The night was suffocating.
Only a day had passed since the Spell had claimed her sight. Now, Cassie lived in a world where the sun never rose.
Her parents moved through the house like mourners.
They had drilled a small, jagged hole in her bedroom door. It was a cruelty born of love. Every few minutes, an eye would press against that hole to ensure she had not tried to end her life. To them, she was a glass doll already shattered.
Sniff. Sniff.
The sound was pathetic. Cassie lay curled in a tight ball, hugging a pillow to her chest. Her eyes were squeezed shut, though it made no difference.
She did not fall asleep. Her mind simply fractured under the weight of the salt and the dark.
She passed out while the tears were still hot on her face.
A little time passed before she jolted awake.
Every hair on her body stood up.
A shivering cold washed over her.
She tried to sit up but the world had no floor. She tumbled off the bed, hitting the hardwood with a dull thud.
She scrambled backward, her fingernails clawing at the wood until she hit the corner.
Two walls met behind her.
They were the only solid things left in a universe of shadows.
The vision hit her.
She saw a human with a dozen eyes. He was falling between a world of black and white. It was a waterfall. She watched as his skin began to boil. He dissolved into the blackness, his eyes popping one by one. It was a visceral, screaming image that burned into her mind.
She sat in the corner, shaking, until the sun rose for everyone else. Her mother rushed in and found her huddled against the wall.
The next night, the horror changed. It became quiet.
She saw gazania flowers. They opened their petals in the dead of night. They were beautiful for a second before they began to rot. They turned into black slime, withering away into nothing. It was wrong.
The gazania flowers only open up in sun light, Afterall.
Cassie did not break down this time. She just watched the decay.
She hoped that if the visions were getting quieter, maybe the next one would be peaceful.
She prayed for a dream that did not involve death.
***
By now, she had stopped crying. The salt had dried up. She stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling she could no longer see.
The vision came again. She saw a dog. It was standing on a world made giant chains.
Food dropped down for the dog to it.
She watched the cycle. Sometimes the food came early. Sometimes the food was withheld until the dog shook with hunger.
The dog began to look at the place with a desperate, pathetic love.
It was being conditioned. Its freedom was being murdered by a piece of meat.
But Cassie noticed a glitch in the dream.
Why did the dog have cold eyes in end? There was no sadness in them.
The answer came the next night.
She saw a shapeless creature. It was dark to the core with sharp white edges.
It walked on top of the chains of the world.
It leaned down and made a deal with a ghost. For a moment, the creature disappeared from the ghost's vision.
Cassie felt a flicker of pity. She thought the creature was what remained of the man who had boiled alive. She felt glad the vision was not bloody anymore.
That changed in a heartbeat.
She woke up and shoved her hand into her mouth to muffle a scream.
She didn't want to wake her parents.
She didn't want them to see the monster she was becoming.
Her hands trembled so hard she began to tear at her own hair.
She leaned over the side of the bed and puked. The sour smell filled the room.
She finally understood. She was the dog.
She had been free once, but the food in the visions was conditioning her. The shapeless creature was feeding her futures so she would become dependent on the hand that fed her.
It was taking her soul and replacing it with a collar.
She stopped sleeping. She stayed awake until her eyes burned, terrified of the theater behind her eyelids.
***
Cassie stopped eating regular meals. She stayed inside the house. Even when her parents forced her to sit at the table, she would only swallow one or two spoonfuls of food.
Her mother held a spoon in front of Cassie's mouth. Her mother was smiling, but the corners of her mouth were trembling.
When Cassie did not respond, the smile stopped. Her mother began to lower the spoon back toward the tray.
Cassie moved her head forward and took the food from the spoon.
Her mother's eyes widened.
Tears formed in her mother's eyes, but she remained silent. She refilled the spoon immediately and held it out again.
Cassie continued to eat until she stopped and spoke.
"Mother," she whispered. "I have a question."
Her mother placed her hands on Cassie's cheeks. Her skin was shaking.
"I will listen to everything you have to say,"
Cassie bit her lip. She took the spoon from her mother's hand and began to feed herself. She chewed the food while keeping her teeth clenched tight.
"Suppose you are given a choice," Cassie said. "You can survive, but the person you are now is extinguished. A stranger wears your skin, and you remain only as a creature on a leash. Or, you could bite the hand that tried to claim you. You would disappear, but you would leave behind a mark that the master can never wash away."
Her mother moved from her chair and dropped to her knees on the floor to get closer to Cassie.
"Why are you saying stuff like that?"
