The throne felt too large for him.
Though he sat squarely at its center, back straight, palms resting lightly on the cold armrests, Seth Virell could not shake the impression that the vast chair had been fashioned for someone older, taller, heavier in presence. The marble seat was a size too great, its surface unyielding, and the echo of his movements was swallowed by the emptiness of the ceilingless hall.
Above him, there was only a vast stretch of indeterminate space—neither day nor night, neither firmament nor void. A place without sky.
Seth lowered his eyes, examining his fingers as though they belonged to another. His thoughts, however, were elsewhere.
Should I start a cult here?
The idea had come unbidden when he first realized the Final Page responded to his will. His tentative experiment—imagining grandeur and being rewarded with this hall and throne—had proven that thought carried consequence here. And consequence was temptation.
A hall. A throne. A stage upon which worship could be gathered.
He exhaled slowly, almost laughing at himself. "A cult…" he murmured aloud, the word foreign on his tongue.
The air carried the sound away without echo, as though even this space refused to give the thought back to him.
Seth's brows furrowed. He leaned into the thought instead of discarding it. If he truly did reach higher Ciphers… if he continued climbing the Ladder his Discipline had offered him… would he not need followers, believers, stability? A cult was not merely madness or ambition. In many stories, it was survival.
But survival of what?
The question intruded before he could restrain it. Survival of knowledge? Survival of his body? Of his name?
Or survival of his humanity?
His lips tightened at the word. Humanity.
He remembered the whisper of the mysterious figure in the earlier dream—you can do anything here, like a god. He had dismissed it, then half-believed it, then tried it. A hall appeared. A throne materialized. The words had not been lies.
Like a god.
And what were gods but men who had abandoned the burden of being merely human?
Seth allowed himself a dry chuckle that carried no humor. "If I continue down this road, if I touch the higher Ciphers, I will need to hold on to humanity. Or else I'll lose myself entirely."
He closed his eyes and sat in silence, letting the idea coil around him. The mental image of a cult came back unbidden: faceless supplicants kneeling in rows, chanting names that had never been his, raising hands in prayer to an altar that fed only emptiness.
A shiver coursed through him.
Then, just as quickly, he exhaled and dismissed it with a shake of the head.
"…Forget it." His voice was soft, the words meant more for himself than for any imagined listener. "I'm only a Cipher Nine. A Loose-End Finder. Nothing more. No need to trouble myself with these… yet."
The denial was both shield and reprieve. To wrestle with questions of cults, godhood, humanity—it was premature, dangerous even. Let those be matters for a future self, if such a self survived the climb.
Now… now there was only information to gather, truths to test, rules to learn.
He let his gaze wander the endless hall one last time, tracing its pillars that rose but did not meet a ceiling. The throne beneath him felt suddenly less comfortable, less alluring. He had extracted what meaning he could for now. To linger further was indulgence.
A new thought intruded, sharp and practical.
How much time has passed in Aetheros?
His body in that cramped apartment on East Drowsing Street—was it slumped in the chair, untouched? Was he being observed? Had an hour gone by, or a day?
The uncertainty gnawed at him more than the prospect of cults and thrones. Time was a currency more fragile than belief.
Seth straightened, pulling his hands back from the armrests. He whispered into the air, as though voicing the decision would finalize it:
"…Time to get out of this. Maybe I'll think about starting a cult later. For now—only observation. Only information."
He closed his eyes, let his thoughts retract from the vast space, and willed himself away.
There was no tremor, no collapse of scenery, no dramatic unweaving of reality. Simply a blink.
And the next instant, the throne was gone. The hall was gone. The Final Page—if that was truly what it was—had vanished.
Seth found himself seated on the familiar wooden chair in his apartment. His forearm rested against the desk in precisely the same posture as before, a pen lying untouched nearby, his other hand brushing against the cool glass of the oil lamp.
For a heartbeat he did not breathe. Then he darted a glance to the wall clock.
The pendulum swung calmly. The hands had advanced by less than five minutes.
"…Less than five." The whisper escaped his lips in disbelief.
All of that—the conjuring of a hall, the sitting on the throne, the reflections and temptations—compressed into fewer than five minutes in Aetheros.
He pressed thumb and forefinger against his brow, massaging the sudden dull ache that had gathered there. Was the Page's time his own, or was it false? Was time in Aetheros true, or was this—this return—an illusion?
The questions were inevitable, but answers eluded.
At length, he let his hand fall. The ache did not vanish, but dulled enough to ignore.
There was nothing more to be gained tonight.
The apartment's silence felt heavier than usual, the shadows in its corners thicker. The lamp flame flickered once, as if in response to his return, then steadied.
Seth let out a breath. "Enough."
He pushed himself up from the chair, its wood creaking faintly beneath his weight, and crossed the narrow space to the bed. The sheets were cool when he lowered himself into them, unfamiliar as though the place remembered an absence rather than an occupant.
Sleep, then. He needed sleep.
As he lay on his back staring at the ceiling's faint cracks, his mind could not help but whisper again: a cult… a throne… humanity…
He turned onto his side, shut his eyes with deliberate force, and ordered himself into silence.
Gradually, the murmurs receded.
In less than five minutes, he slept.