Lucid considered the offer. Remaining trapped inside his own mind with a possessive, defective creator sounded exactly like hell.
He carefully shook his head.
Alice looked genuinely upset for a second. The corners of her mouth turned downward into a sharp frown.
Lucid offered a quick, placating smile. "But how would my beautiful divine maiden be herself without the real world to observe?"
It was a horrible attempt at joking. He realized his mistake the moment the words left his mouth.
"Goddess," Alice corrected. Her voice did not hold a trace of its previous teasing warmth. Her tone dropped an entire octave, imposing a sudden, terrifying dominance over the immediate area. Lucid stopped smiling. A thick, suffocating tension suddenly replaced the gentle breeze of the green field.
"Do not call me anything else," Alice commanded. Her pale skin seemed to glow with a harsh, unyielding light. "Goddess. I am your Goddess."
Lucid wanted to speak back immediately. He wanted to deliver a sarcastic remark to deflate her sudden arrogance. But he considered his current tactical disadvantage. He did not want to anger this self-proclaimed deity while trapped completely within her absolute domain. He could only imagine the horrible outcomes she might inflict upon his physical body if he deeply offended her here.
"You are to address me in that exact manner," Alice stated, stepping closer until her chest brushed against his shirt. "For I am your creator. I am your everything."
Lucid stopped calculating. His innate, stubborn defiance flared violently in his chest. He could tolerate her teasing. He could tolerate her bizarre, flawless body. He absolutely refused to tolerate this specific delusion.
"You are not my creator," Lucid stated flatly.
The ambient temperature of the soulscape dropped instantly. The small pond behind Alice began to boil, sending thick plumes of white steam into the air.
"Excuse me?" Alice whispered.
"You heard me," Lucid continued, refusing to back down from the blindfolded entity. "You are not a creator. You just proved it yourself. You made a swan with no mouth because you do not understand how biology actually works. You made flowers with no scent because you only know what things look like from my memories. You are copying my homework, Alice."
Alice raised her chin. Her lips pressed together into a thin, furious line. The heavy iron chains wrapped around her torso began to rattle softly.
"I shaped your destiny," Alice declared coldly. "I granted you the power to survive."
"And I gave you a vessel to escape that tree," Lucid fired back. "We are parasites, Alice. We are bound by a contract. Do not stand there and pretend you are some omnipotent god who forged my soul from dust. If I die out there, you die in here. A true creator does not need a mortal meat shield to experience the rain."
The green field violently shuddered beneath his boots. The bright blue sky overhead instantly inverted, turning into a bruised, terrifying shade of dark violet.
Alice did not yell. She did not strike him. She simply raised two fingers.
A crushing, invisible weight slammed into Lucid's shoulders. The gravitational force of the entire domain localized directly above his spine. His knees buckled instantly. He crashed down into the green grass, his hands digging into the dirt to prevent his face from smashing into the soil. He tried to push himself back up, but the metaphysical pressure was absolute.
Alice walked slowly forward until the hem of her white robe brushed against his knuckles.
She looked down at him. Her posture radiated a cold, ancient ruthlessness that completely shattered her previous cute demeanor. She was no longer a teasing maiden. She was a Primordial horror demanding absolute reverence from a lesser organism.
"You are mortal," Alice whispered, her voice echoing from every direction at once. "And I am your creator. You do not know any better."
Lucid remained entirely quiet. He analyzed her words meticulously, turning them over in his mind while her physical weight pressed down upon his hips. If her declarations were simply true, then a person so completely lost in her own delusions could not be reasoned with through standard logic. He realized with painful clarity that she thought of herself entirely as a supreme god.
She simply did not consider the fact that Lucid possessed a full, complex life before he met her. To Alice, there was no previous life. His existence only truly began when he had awakened in the Scattered Realms and discovered she resided inside his soul. Even if she retained the factual knowledge that Lucid had lived on Earth, survived a planetary collapse, and lost everything he held dear, that information remained entirely irrelevant to her. It was something she aggressively refused to acknowledge. His mortal past was simply beneath her divine notice.
"I said those words because your soul, your very being, belongs to me and only me," Alice declared. Her voice echoed with absolute conviction, vibrating against the crisp air of the green expanse. "I do not care about anything else. You are the very reason why I bless this mortal realm with my presence."
Lucid looked at her face. His vision blurred slightly from a sudden, unwanted accumulation of unshed tears. "If you are so benevolent, then why does nobody in this world know about you?"
Alice shifted her posture. She sat up slightly, resting her entire weight firmly across his paralyzed legs. Her voice shook with an intense, terrifying fervor.
"The other deities have many threads," Alice explained. She raised one hand and gestured toward the empty blue sky above them, referencing the other Monoliths and Primordials. "They have many believers spanning across countless lands. But I have a single, radiant thread anchoring me to this world. That single thread is worth not just thousands, or millions, but every single human in existence."
She leaned down slowly. She brought her face dangerously close to his own, forcing him to look at the stained white blindfold covering her eyes.
"Lucid, you are my thread of fate that attaches me to the world," Alice insisted. Her breath brushed against his cheek, carrying a scent blending crushed damp grass with the heavy metallic tang of ozone. "You are so brilliant, vibrant, and shining that it is enough for me. I do not need anything else. I do not need another believer. You are enough for me."
She reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair away from his forehead. Her touch turned impossibly soft, contrasting violently with the intense obsession radiating from her posture.
"I do not just only love you, but you are a lamb that I have to take care of," Alice promised gently.
Lucid let out a dry, bitter laugh despite his physical paralysis. "And you are the shepherd?"
Alice shook her head slowly side to side. A dark, possessive smile spread across her pale lips.
"I am the shepherd," Alice confirmed in a breathless whisper. "I am the slaughterer. I am the butcher, and I am the one who shall consume the lamb."
Lucid felt his blood run cold. "I do not understand."
She reached down and took his paralyzed right hand. She pressed his palm directly against the center of her chest. Her skin felt feverishly warm beneath his fingers. He could feel the heavy, cold iron chains resting against her delicate collarbone, creating a jarring physical contradiction.
"You do not understand because this dynamic transcends mortal comprehension," Alice promised. She leaned her upper body forward, pressing her weight fully against his captive hand to ensure he felt the steady rhythm of her heart. "But you will understand soon. You will only truly comprehend it once you have fully accepted me."
She inched closer once more. Her expression looked more frantic and unhinged than he had ever seen before. The serene divine maiden had vanished, replaced by an entity starving for validation.
"Stop," Lucid begged. His voice trembled with genuine terror. "Please, wait."
Alice stopped moving immediately. She froze in place, waiting for his compliance.
"I understand," Lucid stammered out. "I really do."
His voice did not sound convincing at all. He scrambled to formulate a rational argument, desperate to deescalate her mounting obsession.
"You want me to devote myself to you like how a believer does to their god," Lucid reasoned aloud. "Like how a student should devote himself to his studies. Like how a parent should devote their time to their children."
Alice tightened her grip on his hand. "Yes."
Lucid looked up at her blindfold. "I need time with you. I just cannot process all of this at once."
She interrupted his sentence before he could finish his thought.
"Time is irrelevant when we have been together for millennia," Alice countered smoothly.
Lucid reconsidered his approach. Her perception of reality was fundamentally broken. He needed to strike at the core of her identity to break her current fixation. He remembered the cryptic warnings he had received in the physical world.
"Are you starting to remember your own past?" Lucid asked quietly.
Alice paused completely. She stared down at him in total silence.