The gray fog drifted eternally through the silent halls of Sefirah Castle, clinging to the legs of the ancient bronze table like a loyal, phantom hound. At the head of the table sat a figure shrouded in shadow, his gaze fixed on the crimson stars pulsing in the distance.
The Tarot Club gathering was drawing to a close.
The members—now legendary figures in their own right—were deep in discussion. Audrey, Justice, spoke of the shifting psychological landscapes of the Loen Kingdom's new government. Alger, The Hanged Man, reported on the maritime expansion into the western reaches of the Sonia Sea. Derrick, The Sun, shared the progress of the New City of Silver's latest generation of Beyonders and how he spread the faith of Mr. Fool on different planets and civilizations(even thought Miss Magician had forbidden him from doing it).
Among them, the seat of The Hermit's faction felt particularly vibrant today.
He heard a prayer.
A prayer he always pays great attention to.
His sister.
Melissa had recently advanced to Sequence 4. A Saint. Klein watched her through the fog, a faint, genuine ripple of warmth touching his cold heart.
She was safe.
She was strong.
But as the members debated the movements of secret organizations and the rise of new civilizations in the Cosmos, Klein felt a familiar, hollow weight. He tried to think of a witty remark, a piece of internal lampooning.
Yet, the jokes felt recycled.
The humor didn't spark the way it used to.
The lampooning that had once been his anchor to humanity now felt like a script he was tired of reciting.
Divinity was a slow, numbing frost.
"That is all for today," Klein's voice resonated, layered with the echoes of a thousand secrets.
The members rose in unison, bowing deeply toward the head of the table.
"Praise the Fool."
With a casual wave of his hand, Klein sent them back. The crimson stars flared and vanished, leaving the castle in a sudden, ringing silence.
Klein didn't move.
He stared at a pillar of gray fog for a long moment before speaking into the absolute void.
"Amon. How many times have I told you to stop infiltrating Sefirah Castle that way?"
There was a ripple in the air.
A figure materialized on the edge of the bronze table, sitting cross-legged with a casual, annoying grace. He wore a classic black robe and a pointed hat, but it was the crystal monocle on his right eye that caught the dim light.
Amon adjusted the monocle and chuckled, his eyes twinkling with a mirth that hadn't changed in centuries.
"What? Are you worried that I might catch you naked or something, oh Great Fool? Honestly, I've been looking for a shower around here. This place is all fog and no plumbing."
"If you have something to say, say it," Klein interrupted, his voice tired. "Why are you here? You could have simply prayed."
Amon's smile didn't vanish, but it shifted, losing some of its sharp edge. He leaned back, looking up at the high, vaulted ceiling of the castle.
"Because for the past few years, I've been suffering from dreams."
Klein tilted his head slightly.
"What kind of dreams?"
"The kind where I am you," Amon said, his voice dropping an octave. "And you are me. Where the lines between the Error and the Fool are gone."
Amon shook his head, a rare look of genuine discomfort crossing his face. In his time as a 'Sufferer,' wandering the cosmos to understand the weight of the inevitable, he had seen many horrors.
But this internal erosion was different.
He looked at Klein, his monocle reflecting the shifting gray fog.
"I've explored the far reaches of the cosmos trying to understand what this all meant," Amon whispered. "It led me to a question I think only you can answer."
Amon leaned forward, his expression becoming strangely intense.
"Klein... have you ever wondered what resides in the very center of the universe?"
***
The gray fog of Sefirah Castle felt a world away as Klein stepped onto the bustling streets of Backlund.
The air was a familiar cocktail of coal smoke, expensive perfume, and the salty tang of the River Tussock.
His first stop wasn't the cathedral, but a high-end tailor in the North Borough.
Klein stood before the triptych mirror, adjusting the lapels of a double-breasted black suit. It was made of the finest wool, cut in a style that mirrored his old Tingen days, yet possessed a silent elegance that befitted a gentleman of his current "standing."
