The hours bled together as Ilyan, Ashwen, and Loup made their way through the winding, oppressive streets of Uvvvaek. The city had shifted yet again—no longer a collection of twisted buildings and elusive corners—but now, it seemed to have taken on the weight of their task, pressing down on them like the very air was made of secrets.
Ilyan was still holding the form, but now the weight was different. The edges felt cold, and his fingers tingled as though the paper were somehow alive with anticipation. Every step he took seemed to pull him deeper into the city's grasp.
Loup, as usual, was taking it all in stride. "Mon cher, you look like you've swallowed an entire barrel of gloom. What is this? The weight of the world on your shoulders?" He grinned and twirled around in the street, looking absurd in his jester's attire. "Don't worry, the truth will come to you. It always does, doesn't it?"
Ilyan didn't reply. Instead, his thoughts churned, a swirling mess of anxiety, anticipation, and confusion. What did it mean, this price? A truth unspoken? Was it something about his past? Or the truth about the relic itself? Was he ready to face it?
Ashwen shot a sharp glance at Loup. "You're being awfully cheerful for someone in a city that's practically a nightmare."
Loup winked. "Oh, but every nightmare needs a bit of a jester, don't you think? How else would you all make it through without me?"
"You're not helping," Ashwen muttered, but there was no bite to her tone. In truth, they could all use a little humor to lighten the unbearable tension hanging over them.
Ilyan stopped. The three of them were standing before a nondescript building. The door had no handle, just a faint engraving—a symbol of an eye, closed shut. It looked unassuming, almost… forgotten. Yet, Ilyan knew, this was where they needed to go.
"Is this it?" Ashwen asked, looking up at the door suspiciously. "What are we even looking for in there?"
"I don't know," Ilyan said, holding the form up. The words on the parchment had become clearer as he approached the door, the shimmering ink now almost static in place. "But I think this is where I'm supposed to face the truth. The realtruth."
Loup chuckled from behind them. "Ah, so now we enter the belly of the beast, oui? Well, let's make sure to stay polite. There are rules, you know."
Without waiting for any objections, Ilyan placed a hand on the door. The engraving beneath his palm shifted, the eye opening slightly in acknowledgment. With a soft click, the door swung open into darkness. They stepped through.
Inside was a room of absolute silence. Not even the hum of the city could reach them here. The space felt infinite—endless corridors stretching into an unreachable distance. At the center of it all was a pedestal, upon which rested an ancient book, its pages glowing softly with blue light. It was the only object in the room.
"Well," Loup said, still in his jovial tone, "this looks like a fun place."
"Stay sharp," Ashwen warned. "I don't like the feel of this."
Ilyan approached the pedestal cautiously, his heart pounding in his chest. There was something oddly familiar about this place, the sense that he had been here before. But no… that wasn't possible. He couldn't have. He had no memory of being here.
With a deep breath, he reached out for the book.
The moment his fingers touched the cover, the room seemed to ripple around them. The walls shifted like liquid, the air thick with the sensation of being pulled into something vast and unknowable. A voice—deep, resonant, and echoing—whispered through the space.
"What is truth, child of the Weft?"
Ilyan froze. The voice was not one he could place. It wasn't human, wasn't even from the living world. It was… something else entirely.
"I…" he stammered, looking at the book, but the words swirled on the pages, ever-changing. "I don't understand."
"Understand? No one understands. But you must speak it. Your truth."
The voice boomed, and the book began to tremble, as if the very weight of the question was too much to bear. Ilyan felt himself falling, or perhaps it was the room falling around him. He felt his heart skip a beat, his mind swimming with flashes of memories—memories he hadn't experienced. Faces, words, moments. The names of people he had never known, of places he had never been.
"No!" he gasped, his fingers digging into the book harder. "I can't—what is this? Who are you?"
"You know who I am."
The voice was calm now, almost soothing. The air around him shimmered, and he felt a sudden compulsion to speak, to confess. But he wasn't ready. His truth was still buried beneath layers of fear, of the things he couldn't admit to himself.
"I… I'm not ready," Ilyan whispered. "I'm not—"
"You are."
The voice boomed, filling his mind with unbearable weight. And then, the book opened. The words swirled around him, blurring everything into a haze of indistinct letters and phrases.
Ilyan fell to his knees, his head spinning as he tried to hold on to his sense of self, but it was slipping away. His breath hitched as his vision blurred, the edges of his reality pulling apart.
"Say it, child," the voice urged again. "Say your truth, or pay the price."
Tears welled up in his eyes. He didn't know what it meant. Didn't know if he could do it. But the room was suffocating him. The truth was pressing in from all sides. There was no escape.
"I…" he whispered, his voice shaking. "I... I was running. From who I was. From what I've become. I thought I could escape it, but now it's too late. I don't know who I am anymore."
The room shook. The voice grew louder, filling every corner of the space. "Acknowledge the lie, child."
With one last shuddering breath, Ilyan closed his eyes, letting the words spill from his lips, raw and unfiltered.
"I was afraid... of being nothing."
The words echoed in the room, and the walls seemed to shudder with a deep, resonating hum. The truth, his truth, hung in the air like a weightless burden.
Then, silence.
Ilyan opened his eyes, and for a moment, everything seemed still. The book lay before him, its pages still glowing softly, but no longer swirling with strange, shifting text.
He'd spoken it.
The price had been paid.
But the truth didn't feel like a relief. It felt like a door that had been opened to an even darker, unknown place.