The byrinth groaned like a stage shifting its set, curtains of painted fabric unfurling across unseen rafters. Lanterns swung on strings that weren’t there, throwing elongated shadows across the warped halls. Lea followed Auger through the smoke, her sword trembling faintly in her grip.

  At the heart of the maze, a stage rose from nothing, an eborate wooden ptform cquered crimson, its surface slick with varnish that glistened like blood. Upon it stood a man draped in velvet robes, his mask painted into a smile too wide for a human face.

  He spread his arms, theatrical, as though greeting an eager audience.

  "Well, well, curtain-call intruders…", his voice cracked with both mirth and menace, "You've done quite the job tearing through my chorus."

  The masks painted on the walls leaned forward, their hollow eyes watching. Lea stiffened, her heart thudding. She could feel the weight of the pce pressing down harder now, as though every shadow whispered in chorus with the masked man's words.

  Auger, however, merely tapped his cane against the floor once, unimpressed.

  The figure tilted his head, chuckling, "Do you know whose stage you trespass upon? This is no mere ritual of a mortal Pathstrider. No, this is theater sanctified..."

  His voice deepened, echoing unnaturally across the walls.

  "I am a humble actor of The Maker!! Through His design, all pys must end in ruin, all masks must crack, all puppets must dance until they fall apart!!!", He raised his arms, as if expecting the revetion to crush them beneath its weight.

  Lea’s grip tightened on her sword, her breath shallow.

  The name sent a ripple down her spine, Malediction inside her stirring like a beast that recognized something older, darker. Her golden light flickered, dimming.

  But Auger?

  He yawned.

  "Mm, a god of broken pys and drunken appuse.", he mused, tone utterly ft, "Hardly impressive."

  The masked man faltered, his grin twitching, "Y-you— You dare to mock The Maker?! His degeneration is the destiny of all creation! His theater swallows even kings, even gods themselves!!"

  Auger’s smile widened, sharp and cutting, eyes glinting with lightning, "Child, I have seen gods bleed. Your theatrics are wasted on me."

  Lea gnced at him, startled, then back at the masked figure. Her voice trembled despite herself, "…He’s not bluffing."

  The man’s ughter returned, harsher, more desperate, like splintering wood, "Then let us see if your defiance sts when the final act begins!"

  The curtains behind him snapped open, revealing towering puppets in robes of velvet and gold, strings vanishing into the void above.

  Lea swallowed hard, bracing her parasol. Auger only straightened his coat, his cane crackling faintly with sparks.

  “Final act?” he murmured, amused. “Then by all means, boy. Show us your best performance.”

  The stage shuddered like it was alive. Wooden boards rippled as if made of water, the velvet curtains ballooning outward with phantom breath.

  Dickenson’s mask glowed faintly, painted grin stretching wider as he raised his cane like a conductor’s baton, "Behold… the stage where you shall perish!!"

  Behind him, the shadows twisted into a figure draped in robes of pale parchment, its head a mask with dozens of shifting expressions— ughing, weeping, sneering, all at once. The Director snapped its fingers.

  From the curtains poured forth an army of performers; actors with fwless porcein faces, dancers stitched together from paper and paint, their movements elegant yet wrong.

  Lea flinched as one lunged. Its rapier gleamed like steel but was nothing more than manifested paint and string. Yet when bde met bde, sparks screeched across the boards.

  "These… they’re real?", she gasped, stumbling back.

  "Creation, bound with Veil.", Auger's voice echoed zily from behind.

  He hadn't moved from the aisle, leaning on his cane as though this were a matinee performance, "Illusions given teeth. The Maker must be proud."

  "Proud?!", Lea shouted, parrying another strike, her arms shivering with the weight, "A little help would be nice!!"

  Dickenson ughed, sweeping his baton. The puppets surged forward, swords, ribbons, and cws fshing under stage lights that weren't there, "Your struggle is already written! The script demands your colpse!"

  Lea darted between lunges, her cloak tearing from a paper bde. Every step closer to the stage, the world grew heavier, as though the Director’s presence was rewriting gravity itself.

  She risked a gnce back, "Count!! I can’t get near him—"

  She cannot use Branding without touching him. She desperately needs some way to harm, or at least touch him, for her to use Hex.

  "Mm.", Auger tapped his cane once, sending a ripple of pale lightning across the floor that disintegrated three puppets in a crackle of static, "I'm here. Don't worry."

  "That's all you’re going to do?!"

  Another puppet’s cw raked her sleeve, nearly catching flesh. Lea cursed, pushing forward, golden light fshing as she cut through a pair of dancers that dissolved into shreds of glowing script.

  Her voice rose in panic and anger, "If you can bulldoze them, why aren’t you up here with me?!"

  Auger chuckled quietly, shaking his head, "Because you won't grow if you hide behind me. Besides—” His eyes glinted with faint amusement. "I rather enjoy watching your fire."

  "I'm not a performer!", Lea screamed, driving her parasol through another phantom actor.

  The blow connected— wood splintered, gss shattered, paint bled like blood. Yet more dancers stepped into pce, the Director gesturing with cold authority.

  "Not a performer?", Dickenson hissed, voice splitting into overpping tones, "Then die as an extra!!"

  The puppets lunged again, strings glowing white-hot.

  And Lea had no choice but to keep pressing forward. She cannot unch any golden sword to make a quick path; her only option is to keep bulldozing through.

  Even the strength she gained from the 'Power of Friendship' was draining away fast...

  It was then that Auger tensed up; he instinctively took a step back.

