The sound of the chamber door opening awoke him.
Zachary opened his eyes and was met with the cold feeling of the floor against his cheek. He tensed and quickly stood up, thinking he was still in the middle of being mangled, but realized the man was nowhere in sight. He scanned the room and found the veiled woman standing near the chamber door.
"Congratulations, Witness Candidate. I heard the ceremony is being moved up due to your outstanding performance," the woman announced in a professional voice. Zachary couldn't tell what kind of expression she wore behind that veil of hers.
"How long was I out?" Zachary asked, half-expecting her to dodge the question like last time. Fortunately, that wasn't the case.
"A little more than five hours," the woman said, glancing at the sky through the broken ceiling of the chamber. She added quietly, "The sun is beginning to set."
Zachary followed her gaze to the missing dome. The sky had turned a calm shade of orange, casting a gentle light over the chamber. Thin clouds hung above, lightly tinted with pink. His mind drifted to the last memories he had before losing consciousness—the enlightenment he gained about the man's fighting technique, the failed counter, and how his mind had failed him in the end.
"What happens next?" Zachary couldn't help but ask aloud.
"You will return to your abode, and tomorrow the Ceremony will be held beneath the stars, in the Sky Temple," the woman said as she stood by the door, signaling that they should begin their way back. Zachary followed with quiet steps, then couldn't help but speak again.
"You seem more talkative than last time." He wasn't entirely sure if this was the same woman from the previous day, but they likely had the same orders to deny his questions.
"Well, your Candidacy has been practically confirmed by His Holiness, the Present Witness, so we Lookouts can take more liberties. But please, don't misunderstand—these liberties only extend as far as our Sisterhood with you. You still need to control what you witness, especially this close to the Fated Day." The woman concluded, and by the silence that followed, it seemed she would accept no further questions.
Thankfully, Zachary didn't need more. Maybe the "Lookout," as she called herself, didn't consider her answers important. But for Zachary—who had zero context for his situation—they were invaluable. His mind had long since recovered, but still felt foggy, like waking from a long sleep that hadn't quite cleared his exhaustion. Regardless, he forced himself to awaken fully.
'Let's see, first—the most important thing. It seems the man who's been tormenting me these past days is the current Witness. Kind of obvious, considering our roles in this charade. Second, she sort of confirmed that there's more than one of these veiled women—Lookouts. A useless piece of information, but still information. Lastly… I really don't like how this "Fated Day" sounds.'
Not at all.
"We're here," the woman said, snapping Zachary out of his thoughts. She stood before his bedroom door. He glimpsed a slight smirk behind her veil—a smirk that gave him the creeps.
"The food is right on the table. You should rest, Witness Candidate," she said as she began closing the door. "Tomorrow is a special day," the woman concluded, locking it behind her.
Zachary saw that the bedroom remained the same as the night before and made his way to the table. The food lay in front of him: a variety of cold cured meats accompanied by pieces of cheese, a few slices of some exotic fruit he couldn't recognize, and something that looked like olives, along with a few squares of bland bread. Everything was accompanied by a vase of water.
'Kind of bland, but I hate to admit that it's pretty good,' Zachary thought humorlessly as he chewed the food.
'Fuck, I believed I had more time. It seems the main conflict of this Nightmare is this so-called Ceremony. And now I only have a day to find a way to resolve it. But wait! Wasn't I supposed to be shown a timelapse of the conflict?' Zachary sifted through his memories of the novel as he chewed a piece of bread layered with cheese.
'Yes, in every Nightmare the main cast experienced, they were shown the scene they were in during the present as they moved backward through the past.' With this, Zachary focused on his memories—not his, but the Original One's. That's when he found it.
The memory revealed the ruins of a once-thriving city by the sea. Towers and high buildings lay crumbled, broken like old bones. No human remains. Nothing to show that souls had once walked here, sharing the world with salt-kissed stone.
Then, time began to rewind.
The towers rose again, assembling themselves like giants waking from sleep. The buildings and temples regained their former grandeur—proud, magnanimous in their stature. This time, there were people. But something was wrong. They seemed misplaced. Their eyes were dull, their bodies weary. None of them bore the splendor of the city they inhabited.
Time kept winding backward. Scene after scene echoed the same truth: opulence coexisted with hollow eyes.
Zachary understood.
The city had not fallen to war, nor to some foreign invader or Cursed Being. It had fallen by its own hand—the slow erosion of the spirit. A quiet, devastating defeat of the soul.
