Lord of Mysteries: The Dream That Waits

The doors slammed open.

Klein's breath rattled in his chest. His fingers twitched against the cold floor, gripping at nothing, searching for something real.

He didn't know how long it had been.

His mind was fraying at the edges.

Each loop tore something from them—memories, sensations, the fragile threads that kept them tethered to their own existence.

And Yeaia—

They were slipping away.

Klein turned his head, heart hammering.

Yeaia was still there. But barely.

Their form flickered, the colors of their hair and clothes blurring like wet ink smeared across a page. Their mismatched eyes were dull, unfocused, barely clinging to awareness.

But their lips moved.

"...There's something wrong."

Their voice was strained, but there.

Klein swallowed, his pulse thudding. "The flaw. You said there's a flaw."

Yeaia's fingers clenched, the motion slow, as if even that tiny effort was being stripped from them.

Their breath shuddered.

"Yes. It's not… perfect. Something… doesn't belong."

Klein forced himself up, ignoring the agony in his limbs.

Something that doesn't belong.

He pushed through the haze of exhaustion, of fractured memories. He needed to think.

Every loop was the same. The doors, the ink, the crushing sense of an invisible force watching them.

Every loop reset them.

Every loop—

Every loop.

A sharp pulse of realization shot through Klein's skull.

His hand shot out and gripped Yeaia's wrist.

"…We are the only ones changing."

Yeaia's breath hitched.

Klein's mind spun as the pieces slotted together, a terrible clarity breaking through the fog of endless repetition.

The Vault, the ink, the voice—everything else was unchanged.

But they—they were breaking down.

The loop wasn't trapping them in a cycle.

It was rewriting them each time.

Wearing them down, fragmenting them, until they became something else entirely.

"…We're being turned into part of the Vault," Yeaia whispered.

A terrible silence followed.

Then—

A slow, delighted laugh echoed from the shadows.

"Ah. You finally noticed."

The unseen presence shifted, and suddenly, the weight of it was crushing.

Klein's breath hitched as his body refused to move.

Yeaia gasped beside him, struggling as the ink-like space around them tightened.

The voice hummed, pleased.

"I was wondering how long it would take you to realize."

Klein's fingers dug into the ground. "You're trying to—"

"To make you part of this place?" The voice chuckled. "Not trying. Succeeding."

The pressure increased. Klein felt something pulling at him, as if his very essence was being unraveled thread by thread.

He clenched his teeth, fighting against the suffocating force. No. No, he wouldn't let this happen.

His mind raced.

The flaw. The mistake.

If they were the only things changing—then that meant…

The flaw was within them.

Klein forced his gaze toward Yeaia, his mind grasping for any detail—any difference between them and everything else.

Then—

He saw it.

A flicker.

Something that should not be there.

A tiny, fragile glow clinging to Yeaia's wrist.

A symbol, half-erased, fighting against the loop.

Klein's heart slammed against his ribs.

"…You still have it."

Yeaia's head lifted, their eyes dazed. "What…?"

Klein grabbed their wrist, fingers pressing over the faint sigil.

It was weak. Fading.

But it was not gone.

The Evernight Goddess's blessing.

It was the one thing the loop had failed to erase.

And if it was still there—then that meant something of their past self still remained.

Klein latched onto the thought like a lifeline.

"The loop isn't perfect," he murmured. "It's strong enough to erode us, to make us forget, to strip away our identity—but it can't erase divine authority completely."

His mind raced. "That means—there's still a connection to something outside."

A connection to reality.

Yeaia's breath shuddered.

Klein met their gaze. "We can use it."

The voice in the darkness went silent.

Then—

It hissed.

The pressure around them spiked, ink curling and writhing, fighting back.

Klein gritted his teeth. "Yeaia—focus. You need to focus on that mark. Hold onto it. Don't let it fade."

Yeaia trembled, their body flickering, parts of them nearly vanishing into the shadows.

They were so close to being swallowed whole.

But—

They took a shaking breath.

And gripped his hand.

The Evernight sigil flickered—

And then burned.

The Vault screamed.

The ink tore apart, the illusions splintering, as the fabric of the loop ripped open.

The presence in the darkness snarled, its control shattering as the two of them were yanked backward—

Out of the loop.

---

The Vault collapsed.

Klein hit the ground hard, his body aching, his breath ragged.

He gasped, feeling real air in his lungs for the first time in what felt like centuries.

The ink-like abyss was gone.

Instead, he found himself on the cold, cracked marble floor of a ruined hall, dust and scattered pages floating in the dim, flickering light.

And beside him—

Yeaia lay motionless.

Their form was still flickering, still unstable.

Klein's pulse thundered.

He scrambled toward them, shaking their shoulders. "Yeaia—Yeaia, stay with me—"

A faint breath escaped them.

Their eyes cracked open.

And, for the first time since the loops began—

They looked alive.

They blinked slowly, focus returning, reality settling back into their mismatched gaze.

"…We made it," they whispered.

Klein let out a sharp, breathless laugh.

"Yeah," he rasped. "Yeah, we did."

But as relief began to set in—

Something shifted.

A new presence stirred, the shadows curling unnaturally at the edges of the ruined hall.

A voice spoke.

Low. Ancient. Amused.

"Well now. That was interesting."

Klein and Yeaia froze.

The true keeper of the Vault had arrived.

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End of Chapter 60.

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