You're so obsessed...
The word vibrated in his mind. Obsession had taken his purest desire and turned it into a prison of childlike perfection. Kael absently touched the spot on his chest where he knew his Dormant Flame dwelled, feeling it almost dormant. The illusion was smothering him with complacency.
'It's not her.'
That golden hair would not leave his mind. Elara had never been blonde. Obsession works on desire, and a desire does not remember details.
Kael swayed, one foot in paradise and the other in prison.
Beneath Elara's voice, like the echo of an echo, another one surfaced, warm and reassuring, one Kael would have recognized anywhere. Solara, or what the Ash had drawn from her, reduced to a whisper.
Stay, Keeper. I began like this too: one single dream to save. Then a thousand came, then all of them. I stopped sleeping, stopped pausing, stopped being anything but my mission. Stay here while there is still time. Here Elara is safe, and no one else needs saving. Here you can stop.
Kael remembered the fall of Solara that he had seen. One dream, then a thousand, then all of them, until nothing of her remained. That was how she had begun.
The illusion was perfect. Too perfect.
Kael heard a thin buzzing in his ear, barely perceptible, but he recognized it at once: it was the one Lyra had warned him about. And then the bud on the sprout in his Dream Garden: still closed.
This dream was a beautiful deception. Elara was real only in his memories and his hope, but she was not here, not like this.
His Dormant Flame in his chest, though wrapped in that illusory peace, pulsed with unmistakable clarity. It was his compass. It was his reality. His deepest essence would not be fooled.
Kael clung to that beat. He stopped searching his memories for answers. He let the sweetness of the illusion wrap around him without letting it swallow him, and he drew the Flame up from his chest, along his arm, down to his palm.
"It's beautiful," Kael said. His voice, for a moment, trembled with grief for what could not be.
He stood still for a long moment, tears on his face, a breath away from her. One step would have been enough to stay.
The step he took was toward Elara, to see her up close.
"It's exactly what I always wanted." Then his gaze turned steady. "But you're not her. Elara has black hair."
The golden flame in his palm expanded into a clear, piercing light, with no shockwave, and Kael sought to reveal the nature of everything.
Elara's smile grew stiffer, her eyes less expressive. The garden's melody went slightly out of tune, and among the golden hair a black lock appeared, a single one, as if by mistake. But the illusion did not give way. The sun stayed over the meadow, the flowers on the ponds, the scent of lotus in the air. The Flame could show him the truth, and could not take away his wish to stay: that was his own, and the light could not put it out.
Fool, whispered the voice beneath the voice, heavy with despair and frustration. You refuse peace. You'll end up like me.
"Maybe," Kael said softly. "But you stopped looking at the people you were trying to save. I can stop: I have people who bring me back. My peace is in the truth, even when it hurts. And my mission is bigger than a single obsession."
He turned. It was the hardest thing he had ever done: turning his back on that laughter.
"Kael?" Elara had stopped smiling. "Where are you going? Shall we play hide and seek among the flowers?"
Kael did not answer. Where the path of white gravel had been, an arch of pale stone now opened, unadorned, and at its center pulsed a white light, blinding and pure, a core of dream energy. Kael felt its call, like a thread pulled taut in his chest.
It was the way out of the Veil of Obsession. He stepped through.
The garden stayed where it was, untouched, and kept calling him. Elara's voice followed him through the arch, smaller with every step, never quite fading. The last thing he heard was the voice beneath the voice, barely audible: Truth... only pain...
Beyond the arch the polished stone was cold underfoot, and a dim light filtered through cracks in the ceiling. The air was clean and tasted of minerals. It was an ancient place.
His legs trembled with exhaustion. His obsession with Elara had not vanished, and her garden waited for him behind that arch, with her voice.
Kael walked on anyway.
He found himself back in the Deep Foundations. In the hall there was only Lyra, sitting against a wall with her knees to her chest, her fingers drumming on the stone, never still. The moment she saw him she shot to her feet.
"You made it," Lyra said. She stopped a step from him, and for a moment seemed to search for other words. "Well done."
She seemed to want to say more, and the red of her hair had now appeared on her cheeks too...
"Thank you, Lyra," Kael answered. "Where's Anya?"
"Asleep. I made her: she wouldn't leave this spot."
Footsteps sounded on the stone from the far end of the hall. It was Elian, and Lyra straightened at once: her fingers, always in motion, went still.
"Eight out of eight," said Elian. "All things considered, no one has ever done it so fast. Don't let it go to your head: next time, anchor yourself to the Garden before you go in. This time you didn't."
"It called me by name," Kael answered.
"It does that to everyone, boy. That's why it's called Obsession."
Kael looked him straight in the eye. "Master," he said, his voice steady. "I'm ready. When do we leave for the Seven Veils of Dream?"
"Soon, Kael. Soon. The Ash is accelerating its advance. We can't wait any longer." Elian pointed to the far end of the hall, at the immense black crystal Dream Portal, dark and silent. "Tomorrow, at dream dawn, you will pass through it."
He left without another word, and Lyra followed after one last glance at Kael.
Left alone before the great Portal, Kael closed his eyes and looked into his Dream Garden. The Flame burned steady. It was still his Dormant Flame, though the name now fit him tightly. The bud on the sprout was closed, and one leaf near the base had turned yellow.
The scent of lotus had come in with him and would not leave. Far away, a little girl was laughing.
Kael did not turn around.