Chương 10: Act 1, Chapter 10: Crystal's bloom

Day in the story: 27th September (Saturday) I woke suspended in the heart of a vast, spiraling chamber woven entirely from silver threads. Each one was as thick as rope and shimmered like moonlight on still water. The web stretched endlessly in all directions: upward into loops, downward into coils, sideways into impossible folds, like an Escher drawing made real. Even the sound of my breath felt too loud, disturbing the delicate strands beneath my boots.

"Where the hell am I? Is this… hell?" I asked aloud, though the silence gave nothing back. The "walls," if they could even be called that, were woven from gossamer and light. Corridors twisted at impossible angles, coiling into knots that bent perspective itself. There was no clear path forward—only choices. Above me, a corkscrewing tunnel lined in ink-black silk. Below, a chamber of violet threads vibrating with invisible energy.

Everything pulsed like a living thing, yet all of it looked as though it had been painted or sketched into existence. And there was sound too—low, barely perceptible, but undeniably melodic. A song played across all those strings, as if the place itself were an instrument. Am I dead? Is this what happens to the unraveled? Or is this all in my head? A dream? A prison? A world between threads? I exhaled, but no answers came. This could have been my dying wish fulfilled—a second chance.

So I did the only thing I could. I moved forward. The moment my foot touched the nearest strand, the web beneath me flexed. Light bloomed from the touch, swirling in colors that danced like motes of colorful dust in the air. It painted a path downward. And yet it felt… wrong—too easy. It seemed like a maze and a metaphor. A trap built not from walls, but from meaning.

I remembered one of the first lessons I ever learned about art: spiders represent creativity, weaving, hidden connections and the architecture of thoughts. Their webs are art itself. I looked down at myself. My body was glowing. Soft light in every color spilled from my pores, tingling and warm and shaped like those silky strands around me, as if my essence and my creativity were trying to escape, to be seen. It was my silent companion—always there—even when I stole instead of created.

Maybe after everything I've done… it's not my schemes or my training that will save me. The obvious path was not the real one, so I ignored the light and turned toward the darkness. Climbing upward through the black silk tunnel, I used the strength I'd honed through years of brutal training. My fingers dug into the strange fabric and it gave like velvet, breathing faintly against my skin. The passage narrowed, then spiraled downward again, like a funnel-shaped spider's den.

I emerged into a chamber that unfolded around me like a blossom. At its center: a single painting, suspended in a knot of silver fibers. Its frame was made from the same threads as the walls and I knew the painting immediately. A memory came back to me, of a younger me. I was alone in my childhood room, where a wrecked canvas lay beneath my feet, footprints smeared in paint across the floor. I remembered it clearly, my first real painting of clumsy flowers in a vase.

I'd tried so hard to make it perfect, to impress my parents. And when it failed to match the image in my head, I destroyed it in a fit of rage. I reached out and touched the very same creation, stripped of the destruction that it had endured from my hands. The canvas pulsed with warmth. When I did that, my own voice spoke to me: "What must be given up to become something more?" My breath caught momentarily. What did I give up? I hadn't abandoned art. I kept painting, even the still lifes, the meaningless exercises.

But something had changed that day. I sat for a long time. I tried to think of the perfect answer. Then I stopped myself. That was it. Not the perfect answer. Just one that's good enough.

"Perfection. One must give up perfection." I stood and said it clearly, into the glowing air. At once, the web behind the painting trembled, then unraveled in a slow, satisfying ripple. It moved like a curtain falling away and a new path revealed itself, shining with soft blue light. I crawled onward, grinning despite the absurdity of the whole situation. I moved through another corridor until I reached an intersection: one path to the left, one to the right.

"Nothing is right when only you are left and nothing is left when you are always right," a voice whispered. Seriously? Riddles now? What is this supposed to be, a metaphor for my parents leaving? Or me being a smug bastard who thinks she's smarter than everyone else? I frowned, peering down each dim corridor. One twisted like a spine, the other bent like a question mark. Both promised confusion. Maybe I should've gone down to begin with, I thought. It's never too late to change a path. I turned to go back.

