The descent was a test of endurance.
Behind the translucent lift lay a spiraling stairwell that seemed to bore into the very foundations of the world. It was carved from a single vein of light-absorbing stone, a stark contrast to the shimmering surfaces of the upper tiers. The only illumination came from the Queen herself; Halesia's presence cast a cold glow against the damp walls as they descended deeper into the earth.
Asteria's knees throbbed. Every step felt like a descent into a predator's gullet. The air grew thick and heavy, smelling less of flowers and more of ancient, stagnant dust.
"Do you know what really lies beneath my kingdom, Asteria?" Halesia asked.
The Queen didn't look back. She glided down the stairs with a terrifying ease, her voice casual, as if they were merely strolling back through the gardens.
"I imagine it's more glass and valuables, yes?" Asteria replied. "That's usually what people like you bury the deepest."
Halesia let out a soft, airy chuckle. "Valuables. How narrow. It is where the heart of this paradise sits. The chime that spreads throughout Aethelgard to appease my subjects. I have to maintain peace somehow, yes?"
'Appease?' Asteria thought, her mind racing. 'She didn't say protect. She didn't say bless. She said appease. Like you'd soothe animals in a cage... Hah... is that what I am now? Pathetic, I really am pathetic.'
"Is that why it sounds like a funeral bell?" Asteria muttered, her grip tightening on the railing.
Halesia stopped abruptly. She turned, her sky-blue eyes catching the dim light in a way that made them look like shards of ice. "A funeral bell? Is that what you hear?"
Asteria didn't flinch, though her internal monologue was screaming for her to shut up. 'Nice one, Asteria. Insult the goddess's favourite toy while she's got you a mile underground.'
"I hear a sound that tells everyone when to breathe and when to sleep," Asteria said, her jaw set. "Back in the mines, we didn't have anything of the sort. We had the sound of the pickaxe. At least that was honest."
"Honesty is a luxury of the dying," Halesia said, her tone shifting into something uncomfortably philosophical. She began to walk again, her bare feet clicking rhythmically on the stone. "You think my subjects want honesty? They want the dream. They want to believe that the glass will never shatter and the light will never dim. My bell gives them that. It is a lie that allows them to live."
The Queen trailed her fingers along the wall, leaving a faint, glowing streak of her essence behind.
"Listen to me, little shadow. In your world – whatever dust-heap you crawled out of – you likely value the truth. But truth is a jagged thing. It cuts the hands of anyone who tries to hold it. Here, we prefer the curve of a well-crafted illusion. If you want to survive the things that are coming, learn to love the mask. If you show the world your true face, they will only ever find a way to break it."
Asteria chewed on the inside of her cheek. It was advice – genuine advice – wrapped in the arrogance of a Supreme. It felt like the Queen was trying to teach a wolf how to be a dog.
'She thinks she's doing me a favour,' Asteria realized with a jolt of disgust. 'She thinks her insanity is called mercy and a better reality? Is this how all powerful people are – absolute lunatics?'
"And what happens when the mask gets too heavy?" Asteria asked. "Does your Majesty ever get tired of the weight?"
Halesia paused, her silhouette flickering. For a heartbeat, the divine warmth of her presence vanished, replaced by a vacuum of absolute, bone-chilling cold. "The Queen does not get tired, she cannot allow herself to be tired." she said, her voice dropping into a register that made the stones vibrate. "The Queen endures. Because the alternative is the silence. And believe me, Asteria, you do not want to hear what lives in the silence."
They continued down in a heavy, suffocating silence. The air began to thrum. It started as a vibration in Asteria's teeth, then moved to her chest.
The stairs finally ended at a massive, vaulted corridor. At the end stood a set of doors taller than any they had passed before. They weren't made of glass nor gold; they were made of a dull, grey metal that seemed to groan under the pressure of whatever lay behind them.
The sound was unmistakable now.
Ding.
It was the chime. The same sickly, sweet, yet dissonant ring that had echoed in Asteria's ears the moment she had been dragged into this Nightmare.
Up close, it wasn't melodic. It was a physical blow. It felt like a needle being driven into her ear canal, vibrating against her brain.
Asteria stumbled, her hand flying to her ear. Her eyes jolted; the world turning into a kaleidoscope of structural fractures. She saw the doors, but she also saw the massive, invisible waves of sound rippling through the metal, traveling up through the palace and out into the city like a pulse of slow-acting poison.
Halesia stood before the doors, bathed in the golden light of her own making, looking perfectly at peace. She looked at Asteria's pained expression with a look of almost motherly pity.
"Do you feel it?" Halesia asked softly, her hand reaching for the heavy iron latch. "The heartbeat of my world. It's a bit loud for those with unrefined ears, I suppose. But once you stop fighting it, it becomes quite beautiful."
The Queen pulled the door open.
A wave of pure, unadulterated sound crashed over Asteria, threatening to drop her to her knees. This was the source. This was the lie that kept Aethelgard alive.
"Welcome to the Chime Chambers, little shadow," the Queen whispered over the roar. "Try not to let your soul shatter."
When the doors groaned open, Asteria braced for a physical impact. Instead, she was met with a rush of air so cold and still it felt like being submerged in a frozen lake.
The transition was violent in its subtlety. Her frantic pulse, which had been hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, suddenly slowed to a steady, rhythmic thrum. Her shoulders dropped. Her jaw uncurled. A terrifying, synthetic calm washed over her, an artificial peace that felt like a thick layer of velvet draped over a pit of spikes.
'No,' she screamed internally, but her face remained as smooth as the glass walls above. 'What is this?'