'I think I understand,' Zachary thought as he took a bite of the fruit. It was a little sour, but it complemented the saltiness of the meat perfectly. 'I think just like the main cast's Second Nightmare, if I do nothing, the conflict will pass by itself. The Ceremony will be held, and the city will fall on its own. I might receive an Aspect related to the Storm God, considering the Ceremony is structurally tied to Him.'
Zachary kept thinking. Without noticing, he had finished his food—everything except the olive-like dish. With a slight frown and a moment of deep consideration, Zachary took a bite of one, and immediately regretted it. It was too late to spit it out, so he forced himself to chew and swallow, chasing it with a large gulp of water.
"Olives. I fucking hate olives."
With a sigh, he finished the water and continued thinking. 'Certainly, I could let the Ceremony take place and be done with this forsaken Nightmare, but...'
Zachary stood and made his way to the balcony. The orange sky was beginning to darken, giving way to faint stars. He noticed things he hadn't seen before. The balcony overlooked a cliff that ended in a white beach. To the left, he could glimpse traces of people—an old, demolished dock.
"My Intuition is telling me that I can't let the Ceremony happen," Zachary concluded.
"What to do, what to do," Zachary contemplated as he revisited every single thing he had experienced since falling into this Cursed World. Every thought, every hit, every word. That's when it hit him—something he hadn't noticed before. Something that had escaped him due to bad timing. But now, focusing on it, he was surprised he'd missed it in the first place: how the man, the Present Witness, seemed to hold conflicting thoughts about the Ceremony. More specifically, how he seemed to hope Zachary wouldn't participate in it.
The first time was just as he arrived in the Nightmare, when the Witness, filled with contempt, demanded he get his act together—even threatening to seek another Candidate. But just behind that contempt... a hidden emotion. A timid hope. A faint yearning. Zachary, at the time, hadn't had the presence of mind to delve deeper into its meaning, but looking back, it seemed as if the Witness wanted another Candidate to take Zachary's place. A political move, maybe.
But just a few hours ago, that notion changed. Zachary had been only a few breaths from passing out, but he managed to catch a glimpse of the man's expression—the excitement born from Zachary's ability to perceive the deeper layers of his fighting technique. And deeper still, behind those piercing blue eyes: regret.
This seemed to support Zachary's earlier theory. The man was proud that the Candidate had proven useful, but he subtly regretted that his preferred Candidate wouldn't have the opportunity. And yet... the last words the man had uttered before Zachary lost consciousness clashed with everything built so far.
"I'm proud of you," Zachary silently repeated.
Those words didn't hold much meaning for him. After all, he'd heard them often from family and friends in the other world. But for the Original One, they might have struck deep. So, in respect to him, Zachary placed them in the depths of his heart.
Those words changed the preconception he had built. The man didn't want to replace Zachary out of spite or politics—it seemed he held Zachary, or the person Zachary had come to inhabit in this Nightmare, in high esteem. He hoped for Zachary to lose his place as Witness Candidate, but if so... why?
"Once again, questions and more questions." Zachary sighed deeply. The sun had finally set beyond the horizon, giving way to a myriad of stars.
He contemplated his options carefully, and he steeled his resolve.
'I think there's only one way forward. Despite everything going on, I lack too much information. So there's only one thing I can do.'
Zachary placed his hands on the balcony railing.
"That is to witness what I'm not supposed to," he whispered—then leapt forward.
***
He immediately regretted it.
"Fuck!" he screamed quietly as he clung to the edge of the balcony. The cliff stretched out beneath him, promising a long fall.
'Fuck, fuck, fuck. I'm such a stupid fellow. How did I even arrive at this decision?' Zachary asked himself. But ironically, this was the only right answer. The Lookout had locked the bedroom door, and even if she was still nearby, she wouldn't have let him leave. So, this was the only path forward.
'Damn, I have no experience with rappel. Once again, why couldn't I study more useful disciplines than philosophy!' Zachary lampooned angrily.
But there was no turning back. He could feel it. This was the right direction. He needed to witness what the city below had to show him. And for that, the way was down.
'Deep breaths, don't look down, one step at a time, and everything will be all right,' Zachary told himself, trying to wrest back even a little control from his trembling legs.
With a short whimper, he began his descent.
