"But you didn't." Eileen's voice softens further. "You let that special someone deep within you, decide that you could be more then they intended for you to be and that is the most frightening thing you could have showed to them."

Another few minutes down the corridor, the pair find the light shifting overhead without changing color, the way it does in rooms that do not wish to be seen clearly. What was once a corridor becomes something more curious. The ceiling does not rise so much as hesitate, and the walls give a soft, dusty groan as if they are making room for a mouthful of air. A cool draft too, winds past them, though there is no source for it, and the sound it carries is not quite wind. It is the sound of pages turning very slowly in a library no one has entered for a long time.

Parchment then begins to fall from the ceiling.

It does not descend in great flurries or dramatic bursts, but in a soft, steady pattern like snowfall in a dream. The sheets are weightless and pale, drifting sideways as they fall, gathering in little overlapping piles across the stone floor. Most land face up, blank and waiting while others reveal drawings, stencils inked in delicate lines. Eileen bends to examine one, brushing it off with the edge of her sleeve before lifting it gently.

The image is a partial outline of a woman, an older one, mid seventies at least. Her shawl is rendered in perfect detail similar to the trim of Eileen's but her hands are closed into fists and her face is left empty, only three inked dots where her eyes should be are rendered. At the bottom corner, a label written in what looks like careful script reads: "Interruption = Subtype Unknown". Eileen studies it with a faint hum, not displeased, just considering. After a moment, she folds the page neatly and tucks it into her pocket.

Curious, Xozo looks upward toward the ceiling, then along the walls. The architecture of the space speaking of something foundational, its carvings deeper than it has any right to be, but it's behaving like a hallway still deciding how it ought to exist, like its learning the shape of behavior from watching adults it can't speak too.

So Xozo watches as sheets of parchment continue to fall in gentle silence. Most drift without incident, blank and quiet, but some are already printed with faint outlines. That seem to gather ahead of her in organized clusters, not quite aligned but not random either. Some she feels even seem to be shaped like her. She recognizes the attempt immediately, not because the images resemble her closely, but because they miss something important.

Each stencil holds a partial version. One outlines the cloak she wears, given to her by her mother, another renders it so large it swallows the figure inside. Another exaggerates the curve of the shoulders, doubling the hunch as though shame were an anatomical feature. A few show the suggestion of movement beneath the fabric, the hint of snakes coiled neatly, too neatly, arranged like teeth in a smile that has forgotten how to mean anything. Regardless though, the faces are always missing. Some have only a void where the head should be. One shows a collection of looping spirals labeled simply as: "Hair = Risk Unknown"

Until she stops in front of a page that has caught under the tip of the front of her boots. The figure is hollow, nothing drawn inside the lines of the cloak at all. Beneath it, someone has written in clear, careful script: "Subject observed. Definition Changing."

Xozo does not touch the stencil though even as she watches it with quiet tension. The cloak in the drawing looks exactly like the one she wears, but the figure beneath it is empty, hollow. The absence of the drawing feeling, not cruel, more exact.

Until more stencils to her left press themselves against the wall as if trying to be chosen. One shows a figure crouched low to the ground, hands tucked into the folds of their cloak. Another presents a figure mid step, but the feet are missing. A third figure is surrounded by vague floating ball shapes, labeled only as "Resonating Influence = Unclear."

Pushing forward, Xozo waves her arm past a flurry of falling parchments, one of the pieces practically guiding itself into her had. Lifting the stencil, she find this one is heavier, the parchment thick with too much ink. The figure dense, every line overdrawn, the cloak layered until it looks like armor. The figures head is bowed but this time serpents can be seen clearly underneath, bundled into a single shape, "Unresolved Potential." marks the bottom. It is clear the figure is her and she lets it fall back to the floor, not with rejection, but with a kind of recognition.

"They're trying to make sense of us?" she says. The words are quiet, carried more by breath than voice.

Eileen walks to her side. Gently she lifts the one Xozo drops, her fingers move gently, smoothing the corners as if caring for something fragile. She then folds it into her clothing.

"The drawings are very creative, they should be proud of themselves for making so many and they should always remind themselves that like a new kettle," Eileen says, not looking at her. "It won't whistle right until its practiced being boiled a few times."

It is then the paper stencils stop falling from the corridor along with a moment where they place brightens. And when they both turn toward the way they expect to go... they find a door.

Not locked, not guarded, just occupied and they begin to hear voices from the other side, some kind of argument. Nothing violent though, not even urgent. Just the conviction of two people who have been having the same disagreement for decades, centuries, millenniums.

But before either of them can knock, the door opens for them.

And before Xozo can say anything, Eileen steps through.

The pair enter a chamber that yawns wide open, floors of turquoise pavers line the place and arched ceilings hang above buried in deep fog. Columns too support the chamber. etched with gold lettering scripted like legalese as if the very columns themselves could be codified into law. Harp music too echoes from nowhere in particular, four notes, the same four, over and over again. The sound both, welcoming and warning.

