“Diana,” Lucy said in a hushed, urgent tone as she drew up closer to the older Dream Knight’s side, “is it common for the Dreamer to interact with themselves? What should we do about this?”

  “I’ve had it happen before,” came Diana’s quick, efficient reply. “For what to do about this…”

  Lucy’s heart sank hearing Diana’s voice trail off into uncertainty—an incredibly uncharacteristic action for the Knight of Rebellion. Lucy asked, “Should we…get rid of the general? To prevent a paradox or something?”

  “No, don’t do that,” Diana said in a hurried, almost panicked voice, and Lucy could tell she was speaking from experience. “Not yet, anyway. Not before we find out the nature of their relationship.”

  “The nature?”

  Any response Diana might have made was interrupted by the clanking of metal and the thud of boots as the general stood back up from where he had been kneeling in front of Kenneth. Only then did it occur to Lucy that the two had been speaking to each other this whole time.

  “You are far too hard on yourself, my boy,” he said to Kenneth with a reassuring tone, hands on his hips with a smile. “I understand that it may be difficult to imagine yourself in my position. But the positive qualities required will grow with time, for as long as they remain within you. The boy Kenneth has expressed examples of his kindness, fairness, and noble intentions, has he not?”

  For this last question, he turned to Diana and Lucy, soliciting the testimony of Kenneth’s trusted guardians. Diana nodded sternly, while Lucy said, “Yes, of course. I’ve seen it all, even in my short time with him.”

  “Many thanks,” he said, flashing a grin before turning back to Kenneth. “So then, there you have it. Even others are privy to your true character, my boy. Now, are you able to look at yourself with greater gratitude for the path you have taken, the road you have forged, even against the winds of destiny?”

  Kenneth looked up at him, the tears in his eyes glittering with a pure, clear white despite the overpowering green light. Slowly, gravely, he nodded.

  General Hawthorn gave a sigh of satisfaction, gazing at his younger self with fondness. “It is a great relief that you now understand your own agency. You are not trapped. Your current situation is not unsalvageable. The sins you feel responsible for, the cross you carry on your mind always, might seem inerasable, and this viewpoint I understand. But no matter how dark the skies appear, no matter how stormy the seas, you must remember that you can change.”

  Lucy felt her own eyes mist over and a lump form in her throat as she listened to the general’s speech. In a way, she was watching Kenneth’s own mind heal itself, reconciling the mental foibles that had troubled the young boy for far too long. As she brought her hand to her chest, feeling truly reassured for the first time since stepping foot into this castle, she wondered if meeting the general and trusting in his word and grace was the best path they could have chosen in this Dream.

  “You can change,” General Hawthorn said, “and it is not a process limited to a select few. You can begin, at any time you desire. For as long as you achieve total salvation, all obstacles will be vanquished and your way shall be clear.”

  The soft, warm haze in Lucy’s mind began to fade, the green lantern light seeping into the recesses of her consciousness. There it was again: “Total salvation.” What did the general mean by that, and why did it make Lucy’s skin prick?

  “Diana…”

  “Wait.” Diana was also watching intently, her tall, still figure simmering beneath the surface. For once, both of them were inclined to observe carefully.

  “What should I do?” said Kenneth, his voice entirely too earnest. He gazed up with eyes full of infinite awe and yearning, as if wishing to be reformed into his older self then and there.

  “I am very glad you ask,” said General Hawthorn, his smile appearing wider in the lantern lights’ glow. “It it is not too complicated of a process. Behold.”

  Placing his hand on Kenneth’s shoulder, General Hawthorn had both of them turn to look at a space a little further down the hall, where a door nearly as large and ornate at the queen’s stood. Lucy did a double-take, for she was sure that it had not been there before. Nevertheless, the general walked Kenneth over to it with the utmost naturalness, stopping to peer up at it with that distant, inscrutable expression Lucy had seen earlier.

  “Beyond this door lies the Chamber of Redemption.” The general’s voice still held that affable quality, but there was more to it, something formless but undeniably present, like a shadow that had fallen over the landscape of his person. “Should you step through it, you will experience the most arduous and excruciating of trials. There will be no breaks, no moments of solace. But you shall undergo a lifetime’s worth of retribution, and at the end of it, you will become who you have always wished to be.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “That’s a load of bullshit,” Diana cut in before the general could draw another breath. “The only people who believe pain is necessary for a fulfilling life have more than a few screws loose.” She fixed Kenneth with a cutting, definitive glare. “Don’t listen to a word he says.”

  Lucy looked back and forth between Diana and the general in panic, unsure of how she should act given that Diana had said moments ago to back off but was now turning openly hostile toward him. Still, there was one thing she desperately wanted to know. “General, are you saying you went through that chamber?”