Cassie did not answer. The silence confirmed her thoughts.
The loss of her sight and the terror of the visions had changed her.
The images of the shapeless creature had stayed in her mind until her original personality was gone.
The girl who lived there before was gone. What remained in the room was a ghost.
Or perheps... She was always this way and she just discovered it now.
***
The Ghost stood before the creature that had spent weeks trying to leash her soul.
She was no longer the dog who had whimpered in the dark, lost to the heavy and silent weight of his shadow.
She had returned to reclaim her mind before her life reached its end.
Her only motive was to prove that even his shapeless hands could be changed by the will of his victim.
"But sadly for you, I am the ghost."
She looked directly into Kiyotaka eyes despite her blindness.
He remained silent.
She had revealed the existence of her visions, but she had not yet stripped their true meaning bare for him to see.
The Ghost reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of shiny blue cloth.
She held it with both hands, her fingers trembling as she remember everything that took place.
"What you did was a cruelty far worse than slavery. You stole my ability to think for myself until every thought I had was just a reflection of you."
She began to fold the cloth, She folded it once, then a second time, and finally a third.
The fabric became a thick, cold, and straight band in her fingers.
"If I had stayed your dog, I would have eventually mistaken your leash for a hug. I would have felt the warmth you forced into my heart and called it love."
She raised the folded cloth to her face.
She tied it behind her head with a firm and painful knot. She was now blindfolded in blue, a silent watcher of his hidden sins.
Kiyotaka understood the message.
She was telling him that she could see through his nature without even looking at his soul core.
The Ghost smiled even as hot tears escaped from beneath the fabric.
"At first, I was drowning in these visions. But I have found the pattern in your chaos. Your existence is a secret language, and I have finally learned how to read it."
Kiyotaka noted her specific choice of words. It seemed her visions regarding him were a language unique to his life, a secret he had not known he was writing.
"In my first vision, you were a monster with a dozen eyes falling through a waterfall. You tried to reach for the white, but your own karma dragged you into the black until you melted away."
Kiyotaka listened as he reasoned that she was talking about his struggle to be a good man while being forced to be the bad guy.
But it was too normal. It was too simple for the hollow space in his chest.
He traced back through everything that had happened in the academy so far.
He found the answer, but he wanted to hear the execution from her lips.
"That riddle was the hardest to solve because I only knew it through whispers. It was your battle with Caster. You almost lost but stopped right before the line and then you finally chose to take it seriously, This is what the rumours say.."
Yes. That was what Kiyotaka had come to realize too.
It was easy for him because he had lived it. For the Ghost, who was blind, to find it was amazing.
"The rumors say you were almost beaten. But then you stopped pretending. You opened every eye and played with him."
But Kiyotaka could not understand something. There was no way for these two to actually match. Even with his flaw activated, he was still himself.
He did not like where this was going.
"Stepping into the white was your attempt to hide from the world. But your flaw reached out and threw you into the black. The black was the monster that finished the fight."
Kiyotaka found one mistake in this explanation.
He hated it.
Even with the flaw activated, he should still be himself. The world was not supposed to be this simple.
An answer was growing inside him, but he pushed it down.
He stopped thinking about it. He would look deeper into it in the dream realm later. Currently, it was only him and the Ghost.
"This vision is the sequel to my first vision. You have become a shapeless creature. You are a void of ink with only the ghost of a white edge remaining."
Kiyo- no not him...
The shapeless creature understood.
The shapeless creature understood what it meant.
By trying to go to the white first and melting into the black, he had become a mix where the black won. It was both a symbol and a fact.
He was searching for his own personality, and this was what remained of him after he melted. It must have been painful.
"I walked through a world of iron chains and saw five truths. In the second to last, you were walking on those links while holding a rusty crown."
The creature understood that the Ghost was not going to explain every detail. She would only explain what they meant and when they happened.
The creature believed the chains were perhaps the way he looked at fate, or just his Aspect.
But he wanted to believe it was fate. He had a good idea of what this vision was.
"A king who fears a peasant is already starting to rot. That is what the rust means. Caster is just a crown to you. An object. A tool you used until it broke."
A certain memory made its way to the creature's mind.
"That vision was the day you and Caster came to pick me."
The shapeless creature did not like this. He had failed to see so many hints about the dog.
When he and Caster went to pick her up, she had even called Caster by his name. Yet, he had not asked how she knew. He told himself she just knew more about the world.
He should have at least asked. Had he really missed such small details just because he liked being in control?
