The world tore open in light, and when Tibo blinked his eyes clear he found himself back on the first floor.
The walls were the same as before, papered in a pale cream that had yellowed with age, patterned faintly with ivy scrolls. The rain tapped against the window in steady rhythm, and the air still carried the faint metallic sting of old blood.
And there it was, the room. The same one he had left Cormac Ó Briain's body dangling from the room above. But the new sight stopped him.
The body was no longer swinging from rope. It instead lay on the bed, wrapped in white linen as though it were tucked asleep. The face was covered, the folds neat and deliberate. Respectful. Reverence.
Someone had gone to so much trouble even in their precocious situation to dignify the corpse. Tibo could smell the freshness of the soap, clinging on to the corpse.
He stepped inside and pulled a chair into the middle of the room, sitting with his knees apart, his hands clasped loosely together. His head bowed forward, black hair curtaining part of his glasses. The lenses caught the lamp glow as he turned it on.
Annoyance curled through him, slow at first, then coiling tighter.
He had failed to kill the son of his initial target. A single boy, yet the moment had slipped through his fingers like water. Those other two brats, Ruben Rayo and Corbin Monet, had gotten in his way, disrupting a job that should have been clean and easy.
And then there was Atalanta.
"The wretch never should have come." His voice was quiet, flat, as though speaking to an empty room. "I didn't need her gloating. Her smugness. I didn't need someone watching over me. I've been a part of the organization long enough now."
His words hung in the air. His leader was tough, fair but tough. He joked around a lot, and he was very lenient where he should have been brutal. So Tibo was almost certain that Atalanta didn't notify anyone of her involvement to watch over him. She was just here for her own entertainment. She was of a higher rank than he was, she was stronger than he was. So even if he wanted to, he couldn't get her to go or help while he was in this situation.
He thought of his plan he had mouthed off in anger. Kill everyone who stood in his way. It was tempting, and a path he believed was easier. But no matter how tempting it may have seemed, the organization only kills the target, he was not going to mess with the reputation if he was not in a situation that didn't need for it to be tarnished.
"There is no reason for me to still be here. Not anymore."
He rose. His chair legs scraped against the floor with a long groan as he crossed the room to the window. The storm beyond was a sheet of black, silver streaks of rain cutting down the glass.
He thumbed the latch and pushed it open. The gap was narrow, no wider than his shoulders, but he didn't need more.
His body shrank at his own command, scaling down until he was no bigger than a child's toy soldier. He stepped onto the sill, then dropped lightly into the night.
But the ground he expected never arrived. Instead, the world folded, bent, and spat him out onto the carpet again.
Tibo blinked, his body restored to full size, standing not outside in the rain but in the hallway, right outside the very room he had just left.
A vein pulsed sharp on his forehead, and his jaw clenched until his teeth ached.
He pieced it together with cold and quick thoughts of habit. First: The Phantasm outside was shifting them all every minute, cycling them like pieces on a board. Second: no one was allowed to leave the building. The attempt simply looped back, forcing them inside again.
The realization scraped at his patience. He pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling in long, controlled rhythm. Then his voice came low, edged with disdain.
"So. A domain."
He'd seen it before, Phantasms in the slow crawl of evolution. Creatures that reached the edge of something new. They cast their territory wide, creating cages of space and time, trapping prey while they consumed, absorbed or reshaped them.
Some grew so strong that they began to mimic humanity, speech, thought and cunning.
Tibo's mouth twisted. "I won't be here when that happens."
He turned back into the hall, smoothing the front of his jacket, his mind narrowing to one single course. "Find the core. It has to be inside."
And then he froze.
From the end of the corridor, a figure rounded the corner, Sera Weber. The stormlight caught in her hair, and her eyes burned sharp with fury. In her arms she carried Tomas Byrne, the man was bloodied and broken, his breath was shallow and his face pale.
Tibo stilled, though his pulse clicked once in his temple. He remembered the blow, the way he had left Tomas gasping, crippled but not dead. A simple inconvenience, meant to slow the man down, not erase him entirely.
And yet, here he was, dragged back into Tibo's path like a curse.
Sera's eyes locked on him, hard as blades. Her voice cut through the hall. "I know it was you. Tomas told me everything before he passed out."
Her tone sharpened into a shout, echoing against the walls. "Why did you kill Cormac Ó Brian?"
Tibo's lips pressed flat. A ripple of irritation stirred across his face.
Sera shifted Tomas's weight in her arms and drew her weapon from her hip with her free hand. The black steel glinted faintly in the stormlight.
