Day in the story: 12th December (Friday)

We all stared at the terracotta giant lying still on the floor, its weight finally surrendering to silence. It didn't twitch. Didn't breathe. Just sat there like a broken statue, emptied of purpose.

The boys were eating too now, tearing into their rations like they hadn't tasted food in years. Honestly, they probably hadn't felt this kind of hunger before, this bone-deep, soul-worn exhaustion. Their authority had been on life support long before everything started leaning on me. I could see it in the way their hands shook as they ate, in the silence that lingered between bites.

Malik looked over at me, still sitting with the last cracker in hand.

"That was incredibly badass, Alexa," he said, voice soft but certain. "I know you hate being called a hero, but that, what you did? That's the most heroic thing I've ever seen."

And you know what? I let him say it. Let it settle. This time, being called a hero didn't make my skin crawl. It didn't feel fake or exaggerated. It felt… earned. Just for that one quiet moment, I let myself believe I deserved it.

"How'd you even come up with the idea?" he asked.

I exhaled slowly, thinking back. "We tried everything from the outside. Nothing worked. He might as well have been carved from the hardest diamonds, impossible to crack. Then I remembered, the story Dam once told me and our little experiment with the extra vision angles on the roof and it just… clicked. What if I didn't try to break him? What if I made him vulnerable instead? Forced a system onto him that he couldn't handle?"

Nick nodded, chewing slowly. "It's incredible that it worked."

"Honestly," I said, brushing crumbs off my lap, "I didn't expect it to kill him. I thought it'd trap him in a loop of pain. But when he slammed into the part of the mural that was his new 'brain'... he just stopped."

"Maybe he didn't have one to begin with," Nick offered.

Malik raised a brow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, maybe he didn't have a nervous system at all, until Alexa gave him one. So when he hit that brain, it became the most vital thing in his body… and it just shut him down."

Peter caught on quicker than I did. "So if he'd had a real brain, something actually in control, it wouldn't have mattered?"

"Exactly." Nick's tone was thoughtful, not smug. Just tracing the logic. "With a real brain, the pain might've overwhelmed him, but it wouldn't have killed him. But since that new system was all he had... it couldn't take the shock."

He let the thought hang for a bit. Just enough space for us all to absorb it.

"Good thinking, Lex," he said at last. "You saved all of us."

"We all carried our weight," I replied, brushing it off out of habit. But I meant it.

The others smiled, nodding, except Peter.

"I did, like, nothing," he said, not bitter, just blunt. "I strangled four people. Tried to open the big doors, failed. Tried to break the Dome, also failed."

"That's not nothing," Nick said gently. "You had a task and you saw it through. You're human, Pete. A regular human. And still, you stood and fought with us, against things most people can't even wrap their heads around."

He paused, met Peter's eyes.

"Out of all of us," he said, "I think you're the bravest."

Peter didn't respond at first. Just sat with the words like he was trying to figure out if they really belonged to him.

But he didn't argue. Not this time.

"Guys," I said, breaking the quiet that had crept in like fog, "Jason's close. I can feel it, like a tug just beneath my ribs. But even with Ariana's miracle crackers, I'm not good to keep going. Not yet."

My voice felt heavy in my throat, like it had to wade through exhaustion just to make it out. "It's been a very long day. I need at least half an hour, just to sleep. Then we can move."

No one argued. They didn't even flinch. Truth was, I could see it in their eyes, they needed the rest just as badly. The kind of tired that goes beyond muscles or bones. The kind that sticks to your aura.

"I'll finish the painting in my Grimoire," I said, already pushing myself up again, slow and stiff, "then I'll bring us into my Domain. We'll rest there. Properly."

And I did, just like I said I would.

I sat, opened my travel book and let my hand lead the pens in last quiet strokes. The picture wasn't just art anymore, it was anchor, it was purpose. When it was done, I breathed in deep. They all gathered around me, touching each other and my shoulder.

I pulled us in, out of the concrete jungle, out of the dust, into the sanctuary of my Domain.

A place where, finally, we could rest.

**********

I woke up first. The alarm I'd set on the clock by my bed was set for forty-five minutes, but thirty-nine turned out to be enough. Just shy of the full run and I already felt like myself again, stitched back together by my crystal core, which had clearly gone into overdrive while I slept, patching both body and soul.

As I stood, my eyes drifted to the trophy case. No healing soup jar this time. Just that stupid necklace.

I reached for it, fingers brushing over the cool surface and took it down. It felt fitting somehow, this thing that was part thief, part mage. It didn't just hold magic. It stole it. I never really planned to use it. I'd been wary of letting someone else's Domain sink its claws into me. But I'd wanted to keep it. Wanted to look at it and feel that rush again, I pulled this off, me, Alexa.

And yet… now it just pissed me off.

