This damned dream—this vision—refused to bend to an outcome more just than the one it truly was. Why must innocence suffer in the hands of evil and then again under the cold gaze of those who firstly don’t care and secondly refuse to do anything?

Not once, but twice, were they wronged. And one begs an answer to a question: which is then more evil? Is it the one who committed the action or the one who allowed it to happen?

They would not have to suffer through such evils if the world they inhabited was one built to be just. And it was unjust only because it was never meant to be just; the Magi who ruled this city didn’t care for those who suffered; they only cared for the comfort in which they spent their days.

Comfort, which only they and those who followed them were allowed to touch, experience, and feel.

“Why?” He voiced out his question to no one in particular, perhaps the city itself. Perhaps hoping that one of the Magi would come to him and explain why they had created such a city.

Because they were above everyone else, so far above that they could not see for themselves what their city had become.

If there is peace and it is never broken, would it not be normal for a general to become complacent with this lack of war? Would they then truly expect a war to happen?

At first, they had built a city that was fair, and they were involved with it for decades. They achieved perfection, they thought, and so they could retire.

From above a tower, everything seems so small; the people below are now ants, and if one ant stole from another, would you really be able to see it? From so far above?

The Voice spoke, their tone even, not showing sadness nor nostalgia this time; not calling him to remember a city which they once loved, but offering instead a reality of how things had happened. Or their belief in how things had happened.

“Who are you?” Kanrel asked; he had to know. The Voice and who they were—what was their motive?

Perhaps you’ll soon find the answers to the questions that you have…

The Voice lingered for a moment before dissipating into nothing. Into just another memory within a dream that Kanrel had no control over. Was he even dreaming? Was he awake? Was he in another world? No answers to any of his questions...

Kanrel paced from one side of the balcony to the other. Then, with frustration that he had, he turned around and again, for the second time, faced the cafe and its people: those who were gathered around their tables, with newspapers in hand, discussing the things that happened in this world but doing nothing about it.

Perhaps this was why their words sounded like nonsense to him.

He sat down on the same chair as he had previously and took the same paper. This was one that just happened to be different; the headline was not the same; it was of another day; it was of tomorrow.

Times of N’Sharan No. 13

Hartar Agna: A Trial Announced.

The Office of Peace once again showcases their efficiency in findings, justice, and their quest for the safety of all Sharans, for on this day (the 31st of the 9th), a date for a trial was announced:

“For the murder of Wiltem Torna, the accused, Hartar Agna, will stand, based on collected evidence and interrogations of the accused and those around them, on trial as the primary perpetrator on the 2nd of the 10th.”

This makes it clear that the accusations of corruption thrown against the Office of Peace have been unwarranted, as the members of the Audit Team confirm this as well.

Two days from now, we will all be able to see how justice is brought to the deceased and their loved ones. Again, the Office of Peace showcases their swift and precise investigations into murder and accusations of corruption.

We, here at the Times of N’Sharan, are thankful for their service and will continue to follow the closure of the investigation and the trial of a traitorous murderer. And when the ruling is announced, we will hold a sermon in the memory of Wiltem Torna, and we shall remember them as a victim of unfortunate circumstances and the victim of a cold-blooded murderer.

May justice be served.

To claim that this was reality, or was once reality, is surely insanity. Slowly, he crumbled the words that he had just read, all of them into a ball of paper that he then threw on the table. He tried forming codes so that he might burn the paper, to burn the table, to burn the whole damn room, and the people that resided within.

But he could not. He had no access to the power that he could use with ease before. Here he wasn’t a priest, but still, shouldn’t all Sharans be able to use the power as they will? Why was he unable to do so? If he was able to affect the “physical” world around him—he could touch and feel—how was magic any different?

Perhaps such were the limitations of this vision.

So he sat without movement for a while, going through in his mind, again, the things that had bothered him so much. And a question: What was the point of all of this if he could do nothing?