"Sometimes the only right move is to take a step back." Another whisper, closer and clearer this time. Was that approval? Encouragement? Or just more cryptic bullshit? I reflected upon it when the floor dropped and suddenly I was sliding down a coiled tunnel of silken thread, like a twisted child's playground slide. I let out a short laugh and landed in another chamber, this one bathed in cool, navy blue light. There was another painting waiting for me here: René Magritte's The Treachery of Images.

It was a pipe on the canvas and the famous caption beneath: Ceci n'est pas une pipe. This is not a pipe. It had always been my favorite piece. I remembered the first time I saw it, how much it pissed me off. It clearly was a pipe and yet… not. I spent days obsessing over that contradiction.

"Why is it not a pipe?" a voice rang through the air, familiar now, and yet, despite being clearly mine, it felt distorted when coming from the outside. Oh, come on. That one I knew by heart. It was a mantra.

"You're reminding me what art is," I muttered.

"Say it." You can hear my thoughts?

"Yes." Is this place me? My own mental labyrinth? My unraveling? I rolled my eyes when no answer was provided.

"It's not a pipe," I said aloud, giving mine instead.

"It's an image of a pipe. It shows that appearances deceive. That language, representation and reality don't always match. It forces the viewer to see the lie in clarity and the truth behind the lie." The painting shimmered, then split open down the center like parting silk. Threads unraveled to reveal a mask. Not unlike my own Usagi mask, but this one shimmered with the full spectrum of light. Suspended midair and waiting. I reached out and the moment my fingers brushed it, pure and blinding light erupted.

Tendrils shot out, wrapping around me like a living cocoon. I gasped as they poured into me--neither around me nor into my body—into me, the very essence of my being, straight to the soul. It was like being rewritten at the spiritual level and yet remaining the same. This power wasn't something gifted. It was being remembered by me, as if it had always been there. I collapsed to the floor with breath stolen from my lungs. My heart thundered. My limbs trembled. I was exhausted, but immediately stronger too.

I could feel it etched deep inside me, something old and new at the same time. But the reprieve was short, and another path revealed itself, followed by another question.

"What anchors you when your voice falters?" What keeps me standing when no one listens? When my words don't land? When I'm misunderstood? I thought of all the times I was dismissed. When I tried to explain what I saw, what I felt and people just looked through me. But then I remembered my paintings. How they said what I couldn't. Like the city-waking piece.

"My conviction in the truth and my choices," I said quietly.

"In seeing things for what they are and in deciding what I want to be." Silk threads peeled away to reveal a new route in response. It was a bridge made of a single silver strand stretched across the abyss. Beyond it: a distant, round chamber hovering in the dark. If there was ever a time for all those years of ledge-walking to pay off… this was it. I stepped out slowly. The thread held, and I moved forward. It was solid—still and tense, like a musician's string held at the brink of snapping.

I moved then, slowly and surely, step by step, but halfway across, it reached its limit and broke with a melodious sound. My foot came down on nothing as it vanished. I looked back quickly—I was still standing on literal nothing, just like in those cartoons I used to love as a kid—but the thread was gone there too. Fantastic. Would I fall if I looked down? I'd never thought of myself as afraid of heights, but apparently I was when the ground wasn't just far away—it was absent entirely. Panic hit me.

I dropped to my knees and reached out instinctively. My hand met something solid, even though nothing was visible. It seemed that the thread was still there beneath me… just invisible. I moved forward on all fours, inch by inch, relying on muscle memory and sheer will. My breaths came shallow. My thoughts narrowed to a single word: forward. Hours passed. Or minutes, stretched thin by terror. Near the end of the line, something hovered in the air, a sculpture of a human body, surrounded by prismatic light.

I reached for it with a trembling arm, but with one hand still gripping the absent line, it stayed just out of reach. I rose slowly, trying to balance, trying to stand on a thread that both was and wasn't, but before I could fully extend, the thing vanished. I sighed and kept crawling while I kept thinking that Penrose would've lashed me for that failure. Eventually, the far chamber welcomed me and I collapsed onto the silk floor.