The necklace hung like a blade above my head, some twisted Damocles sword. A reminder that what I'd taken might now be taking something from me, tugging at my will, shifting my choices in ways I didn't like.

I shoved those thoughts down, hard. No time for that spiral now. I had a job to do, one that mattered more.

Leaving the bedroom behind, I stepped into the main space of my Domain and touched the crystal core at its center. A pulse surged through me, raw, vibrant energy, humming with the urge to create. It was the essence of who I was, distilled into pure motion and color.

[You are at 61%. You need 39% more essence of Authority to initiate growth.]

Wait, what?

How the hell had I grown that much so fast?

[Essence of Authority is also collected from slain enemies who possess it.]

Seriously? That was a thing?

[This one you fought was very strong. Such fights will fill essence quickly, though they carry the risk of death… and advancement.]

Well, that tracked. Everything came at a price. But still... that kind of boost from one fight? It explained the burn in my limbs and the strange fullness in my aura.

Thanks, Anansi.

I sat at my workstation, the tools already laid out and got to work replacing the cards I'd lost. Line by line, color by color, I filled the silence with purpose. The others still slept and I wanted to give them that full hour if I could help it. No one had earned it more than them.

Peter was the first to wake.

"Alexa, can we go to Earth for a minute?" he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I'd like to call Zoe. Tell her what's up."

"Sure, Pete." I stood and moved to him, resting a hand on his shoulder with a tired smile. "I'll send you alone. I'll come back for you before we move out, okay?"

He gave me a wary look. "You're not gonna leave me there, right? I'd hate you for that."

I considered it, for about half a second.

"No," I said, serious. "You've earned your place here, Peter. I'll come back for you."

I made sure he had his phone, then focused on my Lifeline Talisman, sending him to my Earthside room with a gentle flick of will.

Just as he disappeared, the door behind me creaked open and Nick stepped out of his borrowed bedroom.

"I'm ready," he said, quiet but steady.

"We'll wait a bit for Malik," I replied. "Let him have five more minutes. I just sent Peter back to Earth to call Zoe."

Nick nodded, then hesitated. Something in his posture shifted, like a thought snagged on barbed wire.

"Do you want to talk to Sophie, too?" I asked.

His expression tightened. "No. Not yet," he said, eyes drifting to the floor. "After I saw her shadow… I'm not ready. That conversation's gonna take longer than a few minutes."

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I nodded slowly. "I get that." And I did. That shadow of Sophie's had been… wrong. Twisted in a way that left questions neither of us wanted to ask out loud yet.

I wanted to talk to her too. Needed to, even.

Something was tearing at her. I just didn't know what.

"You're working on your cards?" Nick asked, stepping closer to my workstation. His eyes lingered on the one I was painting, a fresh eye-card, with both a painted iris and delicate ears spiraling from the corners.

"You don't use the hearing part that often, right?" he added, studying it with a curious tilt of his head.

"Yeah," I said, not looking up. "Sight's easier. With eyes, I get the whole field, like a 360-degree map in my head. But sound? It overlaps. Layers too much. My brain gets overloaded trying to process it all at once."

"Does it create some kind of discord?" he asked, that familiar thoughtful tone sneaking in.

"Exactly. Like… I hear the same thing from five places, but slightly out of sync. It's maddening sometimes."

"Well," he said, slipping into that calm, professor-like voice he gets when explaining something he loves, "sound moves way slower than light. So even if your eye-cards are scattered, what you see from each angle all happens pretty much simultaneously. But if you've got ears everywhere, sound hits them at different times, it creates natural echoes. Delays."

He always liked explaining physics stuff to me. And honestly? I kinda liked hearing it. His voice made it sound like the world made more sense than it actually did.

"Sometimes I think your Domain shouldn't be cooking," I said, smiling as I sketched a sharp detail along the card's rim. "It should be something more scientific."

"I've told you, science can be part of cooking," he said, with the faintest smirk.

"And you also told me you were basically indoctrinated into your Domain," I said, teasing. "Maybe if you hadn't been, you'd be a sourcerer by now."

He shrugged, but it was thoughtful. "It could still happen. If I diverged far enough from the core principles of my family's Domain, the soul core might offer me the chance to cut ties and form my own."

My brush paused mid-stroke.

"You would want to do that?" I asked.

"If all the Lords and Ladies of the Culinary Excellence Domain agreed," he continued, "they could grant me a shard of the Domain. Not a physical fragment, but a clean one, no marks, no legacy. I'd start from scratch. Still Culinary, technically, but I'd be able to shape it my own way, use different marks than my family does."

"So it has to be created… not just chipped off the original?"

"Right. If you just chip off a piece, it ends up like the necklace you gave Soph. Influential, yeah, but not something that can grow into its own soul core. Creating a real shard requires unity of will, a shared agreement between everyone connected to the Domain. Then you're sent into a Domain trial and from the essence stored inside the core, your own soul core is born."