The room was vast and hollow, carved from the same light-drinking stone as the stairs. In the centre, suspended by chains of moonlight, hung a bell. It was massive, its surface mottled with a dark, iridescent sheen that looked like oil on water. It didn't swing. It didn't move. Yet, every few seconds, a faint, crystalline ting echoed through the chamber, followed by a long, heavy interval of silence. Then, the louder chime – the roar that had nearly broken her outside – pulsed from the metal.
Standing right next to it, the sound wasn't loud. It was deeper than sound. It bypassed her ears entirely, vibrating inside her skull and settling in her bones.
"What... what is this?" Asteria blurted out. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears – too steady, too relaxed. She tried to focus her eyes properly, but the moment she peered into the bell's essence, her vision fractured into a thousand needles of pain. It wasn't just power; it was a concentrated, sentient rot.
"You should understand it better than anyone, little corruption," Halesia said, her voice a warm caress in the freezing air. She walked toward the bell, her fingers ghosting over the corrupted metal. "It is just as stained as you are. You smell the corruption on yourself and call it a curse, yet you stand here, and for the first time in your life, you are truly still."
Halesia turned, her sky-blue eyes glowing with a soft, hypnotic light. "Tell me, Asteria. Do you feel it? The quiet in your blood? The absence of that frantic, miserable struggle to survive?"
"It's fake," Asteria rasped, her mind fighting the velvet fog. "You're just... drugging the air."
"Is it fake if the peace is real?" Halesia countered, stepping closer. "You are calm. You are relaxed. You are, perhaps for the first time, happy. Why would you refuse this? Why cling to the jagged edges of a world that only wants to grind you into dust?"
"Because it's a lie," Asteria shot back, her sharpness cutting through the forced serenity. "People out there think they're living, but they're just... echoing whatever this thing tells them to feel. You've turned your kingdom into a graveyard for the living."
Halesia's expression didn't harden; it softened into a look of genuine, twisted pity. "And what is so noble about screaming? You came from the mines, Asteria. You lived the truth. Was it better? Was the hunger honest? Was the cold more virtuous because it was real?"
She gestured to the bell, then to the shimmering city far above them.
"I have given them a dream where the sun never sets and the heart never aches. I have taken their suffering and replaced it with a chime. You refuse to submit because you think your pain makes you real. But in this kingdom, pain is merely a malfunction we have learned to fix. To refuse this peace isn't brave, child. It's a waste."
Asteria looked at the bell, then at the Queen. The terrifying calm was still there, pulling at her, telling her to just let go. To just breathe.
"If this is a dream," Asteria whispered, her teeth clenching as she forced her heartbeat to quicken by sheer force of will, "then I'd rather wake up and bleed than sleep in your morgue."
Halesia sighed, a sound of disappointment that chilled Asteria more than the air. "A pity. But the dream is long, Asteria. And the Chime always wins in the end."
Halesia stepped closer, her silhouette blurring as the light from the bell seemed to bleed into her skin. She reached out, not to touch Asteria, but to gesture toward the invisible ripples of sound.
"You speak of lies as if they are a poison," the Queen said, her voice dropping into a melodic, earnest tone. "But tell me, Asteria, what has the truth ever given you? It gave you the dust of the mines. It gave you the ache of an empty stomach and the cold of a bed made of stone. The truth is a cruel master that demands everything and promises only a grave."
She leaned in, her eyes searching Asteria's with a sincerity that felt more dangerous than her threats.
"Look at this city. My people do not wake in fear. They do not wonder if they will eat, or if they will be broken by the whims of a stronger man. I have traded their truth for a peace that never falters. I have taken the jagged, bleeding edges of human existence and smoothed them into glass. Is that not the highest form of love? To shield one's children from the very nature of the world?"
Asteria's throat tightened. The forced calm of the room was making it hard to find her anger. She looked at the bell – this pulsing, corrupted heart – and felt a terrifying pull.
'She's right,' a voice whispered in the back of her mind. 'Why struggle? Why fight for a world that treated you like trash? Here, there is no pain. Here, you could just...'
"It's fake," Asteria rasped, though the word felt heavy and clumsy on her tongue. "This isn't them. It's just... fake."
"And yet, the peace they feel is the most honest thing they have ever known," Halesia countered softly. "You hate this because it is generated by a power you do not own. But if the happiness is felt, does the source matter? If a man is dying of thirst and I give him an illusion of water that quenches his throat, have I not saved him?"
She reached out, her fingers almost touching Asteria's cheek.
"You are so tired, Asteria. I can see it in your eyes – those same, spiteful and hungry eyes. You have spent your whole life fighting for air. Why refuse a kingdom that wants to breathe for you? Why choose the scream when you could choose the song?"
Asteria stared at the Queen, her heart slowing to that unnatural, rhythmic beat. She knew this was the Spell. She knew Halesia was a construct of a Nightmare designed to test her, to break her, to lure her into the same delusion that had consumed the original Queen.
But as the Chime pulsed through her, she realized with a jolt of horror that the Queen's earnestness wasn't a trick. This was the most honest moment they had shared. Halesia truly believed she was a saviour. She truly believed that a gilded cage was better than a free wilderness.
"Because a song you're forced to sing isn't music," Asteria whispered, her eyes burning. "It's just a long, beautiful scream that nobody is allowed to hear."
Halesia's hand dropped. Her expression didn't shift into anger, but into a deep, echoing sadness. "Then you are more like Valerius than I thought. You would burn down a paradise just to prove you can still feel the heat of the fire."
She turned back toward the doors, the golden light around her dimming.
"Come. That fox is waiting for his reports, and I have shown you enough of the heart for one day. Let us go see the Vault. Perhaps Aris can explain the necessity of locks to someone who values freedom so highly."
Asteria followed her out, her body still unnaturally calm, even as her mind began to map out the fractures in the Queen's logic. She was terrified – not because Halesia was a monster, but because the dream she offered was so painfully, beautifully tempting.