The sun-drenched field of yellow carnations, the impossible blue sky, the weight of the Original Arthur's final, shattering words—'You are the true hope… the one I could never compare to'—dissolved. My consciousness, now clear, focused, and fundamentally, irrevocably changed, slammed back into my physical body with the force of a tidal wave.
I was back in the cold, alien sanctum. The reality of my situation had not changed. I was still physically pinned, bound by a cocoon of crimson threads woven through warped space, just as I was before my mind was pulled away. Alyssara's divine presence, a suffocating, possessive weight of "Complete Control," still dominated the very air I breathed.