He placed a silk top hat on his head—straightening it with a practiced hand—and gripped a silver-encrusted black cane.
He looked at his reflection and felt a strange, fluttering sensation in his chest.
The Lord of Mysteries, a Pillar of the Universe, is nervous about a wedding. If Amon were here, he'd never stop adjusting his monocle in mockery.
He stepped outside and hailed a carriage.
As the wheels rattled against the cobblestones toward the North Borough's most prestigious residential area, Klein couldn't help but lampoon his own history.
'A mansion in the North Borough? Marrying into the Hall family? Alfred Hall, the decorated general and Audrey's brother? Klein leaned back, a dry smile touching his lips. Back in Tingen, Benson and I would have debated for three days over whether to spend an extra penny on mutton. Now, the carriage ride to my sister's pre-wedding residence probably costs more than our entire week's grocery budget from ten years ago. We've certainly come a long way from rye bread and thin soup.'
The carriage pulled up to a magnificent estate.
Evening had fallen, and the windows glowed with warm, golden light. Strains of orchestral music drifted through the iron gates. Klein stepped out, paid the driver (tipping a bit too generously out of habit), and approached the entrance.
He knocked on the heavy oak door.
A servant in a crisp livery opened it, looking Klein up and down.
"Good evening, sir. You are quite early," the servant said, sounding slightly harassed. "The household is still in a flurry of preparation. The official ceremony at Saint Samuel Cathedral isn't meant to begin for another hour, but if you mean to attend, you'd best head to Phelps Street now. You won't make it through Backlund traffic if you stay here."
The servant paused, opening a ledger. "May I ask your name? I shall check the guest list for the reception later."
The servant looked down at the book. "...Sir?"
She looked back up.
The doorstep was empty.
The servant rubbed her eyes, looking left and right into the foggy street, feeling a sudden, inexplicable chill.
"Must be the overwork," she muttered, crossing herself in the sign of the crimson moon.
Miles away, inside a shadowed alcove of Saint Samuel Cathedral, the air rippled.
'Damn it,' Klein cursed internally, straightening his top hat. 'I should have used divination. No, I wanted to do this 'the human way.' I wanted to be a brother, not a deity. But apparently, a brother who doesn't check the invitation is just a brother who misses the ceremony.'
He had used the "Door" authority to bypass the logic of distance. He complained to himself about the lack of "humanity" in teleporting, but his heart was pounding for a very different reason.
He slipped into the cathedral.
The air was thick with the scent of soothing incense and the soft, holy hum of the choir.
Rows of polished dark-wood benches were filled with the elite of Backlund—the military brass, the nobility, and the rising middle class.
Klein moved like a phantom, unnoticed by the crowd, until he reached the very front row, right near the altar where the candlelight was brightest.
He sat down quietly.
To his left sat a man with a slightly receding hairline and a mustache that had been meticulously groomed. He was dressed in a suit that cost a small fortune, but he looked like he was about to faint from stress.
Beside him sat a kind-faced woman holding a young girl with dark hair and curious eyes.
Benson, Lucy, and Alice.
Benson was staring straight ahead, his hands trembling slightly on his knees.
He felt a sudden shift in the air, a presence that hadn't been there a second ago.
He turned his head slowly, eyes widening as they landed on the man in the top hat.
Benson's breath hitched.
His face went pale, then flushed with a shock so profound he forgot to breathe.
His lips trembled, and a weak, disbelieving whisper broke from his throat.
"K-Klein...?"
Klein turned his head.
He didn't look like a God.
He didn't look like the Lord of Mysteries.
He wore the familiar, slightly mischievous smile of his very first sequences.
"After all," Klein whispered back, his voice thick with a decade of suppressed longing, "I couldn't miss my sister's wedding, could I?"
***
Klein sat at the head of the mottled long table, his fingers tracing the ancient, uneven material.
He let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to ripple through the gray fog.
"That was quite emotional, wasn't it?"
A casual voice broke the stillness.