"That's… honestly kinda cool. I wonder what else is possible. Who figured all this out in the first place?"

He smiled, soft and knowing. "Probably the same way most things are figured out. Trial and error. Someone stumbled into it, got lucky, got unlucky, told the next person and so on. Knowledge is a generational thing. We just keep passing it forward."

Malik's bedroom door creaked open as he stumbled out, yawning and tugging his hoodie over his head with half-asleep clumsiness.

"Guys, I think I'm ready now," he mumbled, blinking against the Domain's low light. He scanned the room. "Peter still sleeping?"

"No," I said, tilting my head thoughtfully. "Actually, he was the first to wake up. Which… is kind of weird now that I think about it."

"Why?" Nick asked.

"Well, he's just a human. You two are both supported by your shadowlight, right? You should regenerate faster, especially you, Nick."

Nick shrugged. "Only you get fully recharged in your Domain, Lex. Your shadowlight doesn't do anything for us in here, we basically just took a nap."

"Oh." I paused. "So Peter must've set the shortest alarm out of all of you?"

"Sounds about right," Nick said as Malik slumped onto the couch with a long exhale.

Malik tapped the brass knuckles strapped to his hand then looked at me. "Alexa, do you think you could make these stronger? Like you did with your umbrella?"

My whole body perked up at the idea. "I think so, yeah. Show me."

He slipped them off and set them on the back of the couch for me to grab. They were classic: four thick rings fused together by a single brass bar, solid and functional but begging for more.

I carried them to my workstation, already pulling out masking tape and spray cans. On something this small, precision was everything. Freehand wouldn't cut it. I carefully wrapped tape around the sections I needed to isolate, visualizing the final effect as I worked. The grip and inside of the rings I painted like textured rubber, dark, matte, grounded. Over that, I traced a thin wire design, coiling from a red button on the grip to a tiny discharge node on the top of each ring.

Then I repeated the process for the second one.

The whole thing took maybe ten minutes, but my mind was humming the entire time. Become electricity-spiked knuckledusters, I thought, channeling intent into the paint and the structure beneath it. The shadowlight flared in response, subtle, but real.

"Here," I said, handing them back to Malik. "Try it. Press the red button and the tops of the rings will conduct electricity. Should give your punches some extra bite."

He stared at them like a kid who just unwrapped the perfect Christmas gift. No exaggeration, his grin was pure joy.

He pressed the button and the faint snap of electric discharge cracked across the rings.

"Holy crap," he whispered. Then he looked at me with a kind of reverent glee. "This is awesome."

"Okay, play with it for a while," I said to Malik with a grin. "I'm going to get Peter. Once I bring him back, we head in."

I activated my Travel Grimoire, letting it tilt the layers of the world until they aligned again, this time, Earth's version of my room. The shift landed me softly into the familiar stillness of the night. It was half past one in the morning. Outside the window, the streets were mostly empty, save for the occasional lonely car slicing through the silence.

Peter stood there by the window, silhouetted in the faint city light, watching the world go by.

"Are you ready?" I asked quietly.

He didn't flinch. "Yeah. We talked." He turned to face me. "I woke her up, actually. She was already searching for us in Ideworld. I pointed her toward Chinatown, she might join us soon."

"You're not happy about that," I said, not as a question, but a statement.

Peter exhaled slowly. "No. I feel like out of all of us, she'd be in the most danger. But that's probably not true, right?"

"No," I said. "Not really. From what I understand not much can actually hurt her while she's in her spiritual form."

He nodded, but the tension in his jaw didn't ease. "Still. I can't help worrying. But since she was already inside, I figured it was better to at least point her in our direction."

"You made the right call," I said, gently touching his arm.

**********

We landed on the bridge ready for a fight, braced, tense, prepared to meet resistance. But the moment we appeared, the shadows that had watched us before, watched Peter struggle with the doors and us battle the terracotta giant, scattered like birds from a branch. They vanished into the narrow alleys between huts and stalls, retreating into their little dwellings without a sound.

Most of them resembled ordinary people, many with Asian features, though there were African Americans among them too and a few white faces, all blending into the vibrant tapestry of this strange place.

The bridge was nothing like the narrow, exposed walkways we'd used before. It was wide, almost as wide as the rooftops themselves and buzzing with the remnants of life. Red paper lanterns hung in gentle clusters overhead, swaying with unseen currents. Food carts lined the sides, some still steaming with leftover scent-trails of roasted chestnuts and sizzling meat. Stalls stood half-stocked with trinkets, silk embroidery, talismans and traditional clothing. It looked less like a battlefield and more like a Chinatown night market plucked from memory and dropped here, dreamlike and uncanny.