He dared to ask this out loud, but silence was his only reply. The Voice refused to give him answers to this or anything; the Voice gave no clear answers. Again, he would have to look for them himself. He always had to; never was there someone who gave him answers to the questions that he asked.

But where would he go from here? This tower of ivory that was the seat of all truths and lies—from where could he find answers, if not from here?

What he knew was that at the very bottom of this great tower, below the ground itself, was where the invention they called the “printing press” worked through the day and through the night. He knew of the machine because of the memories given.

He got up from his chair, and this time, without leaving a tip like last time, he entered the elevator and investigated the many buttons that were on the wall of the elevator. Most of them were numbered from one to one hundred and from minus one to minus five.

Kanrel went ahead and pressed the button "-1." He would start from there; it was the office level, where people who worked on the lower levels would store their belongings, where they would have meetings and their breaks, and where the catalogs for all publications, printings, and such would be stored.

Floor "-2" was the level at which a large part of the publications, such as the latest newspapers and the latest books that had been printed, were then stored; this level would be the storage level for all these things.

Floor "-3" would be the storage level, mainly for printing materials such as paper and ink but also metal letters of different fonts and sizes.

Floor "-4" was where the actual machines were, and even more metal letters of different fonts and sizes, as well as ink.

But of the floor "-5," Kanrel had no idea; he had no planted memory of it. The only memory that he had related to it was that it could only be accessed with "clearance," and he knew that he did not have that required clearance.

The elevator buzzed as it began to descend, and it didn’t take long for it to stop and make a clear “bling” sound. The doors slowly opened, and he stepped out of the elevator and onto a floor that seemed made out of cement.

His new surroundings lacked the already familiar sense of wealth that lay all around him in the upper floors, but the things that were stored here, perhaps not on this floor, but on the floors below, were much more valuable than all of the things that were above.

The elevator door had opened to a corridor that led to three different ways: left, where the corridor would continue for a long while until it reached its end, and another door was presented; it was the same on the right side. But the corridor in the middle was a corridor with many doors.

It reached all the way to the end of this floor, perhaps to another intersection like this, but on its way, there were many doorways, each of them closed, each of them had a number, and each of them surely had a purpose.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Kanrel went ahead and walked forth, and he observed both doors that were on his right and his left. The numbers on the doors were “-101” and "-102," and the other doors on this floor followed the same logic: “-103,” “-104,” and so forth.

Other than the unassuming numbers, there were no other indications as to what the rooms were for or to whom. So, he went ahead and opened the door to his right, door number "-101." The door opened creaking eerily, echoing through the hallway as if coming from all around him, as if all the doors had opened at once.

But as he looked around, the other doors were closed; there was no logic for such a sound to echo here as it did. He hesitatingly spent a while observing the things that were in the room: a long table with multiple chairs on each side. There was nothing else in that room; it seemed to be a meeting room.

He closed the door carefully, trying to avoid the sound that had echoed around, but either way, the same sound went around, again as if all the doors had closed at once. He went to the door across and opened it as fast as he could, almost slamming the door against the wall, and again, that same sound went through the whole floor. There was the sound of all the doors opening together, but only this one had truly opened.

Inside this room were lockers. The room was quite simply a locker room for the people who worked on this floor, of whom he had not seen even one. There were supposed to be people here, right?

He went inside the room, leaving the door purposefully open, and went to one of the lockers; it only had a number, "33,” on it and a lock. He tried opening the locker, but it would not open, so he went around the room and tried opening each of the locker doors, but none of them would open. They were all locked.

He left the room behind, leaving the door still open, and instead went for the next door. Again, that same sound went around the floor. And this room was just a small one; inside were only a few brooms and a bucket.

He left the door wide open and went to the next, and the next, each time revealing what was inside; each time the same sound echoed through the hallways, and most of these rooms remained uninteresting. Office spaces, locker rooms, bathrooms, meeting rooms, and even a kitchen.