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"This is fucked up," I muttered, hoping that the architect of this place was listening. When I recovered, I stood up only to notice another painting at the center of the space. It showed me, but transformed. Spider-like limbs extended from my back, spinning threads from my body. Beneath them unfolded delicate images: faces that were mine, and yet not quite.

These were the Personas I had crafted over the years—Jess Hare speaking to someone, Alex Weatherlight lost in music, Gertrude Monkey raising a gun, Elle Erikson folding paper, and all the others whose faces I had worn, even if only once. They moved with confidence, unaware of the presence above them—guiding, shaping, giving form to their paths. Among them were figures I did not recognize. A version of me with darker skin and freckled, mirror-fractured flesh.

Another in a silver dress, with equally silver skin and hair. And finally, a being not unlike the one watching over them all—part woman, part spider.

"What is art?" a voice whispered. Oh. This was it. The images, the void, the support, the threads—it all made sense now. I'd heard hundreds of definitions in my life, from professors, critics, drunks at galleries, but only one answer fit here. I placed my hand on the canvas with confidence.

"Art is the act of building connections and, through them, showing truth." The final door opened and I stepped into the heart of the labyrinth. It was a chamber suspended in eternal darkness and at its center: a throne of webbing, glistening with dew that shimmered like stars. And seated upon it, a being. Its thorax was obsidian and moonstone. Its multifaceted eyes reflected fragments of worlds. Its face split down the center, half mine, half something other.

Its eight limbs moved like brushstrokes, elegant and deliberate as they wove a tapestry of silk around itself. Beneath it, hovering in a nest of threads, was a jagged crystal, a fractured prism pulsing with light. Color churned within it like trapped memory. Half-finished stories and unspoken truths.

"You've reached the center, Alexa and I wish we had more time, but we don't have that luxury now, not anymore and not yet. I will ask you then, can you claim what you do not yet understand?" The spider-thing tilted its head and whispered with a voice woven from my own.

"I don't need to understand anything of what is happening here," I said softly.

"Yet," I added.

"Just enough to keep looking and trying to piece it all together. If you know me, you should be sure, just like I am, that I would never stop in my search for meaning." The being stared at me.

"I hope that one day we will see eye to eye, again. That you will understand me, remember me for what I was in the past lives and this one. I will be waiting for that day, trying my best to steer you toward the light, Alexandra. The one who manipulates the weaves—he doesn't know that in here, in this moment, I can glimpse into his work. Remember it, please, as I too will forget. Remember it when the time comes."

Then she unraveled, dissolving into threads of luminosity, spinning in slow spirals around the crystal, until only silence and shimmer remained.

"Take it and carry this Authority carefully. It's a power beyond reason," she whispered one final time. I stepped forward. The crystal rose into my palm, pulsing in rhythm with my heartbeat. And the world began to shift, folding outward like a cosmic flower in bloom. In the next instant, I was elsewhere and everywhere. Suspended gently in air, the crystal hovered—now the size of my torso.

Swirling with color and liquid light that did not feel like any light I had known in my entire life—this one was different: a living rhythm, mirroring my breath, my being and my will. When I reached out and touched the crystal, I knew that this was the heart of my domain—The Domain of Artistic Creation. More than that, this was my soul core. Everything I was. Everything I might become. Inside its depths, I saw the Soulmark of Identity, a glowing icon shaped like a mask.

Both expression and concealment, truth and illusion, the face we wear and the one we hide. And beside it—a space. Empty, for now. A place meant for the second mark, the one that vanished when I crossed the invisible bridge. Its absence was a whisper of destiny still unfolding. I pulled my hand back. My breath was steady. My mind, clear. I didn't need my pendant anymore. There was no fog, no haze. Then the world bloomed.

A cascade of light surged downward from the crystal itself, anchoring to the ground in gleaming threads—vertical spiderwebs spun from living glass. The strands shimmered as they descended, fracturing the air with quiet elegance, and unfurled into a floor beneath me: dark, polished and mirror-like, resembling obsidian but soft underfoot. Each filament pulsed, thrumming in sync with the crystal's heartbeat and mine. Then, the walls began to rise.