  “Your inference is solid!” he remarked, giving Lucy a smile that was truly pleased but looked unsettling in the harsh green glow. “I was but a lowly warrior all my life, wearing naught but plain armour so caked with rust and my own dried blood that it was darker and more unsightly than the dead stump of a burned tree. But behold my present attire! As the fires of the Chamber of Redemption burned away my sins, so too did it remould and embellish my armour with this fine golden sheen.” In a motion so quick Lucy could barely see it, he locked eyes with Kenneth again. “Commit yourself to complete atonement, and you shall be reborn anew.”

  “That’s…” Lucy gulped, recomposing herself, and took a heavy step forward with her Ideal pointed straight at the general. “You have it all wrong. Doing that, going through all that pain, it isn’t necessary for living the life you want!”

  The general laughed with great mirth, as if Lucy had just uttered a novel joke. “I appreciate your kind words, Lucy. Truly, I do. However, the world is not one that stops at the surface level. Everywhere one goes, that sin, that inescapable part of themselves, reaches out without one’s notice and taints the people and space around them, the very air they breathe. To live with sin is to live as an outcast to all existence, undeserving of others’ kindness let alone their attention.” The general’s voice slowed and delivered his words with a solemn heaviness as he spoke the latter claims, distant as though pulling from the records of experience.

  Then, suddenly, the general swept his arms out in a wide, sweeping motion as if to embody the entire world, and continued in a wondrous, exalted tone: “But look now upon my present situation! I, a mere pariah before, am revered and beloved by all, with a shining legacy that will long outlive the stains of mine history. It is the everlasting reward for eliminating the malady of my soul. So here, I say: better to accept it. Better then to excise it, to burn it away at all costs.”

  Lucy continued staring at the general, her eyebrows arched. The words of General Hawthorn—no, Kenneth’s older self—were deeply problematic and she firmly agreed with Diana’s command to heed none of it. But at the same, she detected no malice in his words and intentions. This was what Kenneth, truly, sincerely believed would bring him happiness. And that, more than anything else she had found out about the boy, was truly painful.

  “I…I can’t take it anymore!”

  Kenneth began sobbing, his tremulous voice reverberating through the hall, his hands raised up to his eyes as his body trembled. “I just…want it to stop…please, make it stop…”

  “Kenneth—”

  “There, there.” Again, Lucy was cut off, as the elder Kenneth was at the youth’s side in an instant and placed his hand on his shoulder yet again. “You are not wrong to feel overwhelmed. I remember the feeling well—along with my conviction to put an end to it, once and for all.”

  He looked up at the door to the Chamber of Redemption, and the boy looked up from his hands to gaze at it as well. An infernal rumbling tore through the air, and afterwards the door flew open.

  Lucy instinctively brought her arm up to her face as a gale-like wind whipped at her eyes. It continued to blow with wild intensity, but she slowly lowered her arm. There, beyond the ornate doorframe, was unrelenting swathes of green, rippling and distorting and threatening to billow out and devour the entire world.

  Green fire.

  And Lucy knew, in that very instant, that the colour of the flames was not merely arbitrary. All the lights in the kingdom glowed with the wicked green of the queen’s mystical power, and this Chamber of Redemption was overflowing with it. So then, going through the chamber was tantamount to one thing: submitting entirely to her will and allowing it to remould one’s very being.

  “The time has come,” said the elder Kenneth, his voice slightly shaking with awe as he continued gazing into the green flames as if they were the most wondrous thing in the world. With his hand still on the younger Kenneth’s shoulder, he locked eyes and said: “Step through, and like me, you shall—”

  The elder Kenneth’s eyes went wide, and instead of finishing his sentence, he coughed violently, blood splattering onto the stone floor. He struggled to turn his head, finding himself locking gazes with the towering Dream Knight who had just skewered him with her spear.

  “You will…regret this…”

  His voice faded fast, his body following suit as it fell to the floor with the loud clang of metal meeting stone. His once spotless gold armour was now pooled with blood, the deep crimson discernible even in the relentless green light.

  Diana pulled her spear out of her back without remorse, but Lucy immediately stepped up to her, boots clanking and her Ideal held tightly forward, and yelled: “How could you do that?”

  Diana glared at her and clicked her tongue. “Bloody fucking hell. You can’t be that naive, can you? I said we wait and see if his relationship with the boy is a positive one. Did telling him to go through that door to hell sound positive to you?”

  “Of course not!” Lucy yelled, her frustration reaching the point where she clenched her eyes shut and grit her teeth. “But Kenneth…he…he…”

  She pointed her trembling finger at the boy, who had been standing right by his older self during the unceremonious kill—this time, without Keilani’s hands to shield his eyes.