But by far, the most obvious feature is at the far end of the chamber, a magnificent gate. Tall, sealed and unmoved in what feels like forever layered on top of the time after forever. And yet the whole gate hums faintly with the bored energy of a bureaucrat that has long since stopped caring for their post.

A plaque beneath it reads:

Chamber 77-C: Awaiting Resolution.

Until Eileen's eyes are drawn to the center of the chamber, where a pair of twenty foot tall ogres stand like forgotten columns. One is ancient in the way stone is ancient, not old merely by age, but by having endured itself beyond usefulness. His frame is massive, shaped by eons of ceremony and silence. His shoulders are draped in what was once ceremonial armor, long since fused to him, ossified at the joints and threaded through with moss and rusted filigree. He resembles a knight entombed inside his own uniform.

"As established in the Third Scroll of Eligibility," says the ancient one, like gravel pressed into packed earth, "a Named Entrant must precede all rite based activations, provided no ancestral contradictions have been..."

The creature's beard is a forest in miniature, green with creeping lichen and tangled with threads of discarded dirt. Small, dried wax seals dangle from it like old fruits. His eyes are deep set and shadowed, mostly unfocused, as if the weight of its duty now takes longer to lift. In his left hand he lifts a scroll, and the parchment unfurls as if with a will of its own, revealing text that fades even as more of it appears.

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His counterpart is younger, though not young. Time has frayed his edges not through age, but through expectation. He is wound tight, jaw clenched, movements just a little too sharp, like someone trying to pass a test.

He wears too a faded uniform that belongs neither to military nor a university. It sits somewhere in between, like the attire of an apprentice to a priesthood that collapsed a thousand years ago. Still someone has clearly cared for it, patching it over time with stitching styles and fabrics from several eras.

"No," the second one snaps, hands stained with ink. One thumbnail, permanently black, a sign from years of note taking. His other hand clutches a clipboard, sleek in design, though deeply cursed in spirit. The younger one scribbles frantically, but the text keeps vanishing in an endless cycle of names, rules, corrections, and diagrams, each entry dissolving just as he completes it.

"No, because you're forgetting clause thirty two alpha, the one about provisional overlaps in disambiguated lineages."

"Lineage is irrelevant without Invocation Indexing," says the first without reading the scroll.

"Irrelevant only if you apply the post fractional amendments, which were never formally notarized. I've checked. We've checked. Thousands of time."

"Notarization is not required for temporal precedence as sustained by the..."

"Unless the timeline is non sequential." the second interjects, nearly pleading now as he thumbs through trembling pages on his clipboard, pages that appear and disappear while he flips through them. "Which this one is, Father. We agreed on that during cycle five thousand, nine hundred and thirteen."

The first grunts, not in disagreement but with the effort of consideration. He checks the scroll in his hand this time. His eyes strain for understanding. Eileen watches him closely and recognizes the look. It is the expression of someone confronting the terrible weight of forgetfulness, the slow erosion of certainty. She had seen it in kitchens and quiet rooms people left the elderly in, in chairs left un rocked by those trapped sitting in them.

Still Eileen waits and listens, calmly and patiently. Meanwhile Xozo lingers behind her. The weight of the space pressing around her like humidity. Her shoulders disappearing deeper into her oversized cloak. Her voice barely rising as she whispers, "Do we... say something?"

Eileen lifts one hand, not to shush her, but to listen more completely. Her expression remains soft, unreadable but present, like steam rising from a kettle that has not yet whistled.

"Father," the second, younger ogre pleads, "we have to settle this. The gate will never open if we can't come to an agreement on new conditions. It isn't meant to exist, if it cannot have an answer to exist for."

"The rules are explicitly clear. The test requires someone who is both Named and Unnamed," The ancient one declares affirmatively. "Which isn't possible, we both agree on that and that's the problem, Father. We've circled this too many times."

The ancient one responds slowly this time. "The test requires the presence of a paradox. Paradox requires proof of contradiction. Proof requires ritual. Ritual requires continuation."

He pauses then blinking slowly. "What were we saying, Grommet?" His voice is quieter now, laced with something hesitant. "There was something important. Something I was supposed to say." Another blink, "If we leave the gate without resolving the issue... my bones will remember this post. Do you Grommet truly wish for me to be called back to guard what I can no longer name?"

Grommet stares at his father, not in disbelief but with grief he cannot place. He begins to speak, but the words catch somewhere between breath and obligation. Instead, he scratches his name into the top of the clipboard once more. It vanishes before he even finishes writing the name.

"Father, Borosh," he says quietly, "I need you to stay present in our discussion. You keep...," Grommet physically gags as if his words are taken out of his literal mouth, "So I keep writing the rules down, louder and louder, hoping you'll hear me through them."

