With Liora's new purpose solidified and a proper weapon in her hand, the exploration of the cave proceeded. Rhys found it delightfully atmospheric. The quartz veins he'd idly created pulsed with a soft, internal luminescence, casting a soft glow that kept the tunnels from being completely dark.
He populated it with a few more Shard Hounds, which Liora dispatched with an almost zealous efficiency. Her movements were a whirlwind of starlight and moonblade, each strike precise and devastatingly final. She fought with the joy of a person starved who has just been given a feast.
Rhys made mental notes. Combat is satisfyingly visceral. Enemy 'death' animations are great. Loot drops need work. The Shard Hounds just crumbled into inert crystal, which wasn't very rewarding.
"We should come back later and see if they respawn," he mused aloud.
Theia, dutifully scribbling, added a new theological concept to her growing gospel. The Beasts of Shadow are eternal, destined to rise again in the deep places, a perpetual trial to sharpen the faith and blade of the Progenitor's chosen.
After clearing the "dungeon," they emerged back into the gentle, unchanging twilight of the Sanctum's skydome. Rhys felt a sense of accomplishment, the same low-key satisfaction he used to get from finishing a quest in an RPG.
But as the days (or what passed for days in this timeless place) went by, a new problem arose: boredom.
Liora was a zealous, if one-dimensional, sparring partner and guard. Theia was an endless well of fascinating lore and in-universe philosophy. But the island was, ultimately, finite. Rhys had walked every inch of it. He'd fished in the lake. He'd sat on his throne and thought about complex magical theories that had no application because he could already do anything he wanted.
The Sanctum was a perfect, beautiful, static paradise. And for a creator like Rhys, 'static' was another word for 'boring'.
"We need more... intelligence," he declared one 'afternoon' as he, Liora, and Theia sat in their designated thrones in the Grand Foyer. "No offense to you two, you're great. Top-tier. But we need... spies. Scouts. Information."
It was a lie, of course. He didn't need information. He just wanted to introduce a new character class. A rogue. An assassin. Someone to add a little stealth and intrigue to the mix.
Liora, who was dutifully polishing the moonlight blade of her sword, looked up. "Are you saying there are threats beyond this Sanctum, my Lord? Worlds to conquer? Enemies to vanquish?" The prospect lit up her eyes.
"Not exactly," Rhys said, trying to steer the conversation. "More like... secrets. Things we don't know. Hidden truths. We need someone who can walk in the shadows, someone who can find these things."
Theia looked up from her tome. "You speak of a master of secrets. An eye in the darkness."
"Exactly!" Rhys beamed. "A spymaster. We need a spymaster."
As he said the words, a now-familiar sensation pricked the air. A glitch. A flicker. But this one was different.
It wasn't like Theia's ghostly transparency. It was... sharper.
For a single, fleeting instant, the shadow cast by his own throne seemed to stretch, contort, and solidify into a human shape, before snapping back to normal.
Thump.
A faint sound, like a footstep that barely connected with the floor.
Rhys frowned. "Did you guys see that?"
Liora was instantly on her feet, Starlight's Kiss in her hand, her cosmic wings flared. "An intruder! How? The Celestial Weave is absolute!"
Theia clutched her tome, her eyes scanning the great hall not for a person, but for a disruption in reality itself.
"No, it's not an intruder," Rhys said slowly, a grin starting to form. The world was answering his call, providing him with a plot hook on demand. "It's what we were just talking about."
Another flicker. This time, near a far pillar. The shadow of the pillar deepened impossibly for a split second, and a slender, feminine arm reached out of it before retracting, as if testing the air.
Whoosh.
A breath of cold air, smelling of dust and forgotten places, whispered through the hall.
"It walks in shadows..." Liora breathed, her knuckles white on her sword hilt. "What kind of creature is this?"
"This is awesome," Rhys whispered, giddy. "The dream is introducing a new character with thematic flair. This is pro-level storytelling."
He stood up from his throne. "Alright, show yourself!" he called out, his voice booming in the resonant hall. "You're clearly not here to attack. Come on out. Let's talk."
For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, a voice seemed to emanate from all the shadows in the room at once. It was a woman's voice, smooth as silk, but thin, strained, and layered with a subtle, hissing static.
"...I cannot..."
The shadow at the base of the pillar rippled again. The female form appeared, more solid this time, but it was like watching a failing hologram. Her form flickered rapidly, parts of her turning translucent or dissolving into black mist for a microsecond before reforming.
She was tall and willowy, clad in tight-fitting leathers of charcoal grey. Her face was framed by a fall of straight, ink-black hair, and her features were sharp and predatory. But her entire being was unstable, vibrating on the edge of non-existence. She looked like a memory fighting to stay whole.
The Bleed was consuming her, but in a completely different way than it had with Liora or Theia. It wasn't eating her wings or her past. It was eating her presence. Her very concept of being in a single place at a single time was failing.
She took a shuddering step forward, her form flickering violently. "...bzzz...krrshh... Every step is a gamble... between here... and nowhere..."
Liora took a half-step forward, her stance protective, but Rhys held up a hand. He understood instantly. This wasn't a bug in the dream's graphics; it was the character's core concept. An assassin whose very being was fading, causing her to flicker in and out of reality. It was tragically poetic.
And he knew just how to fix it.
"Your problem isn't that you're fading," Rhys said, his voice echoing with the casual authority of a programmer rewriting a line of code. "It's that you don't have a domain. You're a secret without a place to hide."
The flickering woman stopped, her desperate eyes locking onto him. Her existence was an agony of instability, and this man spoke of it as if it were a simple puzzle.
Rhys smiled, a gesture that was at once kind and terrifying in its absolute confidence.
"You've been trying to exist in the light, and it's tearing you apart. You flicker in the shadows because that's where you belong," he declared. "So stop fighting it. I'll give you a new role. You won't just use the shadows. You will be the shadow. You won't just keep secrets. You will become secrecy itself."
He pointed a finger at her.
"From this moment on, you are Vesper. You are the Queen of Penumbra, the keeper of all things unseen, the mistress of the moment between moments."
VMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The resonant hum was not one of creation this time. It was a hum of redefinition.
Where Rhys's finger pointed, a ray of pure, conceptual darkness shot out and struck the flickering assassin in the chest. It was not evil. It was not cold. It was the absolute, fundamental principle of 'unseen'.
The flickering stopped. Instantly.
Vesper gasped, a true, solid breath. She looked down at her hands, which were now perfectly, completely solid. The static hiss that had been the background noise to her entire life was gone. She was stable. She was whole.
But she was also changed. She looked up, and her shadow, once a simple silhouette, now stretched behind her, deep and impossibly dark. And within that darkness, things seemed to move.
She took a step. It was silent. Utterly, supernaturally silent. She was no longer fighting to remain in one place. She now existed with an unshakeable solidity.
Then, to test her new nature, she stepped backward into the shadow of the pillar she'd emerged from.
She didn't merge with it. She didn't disappear in a puff of smoke. She was there one instant, and the next, she was simply gone. The shadow was just a shadow again.
Liora and Theia both gasped.
A moment later, she stepped out of the shadow of Rhys's own throne, right behind him, with the same impossible, instantaneous silence.
She knelt, her head bowed. Her voice, when she spoke, was no longer thin or strained. It was a confident, silken whisper that seemed to come from right beside your ear, no matter where you were standing.
"I am Vesper," she said, her voice full of a gratitude so profound it was almost a physical thing. "The Penumbra Queen. My daggers, my secrets, and my silence belong to The Progenitor. I will be your shadow."