"There are specialized rounds in this gun meant for people like you and me." She said, her voice was commanding and cold. "Answer me when I speak."
Tibo exhaled slowly, deliberately. He raised his hands in the air, wrists loose, fingers spread wide. His expression never changed.
"There doesn't need to be more bloodshed," she continued, leveling the barrel at his chest. "Surrender. Now."
Tibo let the silence stretch, his eyes catching hers through the glint of his glasses. His fingers twitched once, then he dropped his arms, limp at his sides, as if in mock surrender.
The minute struck.
The world detonated into white.
And when his vision cleared, when the light collapsed, he was no longer standing before Sera Weber and Tomas Byrne. His gaze sharpened as he registered the figures before him, Ruben Rayo, Corbin Monet and the child, Fionn Ó Briain.
Fate, it seemed, had no interest in letting him walk away.
***
The lounge had gone silent.
No one dared to look outside anymore. Instead, all eyes drifted to the thing in the center of the room.
It wasn't furniture. Not part of the hotel. A short pillar of stone had risen from the carpet as if the floor itself gave birth to it. From its crown jutted a ring of spikes, and from each spike dangled a grey, wormlike mass, limp and glossy, swaying faintly as though stirred by a breath no one felt. They looked like bait on hooks, wet and unclean, their surfaces glistened.
No one spoke at first. Finally Gareth had broken the silence.
"It hasn't moved. Not once since it appeared a few minutes ago when the Ego users disappeared."
Marta sat with her hands gripping her knees. She glanced from the pillar to Gareth. "What is it?"
"It probably comes from the Phantasm." He answered. He knew what it was, he had never experienced it though. He knew that it just meant the phantasm was supposedly going through a process of evolution.
Annelise's thin voice cracked the quiet. "So that's why… when we try to leave the room, we just get sent back here?"
Gareth nodded. "Yeah. This thing is probably what is holding everyone in the building. Think of it like an anchor." He exhaled through his nose, frustration roughening his words. "And this is terrible. Feeling useless in such a situation."
Marta's lips tightened. She looked down, then up at the others. "Then we just have to hope… hope that whoever's fighting right now can get us out of this."
Beside her, Mrs. Benedict, still clutching her husband's hand, murmured in a shaky whisper, "I only hope the Paladin are on their way."
Annelise shifted uncomfortably, her voice rising into the stillness. "I just hope Tibo is alright."
Marta blinked, turning sharply toward her. "Who is Tibo?"
The words seemed to hang heavier than they should have.
All eyes turned to Annelise. Even her own face shifted, surprise rippling across it as though she'd been struck. Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again.
"...Who is Tibo?"
***
The second floor of the hotel bloomed with a strange, humid breath. A wall of glass curved around them, beyond which stretched the aquarium-like garden that Brumália was famous for, a maze of translucent tubes, great tanks of pale water, and column of sprouting with alien flora that glowed faintly emerald, violet and molten gold.
Corbin didn't waste time. He lunged forward, his voice barking through the air. "Switches happen every minute! We don't have long. Move!"
Ruben gave a curt nod, but his sleeve tugged back sharply. He looked down to see Fionn clinging at his jumper, eyes wide, knuckles pale with terror.
"Everything's okay," Ruben told him firmly, crouching just enough to lock eyes with the boy. "Listen, if we're separated again, don't panic. Just make your way to the lounge. Stay there. Do you understand?"
Fionn's throat bobbled as he nodded, though fear made it small and hesitant.
But Tibo's voice cut the fragile reassurance of the two. It was low, but Ruben's enhanced hearing could pick up on it. "No more time wasting."
The assassin's hand lifted, flat and deliberate, aimed at Fionn like a judge's gavel. Ruben's gut twisted.
And then, from deep within Fionn's chest, something stirred. Ruben's frost-blue dragon, still burrowed inside on its search for the shamrock, surged outward. It clawed its way up, spectral jaws widening as it breached the boy's lips.
For a heartbeat it gleamed, hope embodied. Then the shamrock burst forth, erupting like shrapnel from its maw, shredding the creature to nothing in an instant.
Fionn was thrown back, coughing violently, his small body wracked with tremors. Ruben's heart clenched at the sight, but his voice was sharp. "Fionn, get out of sight. Now!"
"Ruben. Watch out!" Corbin shouted, and it snapped Ruben back into the fight.
Tibo blurred forward, blade swelling into existence mid-swing, slicing down with lethal precision. Ruben barely had time to breathe. One of his dragons manifested with a crack of air, hurling him skyward just as the strike split through the reinforced glass like it was paper. Shards rained down.
