were the first time, which was why Rowena remained silent, watching him... pray? A strange notion for her, but also strangely comforting.

So much so that she mindlessly opened her mouth, breaking the silence for good. "So you also believe in something like gods. Somehow that reassures me."

"Why?" he asked in return.

His voice was calm, but genuinely interested. All the more disappointing that this time it was her who didn't answer.

'Because I can't do that,' she thought. Could he hear her thoughts in this place? It didn't seem so. "I don't know," she finally found the words, "It just felt like it."

He remained silent at first, until he put down a rose that had suddenly appeared in his hand, just like her old necklace, and got up from his crouched position.

"Just so you don't misunderstand, it's not the same as with humans. We don't worship gods. This is certainly a shrine where one is supposed to pay tribute to their patron god, but I don't pray. Because Visitors don't believe that there are other gods besides them. For me, this is more like an anchor," he said, and then, lost in thought, put his hand on the scythe that the man under the cowl held.

"What kind of anchor?" she asked again, after a few seconds had passed by.

As if torn from a dream, he took his hand off the statue. "An anchor to honor all those who have been here before us. Those who are already asleep forever." With these words, he turned to her and walked in her direction - no, he walked past her, through the large double doors to her right, and then stopped, at the entrance to the shrine. "Will you follow me, or do you want to put down roots out there?"

"Ah, yeah, sure. I'll be right there." Once more she turned to the proud statue. It felt so real, had he actually seen this just once in his past?

The sublime beauty it radiated involuntarily captivated her. There was hope that seemed to lie in that face made of cold stone. 'I don't think he's quite right. Maybe he is much more human than he likes to admit.'

For the faith in something bigger than oneself, something that will take away pain and suffering in return for mere trust and obedience, is why people believe in gods. Trusting that one day there will be something they thought was lost, a bit of happiness and salvation - that small inner appeasement. To be able to believe that everything can turn out well, she understood, was what people prayed for.

Although she preferred to take things into her own hands, that didn't mean she couldn't get behind it. In her opinion, that was why the Church of Aurora had been such a blockbuster when it first came out. "A new tomorrow."

The confidence that only something beyond mortal limits could give. Wiser and kinder than any human could ever be. Something that only a truly supreme being could give - a being to whom humanity could send all its dreams and on whom it could build and take comfort in.

'It's sickeningly sweet and positive, covering up all the dark and gritty details that come with it.'

That kind of support is what some people needed just to keep going. In this often grim world - it's no different here, is it?

She used to say, sometimes jokingly and sometimes matter-of-factly, that Pan wasn't a person, so he didn't need to be personable. But in reality, she realized that this might not be the whole truth.

When she followed him to drink a cup of most likely imaginary tea, which tasted exactly like the one Norina always made, she gave him a smile he couldn't understand, because in this realm he was indeed not able to look into her mind. In there, her mind was as real as he was, and their physical connection was irrelevant.

"Do you like your tea?"

"I just feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland, don't think about it."

"I won't." He closed his eyes, no longer bothered by her strange reactions.

'Yes… Maybe, in the end, we are not as different as I initially thought. And that just makes my job a lot more awful.' Then she remembered it was not her job anymore.

With a chuckle, she sipped her tea, only looking up when she realized she was being watched. Even without seeing his eyes, she could tell he had a questioning expression on his face.

"Did something happen?" he asked.

It felt odd that he didn't know what she was thinking, but it was probably better that way.

She smiled at him, a smile that didn't fully reach her eyes. "Nothing. I was just thinking about something stupid again."

Since he couldn't read her mind, he just stared at her for a long moment before putting down his own cup. "There is something you need to know about the incident at Eisenwacht. I thought about it for a long time, but only one thing came to mind."

Somewhat taken aback, she nodded. "Tell me. Whatever you know, even if it turns out to be incorrect, it's better than nothing."

"Hmm," he began, "first I must ask you a question."

"Sure?" Why was he getting all uncomfortable now? It was uncanny.

"What are your thoughts about the one they call the 'King of All'?"