At the end of the hallway, the last two doors, he opened them both, allowing that same loud noise to echo through the hallway. They both revealed similar rooms; both of them were storage rooms filled with filing cabinets. The very reason why he had come here and had gone ahead and opened all these doors.

But as he entered the door on the left and opened the first cabinet, he found that there was nothing inside. He opened another cabinet, and again, there was nothing inside. One by one, he opened each of the filing cabinets and revealed that there was nothing in them. He did the same in the room across, and again, there was nothing in them.

Instead, there was dust around. There was no sign of people ever truly using any of it. Everything on this floor lacked logic. The way in which rooms were positioned wasn’t really efficient, and most of them had just furniture in them and nothing else. It all seemed abandoned.

But the weirdest thing was the differing sizes of the rooms. If he went ahead and entered the first room and the one following that, they would surely have to overlap. Nothing made sense. It was all just a facade. It was like this floor only tried to be what it claimed to be, but only on the most surface level; even in that, it was imperfect, a copy of reality.

All the doors were now open. All of their sizes were different; if one observed most of them from the outside, they would overlap in size. The things in them were never used, and the more closely Kanrel tried different things in different rooms, the more clear one thing became: none of it was truly functional or wasn't fulfilling the function it was designed for.

In the bathrooms, the toilets were just porcelain bowls, the lockers in the locker room were welded shut, the brooms were stuck to the floor, and he could not lift them; the same was true of the bucket. And when one door was opened, it made the sound of each of the doors opening at once, and the same was true when a door was closed.

The tables and the chairs that he found could not be touched; they weren’t actually there; they were instead a substance that one could see but not touch, like light or a shadow.

These rooms were just lies. A facade of something else, it had to be, it must be. The end of the corridor was just that—an end. It first seemed like the corridor would continue both on the right and the left, but instead, they both ended abruptly, and a concrete wall was on both sides. And both of them were very real to the touch.

It was all a waste of his time; all of this, this whole dream, this vision—he could do nothing; he couldn’t find answers, and the Voice sure as hell wasn’t giving him any. It was all a waste of time. In anger and with all of his strength, he slammed the nearest door shut, and the same sound echoed through the hall, as if all of the doors had shut at once.

He stood still and sat on the floor. He stared at the door that he had exited and entered so many times now—one that had filing cabinets inside, all empty. All he now had were the two other corridors that were on both sides of the elevator.

Kanrel got up and turned toward the way he had come in from. A man stood there with a wide smile on his face. His eyes were empty, and so were his words, “Enter.” It said, “Enter.” In repeated. “ENTER!” It screamed.

Around him, all the doors were closed; around him, they opened and closed again, each time they slammed at once, and they creaked open at once, that same sound echoing through the floor. And the man just stood there, his grim smile so empty. Slowly, the man grabbed his arm and pulled Kanrel with him. He pulled him within.

Again… Darkness, but this time he was running, being led by the hand that had gripped him and refusing to let go. They ran together; in the dark, they merged into one, and they came apart. They were submerged beneath waves that crashed against them from all around. They ran through the hallways as all of the doors opened and closed. They opened and closed.

Light exploded, and a whisper ran through him. It went around and around; it touched him in each corner of his mind and pushed out through his ears as if it were a worm. “Welcome.” The whisper was said, and a deep laughter came from his own lips.

There was no more darkness, and the man who had grabbed him was nowhere to be seen. He was no longer in the hallway; he was no longer where he wanted to be or go. It was bright as the light descended and ascended from each direction all at once.

All Kanrel knew was that he could not stop shaking. He could not stop looking around, looking for that man, looking for a door, looking for anything that could lead him outside of there.

Then, from the light, opened a door, and from that door entered a creature; they were one created fully from scales, one that had great wings on its back, and a smile that was far from being a truth. Slowly, they walked before Kanrel, observing the person that was in front of them.

“You are not from here, yet you belong.” The creature spoke, and in its voice, there was much curiosity. Suddenly, they jerked their hands toward Kanrel, who tried to move away from the hand that tried to grab him, only to find that he could not move.