Smooth at first, perfect, unbroken, circular, like the base of a tower carved from untouched marble. Sixty feet across, blank and waiting, but not for long. From within the white stone, statues began to emerge—of me. Dozens of me. The masks I had worn through the years, shaped into stone: the artist, the thief, the student, the liar and a dozen others. Each persona sculpted in exquisite detail, caught mid-motion as if they had turned to look back at me in the moment of their unraveling.

Above, the ceiling ignited into a living sky that bloomed overhead. It was a vivid, impossible blue and shifting subtly as if painted by breath. Wisps of cloud drifted lazily across it, brushed in with care. Then the sun arrived, not harsh or blinding, but warm and golden. It streamed through as if the dome itself had vanished, letting light fall unbroken across my skin. And for a heartbeat longer, it was simply beautiful. Then a gentle tug pulled me.

It was subtle at first, like a thread being drawn from the back of my mind. I felt it: a pull on my consciousness, downward and inward, as if sleep were reaching up to claim me. I moved slowly, resisting the weight gathering in my limbs. My knees bent. I lowered myself carefully onto the obsidian floor, hands bracing my descent. My eyelids grew heavy beneath my Usagi mask and I felt the last sliver of light slip between its edges.

I woke up in cold water. I wasn't shivering yet so it must have been only seconds since I had fallen. I stood up with fogging breath. Rain was falling inside the abandoned building now. The back wall had collapsed, unraveled like frayed canvas. Beyond it, the riverside stretched. I didn't know if I had been pulled into that other world just before he could unravel me or if he'd been the one to trigger it, but he was gone and so was the painting of his face. Torn apart, as I had intended.

Despite the cold, I felt strangely whole. Something inside me that had long been dormant had finally awakened. A tether pulsed within me, not in my body, but in my soul. Not a soul in the religious sense, as I never was that. I knew, however, that I existed as something spiritual now, and this felt like the right term for it. I felt a thread there, one that led to my Domain. I could perceive it now, as surely as I felt my own breath. I reached up and removed my mask.

It was a Kabuki rabbit face: ceramic white, long-eared and eerily serene as I turned it in my hands. I could feel something stirring inside it now. Possibility. It spoke without words, a whisper of what it could become. I put it back on and within my mind, I gave it shape. Be more. I called on my Authority over Identity and Art and made my request: be my senses. Be the ears of the rabbit. The nose. The eyes of the hare. Warm, radiant, familiar light rose from within me.

The same light that had accompanied me through the Domain. It flowed into the mask, fusing with it, rewriting it. No longer just an object of craft, it was art but also the thing it represented. My vision shifted. The black rabbit eyes saw more now, catching subtle flickers, light where none should be. Every sudden movement flashed like a pulse across my vision. I could hear the patter of raindrops, each droplet distinct. The honk of cars beyond the broken walls. The fluttering wings of startled pigeons.

And the smell —gods. The rot, damp, mold and decay. The acrid scent of rats nesting in the far corner. A dead animal, its corpse bloated, innards torn and spilling open. I gagged and turned away. I didn't belong here anymore. Not in this hollow, ruined place. I ran, feet splashing through shallow puddles, heart pounding, mask tight against my skin. I ran toward the open street. Toward the world.

I reached home two hours later in the dead of night. I'd kept the mask hidden under my hoodie the whole way back, taking it off once I'd left the industrial district. Now, it sat on the desk, black eyes staring blankly, yet knowingly, back at me. Two things were clear. First: my Domain. I could feel the invisible thread constantly now, gently tugging inside me. It led here, but also not here. Like something hidden just beyond a veil I couldn't yet pierce. Present, but distant. Second: I held power now.

Over how art, mine and others', was seen. Not just seen, but understood. Art had soul, intent and identity. And I could shape it. But I didn't understand this power, not fully. I needed answers and tests. Wrapped in a warm blanket, I slumped onto my bed. The aroma of tea filled the room. The curtains were drawn. The world outside gone. In here, it was just me, my tools and the magic humming inside my soul. I pulled my jacket closer. It had worked before and I understood why now.