"Now we come to the vision that finally turns me into a dog. I saw flowers blooming in front of a moon and turning to ash."
The Ghost stopped for a second. She was thinking of how to describe the tragedy before she began.
"These flowers are meant to stay closed in the dark. But the moon is your destiny. It is the fate you pull others into."
She stepped closer, her voice shaking with the weight of the truth.
"You forced those flowers to open in the dead of night. They bloomed because they were [Embraced by Fate]. They paid for that moment of fake happiness with their very lives."
Kiyotaka could not help but think how much it must have hurt her.
To get such visions when she was at her lowest point. It made sense that the girl was scared and changed completely.
He was destined for the same thing. His flaw had taken away his power to be himself. He would not stay sane for long.
"A few flowers realized the trap and closed again. The rest melted away as they lost themselves in your light. Every flower died. Every flower but one."
She stood tall, the blue blindfold wet with the tears of a girl who no longer lived.
"There was just this one flower who stood tall. One flower who refused to die in front of the moon. That flower was me."
The shapeless creature noted the change in her tone. Until now her voice was a calm stream, but now it had a jagged edge.
She was angry. She could no longer hold back the flood of emotions these visions forced to the surface.
He looked at the girl and finally opened his mouth to speak.
"What is the ne-"
He could not finish.
Her finger struck his chest. She poked him multiple times, each hit a sharp punctuation of her rage.
The shapeless creature understood that even if she was no longer the dog, her body still remembered the master.
She was blaming him for every second of the dark.
She had changed, but the transformation was too sudden to be perfect. Beneath the Ghost, she was still a girl who had been hurt.
"This vision is about a dog. Someone threw food to her across a world of chains at random times. They did it until she forgot her freedom. She just sat there, waiting for the food all day."
He could hear nothing but hatred in her voice. Yet, beneath the hate, there was the hollow sound of a heart that had been shattered.
"This is how you trained me. Sometimes you came early. Sometimes you came a minute late. You made your timing a riddle. You made the dog wait for your arrival because she had nothing else to live for."
She clenched her teeth. She truly loathed the memory of that dependence.
Her voice was a weapon aimed directly at his silence.
"You did the same thing with [Divine Ledger]. Sometimes you let me use it for hours. Sometimes you took it away in an instant. You made me obsessed with the hand that fed me. You used my blindness as a hunger and fed me love to keep me quiet."
Her mental state was still fragile. She could not keep her mask straight for long.
She had not yet seen the true horrors of the world, only the visions of her own undoing.
She was a work in progress, a ghost still haunted by her own past.
She reached out and grabbed his cloth. Her hand bunched the fabric tightly.
"Do you realize how creepy it is? You copied my body language perfectly. You moved when I moved. You breathed when I breathed. And I was such a well trained dog that I never even questioned it."
The shapeless creature realized his mistake.
He had trusted [Embraced by Fate] more than he should have.
He thought his power would do the heavy lifting for him. He thought the dog would stay in her kennel.
If he had known she would become the Ghost, he would have put a flaw in his acting.
He had misplaced the girl once known as Cassie. He had treated a person like a variable in an equation.
Cassie let go of his cloth and stepped back. Her face looked like a destroyed portrait until she forced a smile through her tears.
"My next vision was about the Vow. In that one, you disappeared from my sight for a long time. It was exactly what just happened."
She looked towards him one last time. She spoke the next lines without stopping, her voice growing cold again.
"Then I saw this. You threw a dog into the cage of your own power. But there was never a dog. I turned the chains of your fate into a cage for you. I watched you trapped inside while I cried for the monster I had caught."
She waited for a moment.
"I could not decipher the last vision. It was just you. The shapeless creature sitting alone on the chains. You were looking down into the void, and the void was looking back."
***
There was no denying the truth anymore.
I had valued Cassie the wrong way. I did not underestimate her power or her mind.
I simply misplaced her within the geometry of my own logic.
She watched herself vanish into that role every single day. She let the mask of a dog consume her. She likely wanted to scream or run. Yet her resolve to prove me wrong kept her moving.
It was a level of willpower I was forced to respect. But something was fundamentally broken between us.
"Cassie, can we talk?"
She was fueled by a righteous, jagged fury.
I was the person she trusted most. Yet I had nearly handed her a fate more hollow than death. My actions were a deeper violation than any physical strike.
"What is there left to say, Kiyotaka? Haven't you already exceeded my visions? What more do you need? Do you want me to bark for you?"
Her voice was raw.