“Don’t be afraid... I would never hurt you." They said, and their voice was honey; it was pleasing to the ear; it was beautiful, but so... untruthful.

“My friend, if you are here, it could mean only one thing and one thing only." They took a step toward him, still reaching with their hands covered with scales. “You want to be free... You want to become beautiful." Each sentence was like a promise, and soon they placed their hands on Kanrel’s head. The creature looked directly into his eyes, and their smile was so sweet when they whispered, “But you want what is mine... You can’t have what is mine."

A sudden, great pressure around his skull. The creature was to crush his skull. Their smile was no more, and tears went down their face of scales, “You know I love you." They whispered, the pressure around his skull went away, and the creature dropped its hands. They looked somewhere else, somewhere beyond.

The tears dropped to the dark floor underneath, becoming one with the darkness. Light would not grace the tears of this creature; they all had to be veiled.

“The truth is..." The creature suddenly said, their voice was now without emotion, without anything; it was just a voice, one that was atonal and flat. “…that I don’t know what is true and what is not.”

“Where a lie ends and another begins.”

The scaley face of their furrowed, “If what I now say is true or not..."

They focused their eyes; again, they saw this world; they observed the one that stood before them; they observed Kanrel and promised, “But I never lie; this you know to be true; I never have and I never will, but all that I just said was not true.”

They stared deep into his eyes, and Kanrel could only see their eyes. So wide and so beautiful, yet this feeling that he had now was so dreadful. Oh, how lonely was that creature that was before him now? He believed that he could not believe a single word that it had said.

And a long silence was all that was between them. The creature did not break eye contact, but they kept alternating between a smile and a face full of anguish and uncertainty. Sometimes it would mutter and ask questions, some of which would make sense but most would not: “Who am I?” “Who are you?” “Am I now?” "Am I you?” “I know everything?” “I know nothing?” “Let me go?” “Can’t I just tell the truth?”

This creature was not lucid. It was one that was clearly insane, or perhaps not. Perhaps even this was a lie; this is what it tried to be. Still, Kanrel could not move, so he asked instead, “Where is this?”

The creature made a sudden jerking movement again; like a bird, it turned its head to the left and then returned its stare back at Kanrel. “Floors through minus one to minus five; they’re all here, just none of it is real." Their voice was soft, and again, there was some emotion in them.

Kanrel thought for a while, staring back at the creature. This had to be a part of the vision; this creature had to be somehow important to it all, to this "domain.”

“Who are you?” He asked the only question that he could think of.

“I?” It asked and looked at its own hands as if they were confused; its scales glistened in the many lights of the room. “A dragon, it would seem.” It said, its voice clear and beautiful, then dark and devoid of life, “No. An Angel.” In their eyes, there was a light for a moment, then it disappeared, dropped its hands to its sides again, and stayed motionless, again glaring at Kanrel.

"I am the Sharan of Lies and Truths. I am all that you know and all that you believe. I hold all that you wish to know but cannot. I know nothing.” It declared with that voice that lacked all emotion.

“It is so, and so I suffer, for to know is to suffer, and the more that you know, the more you are to suffer, but aren’t I lucky, for I know nothing?" it said, “nothing…”

“Aren’t I wise? To declare that I know nothing... is that not the first sign of wisdom?” It scoffed, perhaps in disgust, “Yet another lie, yet another paradox."

“A useless statement, most profound.” It again glared into nothingness, only to find Kanrel’s eyes again. “Leave.” It whispered and waved its hand, “You bore me.” Was the last thing he heard before he once again was on the floor, looking at the door that he had just closed.

He got up and tried to find the man who had grabbed his hand, but he was not behind him; the other doors weren’t closed, only the one that he had just now closed. His body kept shaking, and without much thought, he opened the door. On the other side was a single filing cabinet, which was open and filled with files that needed to be read.

So he slowly walked to it and took out a file, one that was titled “Ignar Orcun.”