The building we had fought in earlier loomed high above us, our entry point dangerously close to its rooftop. But this bridge, this vibrant artery of spirit and memory, connected at a much lower level, maybe the third or fourth floor. The structure on the other side stood just as tall, matching it.

"Guys, head up to the roof and check it out," I said. "I'm going back through the glass gate to reclaim my Authority from the nervous system mural."

No one objected. We split off without a fuss.

I reached the glass gate and painted a wide black void across it. As soon as I finished, I felt it: the painting had already been infused by my soul. The hole responded instantly. My essence had acted before I'd even consciously commanded it, training with Lebens was finally showing real dividends. My soul moved in sync with my needs.

I was just about to step through when a familiar silver light flashed at the edge of my vision. I turned.

A comet streaked across the strange sky, filigree silver, shaped like a woman. Zoe had found us.

I waved her down and she approached quickly, her glowing form flickering as she neared.

"If Peter hadn't told me where to find you, I'd never have made it. I had to hide from dragons, Lex!" she burst out as soon as she landed beside me.

"Hello to you too," I said, raising an eyebrow. "Apparently, those are drakes. Can they hurt you?"

"They were saturated with Authority. So yes, they could've roasted me."

"What happens if your Seer form is destroyed?" I asked, quieter.

"I wouldn't wake up," she replied plainly.

"...Better not tell Peter that."

"I already did." She grimaced. "He's not exactly thrilled that I'm here. Not that I'm overjoyed about it either."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault, Lex. If it weren't for you, we wouldn't even know what happened to Jason, let alone have a shot at saving him."

She glanced past me at the gate. "The others already inside?"

"No, they went the other way a few minutes ago. I left a painting back there that still carries my Authority. I want to unbind it before we move on. Want to come see?"

She nodded.

"There's a soulmark nearby, by the way," she added as we stepped through the black-painted gate.

Zoe flew ahead, pausing above the fallen terracotta warrior and the mural beside him. I caught up, landing lightly beside the massive clay body that had nearly killed us all.

"You're saying this guy is the soulmark?" I asked, studying the cracked statue.

"Yes."

"But… we fought him. We touched him. None of us felt a mark activate. No icon. No resonance."

"He may have become a mark after death. Have you touched him since?"

"No. Honestly, I didn't want to go anywhere near him again."

"It feels powerful," Zoe said, drifting in a slow circle over the body. "Most marks do. They hum at a frequency that's hard to ignore."

"Will he regenerate like other shadows? Or stay gone unless someone uses his mark?"

"I have no idea."

"Well… I heard Seers can move marks between items. Want to give it a try?" I asked, pulling a thunderball from my pocket. "I can't exactly lug a giant terracotta sentinel around with me."

"I can try," she said, floating down to place her hands on both the warrior and the orb.

"I wonder what kind of mark it is," I mused aloud.

"It's icon is a Monument," she said as the connection flared.

"Fitting. Monuments are built to stand against time, immovable, permanent. It kind of works metaphorically… but I don't know how it would mesh with my soul core. It's not as direct as Identity or Connection."

"Maybe it would make your art unbreakable. Or fixed in place," Zoe offered.

"Or unmovable," I added, catching on. "Maybe if I infused it into my cards, they'd just… hover? Like stepping stones locked in the air?"

"You could literally build a staircase from them."

"Yeah. That could be fun to play with. Weirdly useful, too."

Zoe nodded and gently placed her glowing hands on both the statue and the orb. Power shimmered faintly in the space between them, with her acting as the conduit. It couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds before she turned to me, a quiet smile lighting her small face.

"It's done. It was surprisingly easy."

I took the orb into my palm and immediately felt the Monument icon resonate within my soul. There was no doubt now that this was a soul mark.

"Good job, Zoe. I knew there was still some use in you," I joked as I turned back toward the gate. Reaching inward, I withdrew my authority from the mural that had sealed the terracotta warrior's fate. Zoe lingered, watching the shadowlight swirl and pull back toward me before floating after.

"I don't know if I can joke the same about you, though," she replied. "If I'm understanding this right, you managed to kill something that was supposed to be indestructible. And immovable."

"Yeah, but he had a soft center. I made sure of that. And technically, he kind of killed himself. So… assisted suicide, at best."

"You're joking again," she said as we stepped through the painted hole. I removed my authority from it as well, the surface fading back to dull black-painted glass. "But still, it feels like a big deal."

"Thanks, Zoe," I said simply, not wanting to follow the path her thoughts were heading down.

She drifted closer, thoughtful, then suddenly darted ahead when she spotted Peter with the boys on the roof of the next building. The structure mirrored what we'd seen on the bridge but on a larger, more intricate scale. It felt less like a marketplace and more like a sprawling, fantastical village—still draped in Chinese motifs, but clearly less mercantile and more residential in nature.

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