Landing lightly, Ruben flicked his gaze to the fractured pane, cheek twisting in dry amusement. Well there's our murder weapon.
The smell of Cormac Ó Briain's blood still lingered on it.
By the time his shoes touched the tile, Corbin was already there, charging into Tibo's space like a tornado given flesh. Ruben's mind flashed back to Corbin's warning, now they had forty seconds left.
His nails got sharper, like claws and he sprinted in, slashing in tandem with Corbin's overhead hammerblow.
But Tibo shrank. In an eyeblink, his figure dwindled to insect size, dodging the combined assault before reappearing behind Corbin, blade primed for his spine. Ruben's dragon snapped into being, a barrier of teeth, forcing Tibo to retreat with a hiss.
Thinking ahead, Ruben conjured a small hawk-sized wyrm, its wings flickering and he gave the order. Track him.
The dragon shot off, its body vanishing between tanks and columns, tethered to Tibo's presence like a bloodhound.
The seconds bled away. Ruben's chest rose, steady despite the burn in his muscles. At his side, Corbin rolled his neck, knuckles flexing.
"He's stronger than anyone else we've fought." He muttered.
Ruben's eyes narrowed, voice iron. "That just means we can't let him near anyone else."
Across the chamber, Tibo exhaled in obvious irritation. His voice is cool, stripped of pretense. "We never even had to fight. Now with this Phantasm in our way, we could have just worked on finding the key out of here… then disappeared from my life. But no… you wanted this."
Ruben's lips curled into a low, humourless smile. "Of course I did. Because I told Fionn I'd make the man who killed his father suffer."
The clash reignited. Ruben and Corbin surged past opposite pillars, their twin shadows converging on Tibo. The assassin shrank again, dissolving into absence, and in his place, a monstrous sword erupted, lengthening with vicious speed, stabbing to skewer both at once.
They ducked. Ruben vaulted forward, while the dragon tethered to Tibo revealed his location. He reappeared, normal size, weapon shifting in his grip, only to be met with another dragon's breath. Corbin barreled past, striking from the flank.
The room became chaos. Tibo slipped around a pillar, only to eat the wind of Corbin's punch, ducking low as he yanked a pen from his dress suit and expanded it to a jagged spear, thrusting for Corbin's jaw. Ruben's hand snagged his ankle, yanking hard.
Tibo didn't shrink, he spun with the drag, handstanding with eerie control, twisting midair. He shrank at the apex, only to reappear above Ruben, pen already glowing into a lance.
Another dragon bit down, jaws snapping the weapon to splinters, its palms clasping to form a platform. Corbin vaulted off its back, a war cry in his throat as his fist descended like thunder.
The strike smashed air itself, a shockwave tearing across the garden-room, sending Tibo skidding back. He hadn't shrunk, the blast made it too unpredictable. His jaw clenched.
Ruben seized the opening. He snapped another command, his dragon exhaling a cyclone that hurled Corbin straight toward their target. The Paladin rocketed like a missile, fists primed.
But Tibo, ever resourceful, kicked off a shoe, flicking it toward Corbin. Mid-flight, it ballooned into a grotesque boot the size of a cartwheel, slamming down to intercept, Corbin twisted into his punch anyway, colliding with it. The impact detonated, half the glass wall disintegrating outward into the storm.
Dust and fractured flora filled the air. Ruben squinted, chasing with his senses, the dragon tether leading him through the haze. His pulse jolted, too late. The scent was behind him.
No time to dodge. No time to block.
Instead, Ruben gave another command, summoning a scaled wisp from his trouser leg. The dragon lunged upward just as Tibo's dagger elongated toward his ribs, seizing the assassin's leg in a death grip.
And then…
White light consumed them.
The minute was up.
The world remade itself around them, and Ruben blinked through the aftershock. Chandeliers above. Shattered tables. The dining hall on the third floor.
Tibo stood at the center, confusion flickering over his usually impassive face. Ruben before him, Corbin behind him, both closing in like predators.
"Why?" Tibo muttered, disbelief cracking his composure.
Ruben's laugh was sharp and mocking. "Because I figured something out. Fionn stayed with me last time because I was holding him. And my dragons?" His eyes gleamed. "They're a part of me. If they're touching you, you're coming along for the ride."
He lifted a finger, pointing down.
On Tibo's exposed sock, a dragon no larger than a coin clamped down, its tiny jaws dug deep into fabric and flesh.
Ruben snapped his fingers.
The dragon swelled in an instant, its form slicing upward in a sudden arc. The edge of its talons carved across Tibo's cheek, drawing the first true blood from the assassin.
And he bled.