My skin shimmered faintly, swirling with color as I placed my hand over the painted iceberg on the fabric. Be the ice, pure, freezing and cold. I hovered my hand. Where the painting was, I could feel the cold of low temperature now. I didn't dare touch it directly. It held my Authority, borrowed from the Domain. I touched the edge of the painting and whispered: " Be just the jacket again." The fabric shimmered with rainbow light. I felt the shift, the return.

My Authority, flowing back into me as the temperature normalized. Nice. That was… easy. Reassuring. I grabbed my sketchbook, pen in hand and drew a strange compass. This one had the usual cardinal points, but at "North," I scrawled: Penrose's Finest's entrance. I called on my Authority. Be the compass. Point me toward the thing. Magic surged and my skin lit up. I felt the connection stretch toward the paper. I moved the sketch around, but it amounted to a big, fat nothing. The pointer didn't move.

Maybe it needed a full image? I tried again, this time sketching my rabbit mask, but the pointer didn't react at all. Frustrated, I sighed and flipped to a new page. A pigeon. That's what I needed. I drew a cool one with tiny flight goggles, a bomber jacket, a patch reading "Search Pigeon Force." The message was clear. Be the pigeon. Fly toward the mask. Power surged again, filling the paper, but the pigeon didn't budge. What the hell? Was I… losing it? I set the pigeon sketch down.

As I did, I could've sworn the corners twitched, like wings fluttering. I crouched low, eye to the page. Nothing happened, so maybe it was just a trick of my movement. I needed something simpler, so I drew a spring. Just a coiled line. I pushed my authority into it. Be the spring. I set the paper on the floor, jumped onto it and smacked into the ceiling. I landed in a heap, hoping I hadn't just woken the building. So it does work. The spring was real, convincing, even if temporary.

But why did that work and not the pigeon? Or the compass? I painted a black hole. Just a big dark circle like in the Looney Tunes. Be a hole. It still looked like ink, but I felt it now—it was different. I picked up the rolled pigeon sketch and slowly pressed it toward the painted circle. It slid through and I let go, making it drop to the floor on the other side of the page. Excited, I flipped the paper and tried from underneath, but it was blocked, meaning that it was a one-way hole.

I quickly set the paper with the hole on my desk and tried sliding the roll through again. It hit solid wood and stopped. No portable holes either. Fuck, would be cool. Maybe one day. I opened my window and sprayed black circles onto my desk and the window's glass. Then I focused, placing a hand on each and giving the command: Be holes. I tested them and the rolled paper slipped through each effortlessly, but when I tried reversing it through the desk nothing happened. The window, however, worked both ways.

Because it was transparent! The art had to be seen from the side you wanted to interact with. Interesting. Very interesting. I also realized I could infuse two objects at once, if I commanded them to become the same thing. I touched the glass hole, focused and pulled my Authority back. Instantly, the hole was just a painted circle again as I felt the power return to me. I tested again, but there was no passage—just solid glass.

I stepped back and reached toward it from a distance, trying to infuse it with my Authority without touching. Nothing happened; therefore, it required proximity, either through direct contact or through infusion at creation. One last test remained. I picked up the spray paint again. This time, I focused my power while painting, infusing the command into each movement. The desk shimmered faintly and the paint took it in. It felt different. I dropped a pencil into the hole.

It slipped through cleanly, landing inside the drawer beneath. I unrolled the page, peeled off the old magic with a focused command and tried again. Be the pigeon. Fly. Break the bounds. Power surged and light shimmered in response, but the pigeon stayed flat. It seemed that my creations were bound to their medium. The spring worked because it could simulate movement within the page. The compass failed because it couldn't turn.

Or rather it probably could, but it wasn't represented by an actual movement of the image. The pigeon couldn't leave. It was frustrating. But it was progress and a roadmap, of sorts. Authority could shape identity. But the identity was still trapped in its frame. I looked at the rabbit mask on my desk. Maybe that's why it worked so well. It had form and volume. It wasn't just art, it was wearable, usable, part of the world already. The world was its medium.

And with my authority, I simply helped it understand what it could be.