Several hours passed. The descent had been a test of will. Zachary's arms burned with every pull, his fingers screamed as they gripped jagged stones and the occasional creeping vine. Dust clung to his sweat-soaked skin, and more than once, loose rock sent pebbles scattering into the dark below. His breaths were shallow, forced, and every pause stretched longer than the last. More than once he had to convince himself not to look down—not because of the height, but because of the truth waiting below.
At the end of it, Zachary was sweating furiously. As his feet finally touched the sand, he finally managed to take a calming breath.
His entire body trembled from exhaustion—but mostly from the fear and adrenaline he'd endured over the past few hours. He had certainly been loyal to his words: "one step at a time." Sometimes he descended only a few centimeters, then stayed frozen in place for several minutes.
"Fuck, I lost too much time descending," Zachary muttered as the trembling in his limbs finally subsided. He looked up at the cliff he had just descended—and trembled all over again.
"I'm not going to climb that. I don't know how I'll get back, but it definitely won't be from here," he said to himself in a shaky voice.
Zachary looked around and made his way toward the old dock. He was deep into the night now, and couldn't afford to waste any more time. Upon reaching the dock, he managed to glimpse an old stone trail that curved around the beach, leading toward a weary-looking hill. Zachary followed it carefully for a few minutes, constantly checking over his shoulder to make sure no one was following him.
He finally arrived at the hill and made his way to the top, crouching slightly.
There he saw it—magnificent towers, worn by the passage of time.
Finally, the city.
Zachary stood atop the hill. His breath escaped him as he marvelled at the city in front of him.
The vision he had didn't do it justice now that he was seeing it with his own eyes. The high towers pushed into the sky, the fruit of an architecture he found impossible to imagine as the work of human minds. The whole city flowed with harmony, blending organic designs that interconnected the towers with a geometry worthy of sharing the sobriquet "divine" with the Golden Ratio. Zachary couldn't find words to express the majestic city before his eyes, so after a few minutes of deep appreciation, he could only give a sincere whistle.
"Whistle... it certainly is a city worthy of a god, but I'm not here for sightseeing," Zachary said as he began studying the city.
"Joseph Campbell said that if you want to know what a society really believes in, look at what its biggest buildings are." This, in contemplation of how in ancient times, societies—being heavily religious—gave more weight to their beliefs. And now, in modern times, the biggest buildings tend to be banks, corporations, and commercial enterprises. With this in mind, Zachary looked at the city's horizon and quickly found what he was looking for.
A temple, with towers higher than any others in the city. The white stone shone softly, bathed in moonlight and starlight. Even from a distance, Zachary could make out the high-reliefs adorning the walls. He began to walk toward the city, and the closer he got, the more he marvelled at its scale. He finally reached its gates and, steeling himself, walked forward.
Zachary moved carefully through the streets and alleys, heading toward the temple he had seen earlier. Wanting to remain unseen, he crouched behind walls whenever he heard someone nearby. A few of these encounters occurred, and Zachary noticed something that made him feel deeply uneasy. But with no time to dwell on the emotion, he continued toward the main avenue.
He finally reached it. Crouching behind a wall, Zachary looked ahead, and what he saw at last gave meaning to the discomfort in his heart.
'This... These people... They...'
Zachary thought as he watched the scene before him. The avenue felt as if time had stopped. The streets were clean, the buildings unblemished. He saw a working fountain, spewing clear and sparkling water. The gardens were immaculate, tended by experienced hands. But... something was missing.
Will.
Volition.
The air was heavy, as if the city breathed without desire. The people walked without purpose, expressionless. With hollowed eyes, they maintained empty conversations. There was no violence, no chaos. But neither joy nor fulfillment. Just... an unnatural peace, without passion or conflict.
'These people... they just... don't care.' Zachary could feel it—these people were not broken, nor damaged. They were not being controlled by some external force. They were simply absent. He couldn't help but feel slightly sad, but he didn't linger. He looked for a few moments more at the avenue and made a risky decision: he stepped out into the open. And...
'As I imagined,' he thought, a strange feeling stirring in his chest. 'They really don't care.' The people didn't even bother to look at the foreign, disheveled man.
'I mean, the body I came to possess in this Nightmare shouldn't be a foreigner, but I've spent the past few hours climbing down a mountain. That should at least earn a few curious glances.'
With a shake of his head, Zachary stepped fully onto the avenue and made his way to the temple. It was easier now, since he didn't need to cross alleys. At last, he reached the steps of the temple.