[POV Liselotte]

  The garden of white and blue flowers seemed to vibrate in harmony with Tiara’s words. The sky above us, which had once been an infinite white, began to take on a deep purple hue, revealing nebue that rotated with majestic slowness. I felt small—not only because of the immensity of the ndscape, but because of the magnitude of the truth that was beginning to seep into my consciousness. This was not a simple dream; it was a transfer of knowledge that my human brain could barely process without breaking.

  Tiara leaned back in her chair, watching me with eyes that held millennia of wisdom and a hint of maternal sadness.

  "This world you now call home, Liselotte, is known in the higher pnes as Lyre," Tiara began, her voice resonating through the air like a perfect musical note. "Lyre is a beautiful, vast world full of potential, but it is a captive world. Just as I am the spirit of Earth, Lyre has its own pnetary spirit. However, she cannot speak to you. She lies in a deep sleep, imprisoned in a core of stasis by the two entities who procim themselves the owners of this pne: the goddess of creation, Gaia, and the goddess of destruction, Liliath."

  A chill ran through me that had nothing to do with the snow around us. "Imprisoned? But the Church… they worship Gaia as the mother of all. They say she wove the world."

  Tiara let out a bitter ugh. "Gaia wove nothing, little Lotte. She and Liliath are parasites feeding on a power that does not belong to them. But before I tell you about the present, I must tell you the truth about your past. About Edward Celium."

  I tensed at the sound of that name. Memories of the fire that ended my previous life returned with terrifying crity: the bck smoke, the suffocating heat, and the feeling of helplessness as the fmes devoured everything I knew.

  "That fire on Earth was not an accident, Edward," Tiara said, staring directly at me. "It was orchestrated. Liliath, in her tireless search for new 'toys' for her board, sent one of her ckeys through a dimensional fissure. They detected your potential, your unbreakable will, and decided you would be a perfect piece for their game in Lyre. They wanted to harvest your soul at the moment of greatest despair."

  I clenched my fists, feeling a cold rage grow inside me. "They killed me for a game?"

  "They tried to," Tiara corrected. "When I realized those entities were interfering with my world, with my children, I intervened. I could not save your physical body, but I managed to catch your soul just before Liliath dragged it by force into Lyre. In that brief instant between life and death, I gave you my blessing. I knew I could not stop them from taking you, since Lyre exists on a different dimensional pne where my authority does not reach, so I gave you the tools to ensure you would not be a victim."

  "And my friends?" I asked, my voice trembling. "They disappeared before I did. I never knew what happened to them."

  Tiara sighed, and the garden seemed to wither slightly in response to her sorrow. "They met a different fate. It was not Liliath, but Gaia who took them. She prefers clean abduction to the chaos of fire. She brought them to Lyre long before you, using them as pawns in her own pns. Gaia and Liliath maintain an eternal rivalry, but they share the same cruelty: boredom."

  I stood up from the chair, feeling the ground beneath my feet—the ground of this mental space—vibrate with my indignation. "You say they are goddesses. How am I supposed to face beings who control creation and destruction?"

  "That is the greatest lie of Lyre, Liselotte," Tiara said, standing as well. Her white dress rippled as if underwater. "Gaia and Liliath are not goddesses. They were not born of the cosmos, nor are they the personification of universal ws. Originally, they were human. Humans from an ancient civilization that attained forbidden knowledge. They managed to distort the ws of life and death, securing eternal youth and a power that, by absorbing Lyre’s vital energy, grew comparable to my own."

  "Human?" I repeated, stunned. "This entire realm, this entire religion… is based on two powerful humans who are bored?"

  "Exactly," Tiara confirmed. "To them, the inhabitants of Lyre—including you, Leah, William, and every soul on this pnet—are nothing more than wooden pieces on a board. They toy with wars, pgues, and prophecies just to see what happens. And because Lyre is isoted within its own pne, I cannot intervene directly to stop them, nor can they attack me on Earth. That is why they use the rifts. They are their bridges to steal what they cannot create."

  I walked through the garden, brushing my fingers over the petals of a blue flower that felt cold to the touch. Everything was beginning to make a twisted kind of sense. The rifts were not natural disasters; they were the tools of two bored tyrants.

  "Then what is this blessing you speak of?" I asked, turning back to her. "If they possess power equal to yours, what chance do I have?"

  Tiara stepped closer, and this time I felt her presence wrap around me like a protective bnket of frost. "The blessing I gave you is a fragment of my own essence. You are not a simple ice mage, Liselotte. I granted you an amount of magical power equivalent to my own pnetary life force, though your current body can only release a fraction at a time without disintegrating. The ice you wield is not frozen water; it is the manifestation of pnetary stasis, the power to halt time and energy."

  "Are you saying I carry the power of a pnet inside me?" I asked, staring at my own hands.

  "You carry the seed of that power," Tiara corrected. "That is why Liliath and Gaia are so interested in you, even though they do not yet understand the origin of your strength. They believe you are an error in the system or an anomaly they can domesticate. They do not know you are my answer to their crimes. You can wield ice with absolute will, Lotte. You do not need magic circles or chants like the mages of the Royal Tower; you need only your will."

  The garden began to glow with a blinding white light. I felt the connection weakening.

  "Tiara, wait… there is so much I don’t know!" I shouted, trying to cling to her translucent figure.

  "You must wake up, Liselotte," she said, her voice seeming to come from every direction at once. "The experiment at the quarry has drawn Gaia’s attention. The Church will not stop, and the rifts will only grow rger. Protect Leah. She is the key to awakening Lyre’s spirit and freeing this world from its false goddesses."

  "Leah? Why her?"

  But Tiara did not answer. Her image dissolved into a whirlwind of snow and light. The st thing I saw was her encouraging smile and the emerald gleam of her eyes.

  "Do not fear the darkness, Edward Celium," the echo of her voice whispered. "For the coldest winter is the one that precedes true freedom."

  I felt a violent tug at my navel, as if I were being ripped out of that world of snow at impossible speed. The pain in my head returned like a lightning strike, and the sounds of the quarry—the shouts, the roar of the rift, the csh of metal—burst into my ears like an explosion.

  I was no longer a piece on the board.

  Now I knew who the pyers were—and for the first time, I had the power to flip the table.