I could feel the depth of her pain in every syllable. She was still imperfect and bleeding from the trauma. I could have exploited that weakness.
But she would see through any new manipulation. It would only incinerate the last shards of our connection.
"I propose a Vow. It will prevent us from lying for even a second. You will know for certain that I am being honest with you."
I stared into her blue blindfold. I waited for her verdict in the suffocating silence.
She wiped a tear away and took a slow, shaky breath.
"Wow. You realized you cannot lie to me anymore. So you chose truth as your next trick. Are you ever honest with yourself?"
I felt a drop of cold sweat on my neck.
She had read my intent with terrifying precision.
I wondered if her Aspect allowed her to read minds.
She was only a Sleeper, so it seemed unlikely.
She just saw the things others were too blind to notice.
"I am being honest. I never considered you a dog."
That was the absolute truth. I never saw her as an animal.
Fate had simply interpreted my utility in that tragic way.
"Alright, let's believe that. But do you think it changes what you did? You still trained me. You still took advantage of me. Do you think I have no self respect left?"
Her ability to reason through such trauma was admirable. She was truly one of a kind. I could not be aggressive with her.
That would only prove I was still trying to pull her strings.
She was far too smart for that. She read the spaces between my words. She saw the monster I tried to hide.
"Just make this vow with me Cassie. I am offering you something I haven't offered anyone else. Certainty. I will also add a vow that there are no hidden motives behind what I will say."
Cassie heard me and a small smile made its way to her lips as she let out a small laugh.
She went quiet again as she said.
"Certainty is just another cage, Kiyotaka. You want me to trust your words because they are technically true. But your truths are sharper than most people's lies."
She stepped closer to me as her hands moved towards her blindfold.
"You never saw me as a dog. Fine. That is the truth. But tell me, did you see me as a person?"
She took off the blindfold letting me see her eyes again. They had turned a haunting, blood red.
That was a question which I had to answer, but I wasn't sure if I could survive it. I said it anyway.
"Yes. I saw you as the most dangerous opponent within this academy. I saw you as the only person in this academy who could actually see me. To me, that made you more than a person. It made you an equal."
She just looked at my soul core with a smile as she said again.
"An equal? You don't have equals. You have tools and you have obstacles. If I was an equal, you would have asked me to walk beside you. You wouldn't have broken my legs to make sure I stayed behind."
I didn't walk back. I walked ahead as I put my hand on her shoulder.
She yanked my hand away with force.
"I didn't allow you to touch me."
There was a part of me that wanted to revisit my worst moments to feel a hint of discomfort and use my flaw to my advantage.
But there was also a part of me that wanted to be honest.
I grabbed her shoulder again. This was basically forcing her again, but I didn't stop.
"Cassie, please listen to me."
Her hands reached to yank away again, but this time they stopped midway as she clenched her teeth.
"Fine. You are more powerful than me. I cannot throw away your hand if you don't want to. That is what you need, right? To force yourself on me."
Normally I reply to what she says logically, but this time I decided to ignore her.
"I want you to walk beside me."
Her hand wrapped around the hand I used to hold her as she tried to pull it away.
"Now you want this ghost to be with you? What about the dog that died? How would I know that you won't choose someone else in the future?"
This is not a trick. This is how it would have gone if I talked honestly.
I told myself that as I replied.
"You already know [Embraced by Fate] makes others open up to me. Your vision already told you that everyone who couldn't stop it will die. Truth to be told, I don't like to be alive this way."
I could still feel her putting pressure against my hand. An expression of pure loathing was on her face.
"And my flaw, it amplifies the emotions I feel and turns me into something I am not. I don't like it. Whenever I feel even something that indicates that I am alive, it gets taken away as my body begins to move and think on its own."
I didn't like where my flaw's explanation was leading me.
"I don't like others being open with me just because of my attribute. I want someone genuine with me that makes me feel that I am alive. I couldn't appreciate you before because you were also under it. It's not in my power. But now that you are outside of it, I want to be genuine for once."
Cassie did not move her hand. Her fingers curled into the fabric of my clothes.
Her knuckles turned white as if she wanted to tear the truth out of my skin.
She stood there for a long time with her head lowered. I could hear her shallow and jagged breathing.
Finally she let out a sound that was half laugh and half sob. It was the most bitter thing I had ever heard.
"Genuine?"
The word felt like a drop of acid. She finally looked up. Her face was inches from mine.
"You want to be genuine now? After you weeks carving a hole in my mind? You waited until I was dead inside to tell me that you are lonely?"