The ancient one, Borosh, the father, smiles weakly for a moment at his son but then his eye glass over and his rumbling voice returns. "As established in the Third Scroll of Eligibility…"

Eileen takes a step forward, then pauses. In the far corner of the marble chamber, nearly forgotten by architecture and memory alike, sits a tea station. Or rather, what remains of one. She ambles toward it with the quiet deference of someone approaching something familiarly sacred and yet neglected all the same.

A low ceremonial table waits, its surface looped and inscribed with faded sigils, silver filigree dulled by dust and time. A small wooden sign leans askew from its base, the lettering still legible despite the years: Refreshments for Worthy Guests Only.

While beneath the table lie tens of thousands of porcelain shards scattered across the floor, some swept into half hearted piles, others strewn like bone flakes from long dead beasts. The scene though tells no story of violence, only the quiet erosion of hope through disappointment.

So without speaking to anyone, Eileen kneels beside the wreckage. Her hands finding the floor slowly, palms steady, touching the ground not in reverence, but with care. She begins brushing away fragments, her movements gentle and practiced. Xozo too joins her after a moment, mirroring the care, her large cloak trailing behind like a shadow too shy to speak. Together they shift the pieces, searching, until they uncover one pot left mostly whole. Its spout is cracked but still serviceable, the curve of its belly stained black from a viscous substance and yet still serviceable, intact.

Eileen lifts the pot into her hands and turns it once. She examines it only briefly before nodding. "You've been waiting long enough," she says, her voice neither loud nor directed, simply offered into the air like warmth from a kettle she plans to use.

Eileen returns then to the table and retrieves the water skin from her basket. She removes the cloth covering its top, wets it carefully, and begins wiping the teapot clean. When Xozo reaches out to take over the task, Eileen lets her, with a quiet smile that folds at the corners of her mouth like soft linen.

She begins exploring the contents of the table then, lifting lids and shifting canisters until she finds a small tin of loose leaves. She chooses them slowly, with the same attention she might give to the herbs gathered from a garden too old to bloom in neat rows. There is a metal tea ball beside the tin too and once she fills it, she takes the cleaned pot from Xozo.

Without inspecting it further, she pours in the rest of the water brought from home, her motions deliberate and unhurried. The sound of water cascading into the pot echoes through the chamber like the return of something sacred, a familiar presence long overdue.

The noise even pulls attention from the argument to the side of them. Grommet's head jerks up from his clipboard. "No… no, you can't… wait!" he sputters, his voice tangled with disbelief. The clipboard bounces against his thigh as he lurches forward, nearly tripping over one of the ritual lines etched into the floor. "That station isn't. There's no..."

As he stammers, two small canisters blink into existence on the edge of the table. One reads Sugar, the other Cardamom, both labeled in bureaucratic script that glows faintly around the edges, as if recently remembered by the room.

Bu Eileen does not stop at the request of Grommet. Instead, she hums. The melody is small and without urgency, something between a lullaby and the memory of one. The notes too settle in the air like steam on old glass. She glances up at Grommet and smiles not condescending, not amused, only kind and present.

"Do you take yours with cardamom or sugar?" she asks. "Unfortunately though this station lacks cream, so I'll have to experiment with the ingredient ratios a bit before we serve everyone a cup."

Grommet flinches at her words. He looks from the table to the clipboard, then back at Eileen. For a moment, he says nothing at all. Then, quietly he says to the space. "I always used ink."

His voice is no louder than a forgotten footnote.

"I thought… that was the official medium. The instructions said to use the official medium, and I thought given the notation that it meant ink. But maybe it wasn't... Maybe water was the answer..."

Eileen looks up from her work. Above the tea table now floats a parchment scroll she had missed before that unfurls slowly, revealing an exhaustive set of instructions, nearly all of which are unhelpful. The rules for making tea spanning so many lines that the scroll physically scrolls itself downward, words vanishing as new ones appear, the process seemingly infinite and self consuming. Eileen shakes her head though, gently, like clearing dust from her own thoughts, and returns her gaze to Grommet.

"Did it taste any good?" she asks.

Grommet lowers his clipboard. "Never managed to brew a full pot. I always dropped it before it became hot. We must have wasted so much over the..."

Eileen glances down at the porcelain fragments beneath the table and lets out a soft laugh. It is a warm, knowing sound, the kind only the elderly and teapots can make.

"Don't fret, the teapots don't mind," she says. "If anything, I think you should be proud of yourself. Very few mountain muffins would have had the dedication to try, and try again. There's an important lesson there love. One we all forget when others make us think we have already grown up. But it's the motion of trying that teaches us, not the outcome. You mustn't let these bits beneath the table stain your memory of failure without result."

The ogre takes a cautious half step back, then seems to think better of it. He approaches the table instead, kneeling low beside the table, his enormous hands hovering uncertainly in the air between them.

"That's what the bitterness was," he says. "Wasn't it?"

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