  Dickenson let out a maniacal ughter, "Hahahaha!! Why are you so tense? Is my show too much for you?!"

  "No, not at all. It's just..."

  He pointed toward Lea.

  Bck smoke began to leak out of the air around her, not from her body, but from reality itself. The smoke poured outward, thick and suffocating, swallowing color and light alike. Lea staggered back in arm, eyes darting around, clutching her sword in both hands.

  The wrongness spread. The walls warped. Lanterns guttered. A suffocating, primal dread pressed against every soul in the atrium.

  And then it was there.

  No shape. No face. No form the human mind could hold onto. Just a presence, like an absence given will. The stage dipped under it, as though the world itself had grown weak around its weight. Every heartbeat was suddenly too loud, too fragile.

  "Miss Mashhith" had arrived.

  Lea froze, every nerve in her body screaming at her to run. But her legs wouldn’t move. Her sword felt like paper in her hands.

  Dickenson’s manic bravado cracked into outright panic, "No—no! This stage is mine! Puppets! Attack!"

  The horde of marionettes surged forward, bdes raised, strings snapping taut.

  They didn't even reach it.

  The moment the first puppet crossed into the shrouded radius of "Miss Mashhith", it unraveled. Not burned, not shattered - unmade. Paint, wood, and string dissolved into drifting dust, colpsing as if they had never truly existed.

  Dozens more followed, their synchronized steps breaking into spasms before vanishing into nothing.

  Within moments, the tide of puppets was gone. Only their painted grins lingered for a heartbeat in the smoke before dissolving too.

  The silence that followed was suffocating.

  Lea staggered, clenching her sword tightly... she watched as the thing in front of her moved forward. A stain on existence itself—

  "W-What is that...?", she struggles to control her breath, eyes trembling as she continues to stare at "Miss Mashhith"

  "Do not look at it.", Auger warned, his voice uncharacteristically heavy, "No matter what you do, do not look at it."

  Hearing that, Lea clenched her eyes tightly, yet the presence, the gnawing entity of non-existence, kept her haunted...

  How does one even deal with something like that?!

  But at least, to Lea's mind, it was protecting her...

  Dickenson stumbled back, his painted grin twitching. His voice rose to a shriek, cracking with fear, "No—NO! You don't belong here! This is my stage! My performance!!"

  But "Miss Mashhith" did not answer. It merely existed, and in its existence, everything around it bent toward ruin.

  Stumbling back, Dickenson remembered something— Sincir of Akasha Monodrama had given him something truly sinister.

  Taking a talisman from his back pocket, carrying the symbol of an eye inside a book, he held it toward "Miss Mashhith". And to Auger and Dickenson's surprise, it stopped.

  "All Revealing Light!!Keeper of the Forbidden!!!BOOK AND KNOWLEDGE OF TRUTH!!!"

  Lea opened her eyes, realizing what Dickenson chanted was... an Honorific Title!! Not one for a Path— but one for calling upon the attention of a god!!!

  The talisman burned in Dickenson's hand before he hurled it, the symbol of an eye within a book glowing white-hot as it struck the ground.

  The world cracked.

  Strings, curtains, and painted walls shattered like brittle gss. The byrinth dissolved into a ft horizon of searing brilliance. Shadows had no pce to hide. Darkness had no pce to cling. The very air turned to gss, brittle with radiance.

  And then came the sound— pages fluttering, louder than a hurricane, endless, unrelenting.

  The sky above split apart, not into bck but into a blinding sea of light. A book was the culprit for it all, each turn of its pages echoing like thunder.

  Its covers were carved with chains of living scripture, shifting and binding, while the central spine throbbed like the vertebrae of some living creature. Lea and Auger instantly realized that...

  It was the Tome of Light, the God of Light...

  Every word inscribed upon those infinite pages was alive. They twisted and burned with meanings too sharp for human thought, yet ever incomplete, cutting at the minds of everything in the vicinity...

  Δεν ε?μαστε ξ?νοι για να αγαπι?μαστεThe truth of the world...Ξ?ρει? του? καν?νε? και εγ? επ?ση?North...Sea... Deep...Μια πλ?ρη? δ?σμευση ε?ναι αυτ? που σκ?φτομαιFire Crown...The Will of...Θ?λω απλ?? να σου πω π?? νι?θωΠρ?πει να σε κ?νω να καταλ?βει?Ποτ? δεν θα σε εγκαταλε?ψω, ποτ? δεν θα σε απογοητε?σωτο ?νομα του αφηγητ? ε?ναι Ν?θαν

  Lea flinched, clutching her head, as knowledge she never asked for cwed at the edges of her memory. Grinding away her mental defense mercilessly... a small part of her even wants to seek the meanings of what it was saying—

  No!!!

  The Tome of Light did not bring comfort.

  It did not bring warmth.

  It brought pure madness.

  Where it looked, nothing could remain hidden. Veils shredded, illusions died screaming, lies peeled away like rotted skin. Even the painted grin on Dickenson’s mask cracked, a hairline fracture spreading across porcein.

  Auger tightened his grip on the cane, his teeth set in the faintest grimace.

  "Dammit…", he muttered, voice low, "To call that thing here…"

  The presence of "Miss Mashhith" rippled against it, smoke boiling violently, the two anomalies pressing into one another. The stage warped between them, unbeing gnawing from one side, revetion fying from the other.

  Lea’s body trembled, vision swimming, breath catching in her throat. She could not scream. She could not cry. In the light of the Tome, she could feel her very self being dissected.

  The God of Light had turned its pages upon them, and its half-truths are more dreadful than any lie.