She shoved me back. Her voice rose with a raw and vibrating edge of pure hatred.
"You say you hate your flaw. You say you hate being a monster. But you used that monster to keep me close. You used your attribute to make sure I could never leave. Now that I have finally clawed my way out of the trap, you want me to stay and hold your hand?"
She stepped into my space again.
"Do you know what is truly cruel, Kiyotaka? You are telling me you are human just so I can feel sorry for you. You are using your own suffering as a new way to chain me. You want me to be the one person who sees you. But you never cared that you made it impossible for me to see myself."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"You say you want someone genuine. You say you want to feel alive. But look at me. Look at what you made. You don't get to have a genuine girl. You destroyed her. All that is left is the ghost you created. Ghosts do not have enough warmth to keep a monster like you alive."
She turned away. Her small shoulders shook with a silent and violent grief.
She stood in the dark for a moment before she turned back. Her face was a mask of cold and empty resolve.
"Fine. Let us make your Vow. I agree to whatever terms you want to set."
I looked at her. I expected a different reaction.
"I want to see how much lower you can truly drag me. I want to see the absolute bottom of your soul. If we cannot lie, then I want to witness the full weight of the creature you are. I want to see you fail to be human even when you are forced to try."
She held out her hand. Her fingers were cold.
"Make the Vow, Kiyotaka. Let us see which of us breaks first when the truth is the only thing left between us."
I took her hand as the chains appeared between us. This time I didn't bother talking about its divine light.
The chains connected our souls in a second and I made the chant.
I didn't bother caring about what the chant should be as she just said.
"I vow."
We just skimmed past all the runes until the Sacred Equilibrium came.
She waited for me to make the first Vow. Someone else should have been nervous that I would force them to make a different kind of Vow.
They would have been cautious, thinking what if I try to trick them.
But this time, I did none of that. Still, Cassie's eyes widened as she read the Vow.
Kiyotaka: If we are not thrown in the same region of the dream realm we will die. If we meet each other in the dream realm and after that any one of us dies, then we both will die.
I looked directly towards Cassie as her eyes widened. Her smile was gone.
She took a step back but couldn't, as we were holding hands. I didn't give her the space to retreat.
"If you hate me Cassie, then just die once we meet each other in the dream realm. You might have accepted death, but have you accepted leaving behind the desire to live?"
Her mouth opened but no words came out as her eyes shook. She must be trying to find the trick behind this vow.
There was no trick.
She must have been trying to find the deception behind this vow.
There was no deception.
I was really betting my entire livelihood on her.
"What is the meaning of this Kiyotaka? Do you really think I can live?"
I just walked a step ahead as she finally got the space to take a step back.
"Cassie, I didn't lose to you because I underestimated you. Not at all. I just misplaced you. I follow the philosophy of a coin. In that philosophy there are two sides of a coin. One side is heads, filled with righteousness. They have an ethical code and limits."
This was the truth. This was the only reason I couldn't see through her.
"The other side is tails. It is filled with those who will do anything to win. In my philosophy the head can never defeat tails. I had made the stupid mistake of putting you as a heads. But you are the true definition of tails, Cassie."
Her hand shook as she tried to free it.
"I am giving you the front seat to my demise, Cassie. If you hate me, you can kill me. Or if you can't, just give me another chance. Let's walk together."
Cassie you can't run away from this now. You might be the smartest person within this academy. You might be the tails.
I understood the risk of this. Just how risky what I was doing truly was, specifically against someone like you.
But you are still a young girl.
She bit her lips as she said.
"I vow."
Make me truly regret this decision Cassie, Be the monster that makes my life hard enough to keep me going.
Because the way things are currently going, I won't remain myself for long.
They are watching Cassie, I feel the stares.
We are being watched.
*********
Did you guys actually like this chapter? Be honest! Will you all go into withdrawal and miss me once I finally take a break?
HEAR ME OUT!
This was technically supposed to be the end of Dramatic Irony.
But you know what? I actually like this chapter.
In fact, it's the only chapter in this entire fanfic that I don't want to throw into a dumpster fire. It has its own toxic charm, you know?
I really don't want to ruin the vibe by dragging this specific scene out any longer.
Dramatic Irony isn't over yet, though. We've hit about 80% of the reveals, but that final 20% is lurking in the next chapter.
I'm going to try to speedrun the next update in under 48 hours because, believe it or not, I actually have to study. Tragic, I know.
Next chapter spoilers: It's time for that final vision Cassie mentioned. GGs in the chat.