Amon leaned against one of the towering stone pillars, idly adjusting his crystal monocle. He wasn't wearing his usual wide-brimmed hat, making him look strangely approachable—though the mischievous glint in his eyes remained.
"For a moment, I thought the 'Great Fool' might actually shed a tear. That would have been a high-level sequence 'Error' in your godhood, wouldn't it?"
Klein didn't rise to the bait.
He rubbed the edge of the table, his gaze fixed on the crimson stars representing his believers.
"Divinity doesn't mean the death of memory, Amon. It just makes the memories heavier."
He sighed once more, then stood up, his black trench coat swaying.
"Shall we get going? We've delayed long enough."
Amon pushed off from the pillar, his expression sharpening.
"Yes. It's time to unravel the mystery behind the dreams."
Klein nodded.
The most unsettling part is that it wasn't a symbolic revelation or a warning from the spirit world.
It was just a dream—a mundane, repeating sequence of three people meeting in a void.
It had no mystical weight, yet it haunted both the Lord of Mysteries and a Sequence 1 Angel.
"It's strange," Klein murmured. "But before we head, I need to visit an old friend."
"The red-haired kid?" Amon chuckled, his monocle catching a stray spark of light.
Klein reached out, his hand seemingly gripping the fabric of reality itself. With the authority of the 'Door' he opened a path into the conceptual "spider web" that underlay all reflections.
They stepped through the "Mirror," bypassing the dark, illusory passageways of the conventional Mirror World. Instead, they plunged into a strange sensation of rapid descent, arriving on a desolate, lifeless planet that served as the anchor for a very specific corruption.
A thin fog emerged. As they walked through it, the environment shifted.
Suddenly, two blindingly bright headlights flashed toward them. Klein squinted, instinctively raising a hand, while Amon stood perfectly still, a smirk on his face.
A rideshare car—an impossible blend of modern technology and mystical projection—screeched to a halt in front of them.
The driver, another Amon avatar wearing a chauffeur's cap, leaned out the window. He pointed to a golden sun ornament on the dashboard that was radiating an obnoxious amount of light.
"Ever since I stole it from the Eternal Blazing Sun, I can't turn the high beams off," the driver joked.
"Efficiency," the Amon standing beside Klein noted, opening the back door.
They sat in the back, watching the city streets of the Mirror World Trier pass by.
It was a surreal cityscape: skyscrapers and speeding cars superimposed over ancient cathedrals.
On a digital screen inside the car, a woman who looked terrifyingly pure—Mayor Cheek—was announcing a plan to eliminate crosswalks before the screen dissolved into static.
They passed a cathedral where a handsome, masculine priest—Alista Tudor—was performing a ritual for a crowd of mirror-people.
The car eventually reached the edge of the city, transitioning into lush green pastures and a gently flowing stream.
In the distance, an earthen pillar towered dozens of meters high.
At its peak sat a figure with three heads and six arms, silently enduring the wind and rain.
The car stopped in front of the Ol' Tavern.
Klein stepped out, his silver-headed cane clicking against the dirt road. He could hear the lively, passionate singing of a woman named Jenna echoing from within.
He pushed open the heavy wooden doors.
The tavern was warm, smelling of hops and roasted meat.
Lumian Lee sat at the bar, his blood-red hair vibrant under the dim lanterns. He wore a simple white shirt and black vest, his hand resting near a glass of La Fée Verte.
Lumian turned as the door opened.
His eyes, sharp and tempered by the horrors, locked onto Klein.
He didn't stand up immediately, but the tension in his shoulders eased as he recognized the "aura" behind the suit.
"The Empress is at home writing travel notes, if you're looking for her," Lumian said, his voice a steady rumble. He gestured to the empty stool beside him. "But I suspect you're here for something more complicated than a social call, Mr. Fool."
Klein sat down, the weight of the Shared Dream pressing against the back of his mind.
Amon slid onto the stool on Klein's other side, tapping his monocle.
"We're looking for a subway station that doesn't exist on any map. Care for a drink before we set off?"