The chandeliers' flames steadied, their golden light pooling across the endless table and casting shadows that writhed like restless spirits. The library breathed—slow, vast, alive.
Orion sat rigid in his chair, newly lengthened hair brushing his shoulders. His fingers twirled a strand unconsciously as his mind tried—and failed—to contain everything he had just learned. The place no longer felt like a trap.
It felt like a gate.
At the far end of the table, Zhang Han Lu remained seated, regal and unhurried, as though the concept of time itself deferred to his convenience. His obsidian eyes rested on Orion with familiar amusement… and something sharper beneath it.
"You grasp the rudiments," Zhang said calmly. His voice carried through the vastness without effort. "Light. Form. Environment. Child's play for the truly adept."
Orion leaned forward despite himself. Curiosity overpowered fear.
"Adept?" he asked. "You mean… there are others? Like you?"
Zhang's smile thinned, sharp as a honed blade.
"Countless," he replied. "Across innumerable turnings of the veil, many have crossed into this realm. Most perish swiftly—devoured by their doubts, shattered by their own imaginations, or consumed by hungrier wills."
He rose.
The soft whisper of his robes echoed unnaturally loud as he paced along the table's edge. The mist recoiled wherever he passed, retreating like a beaten animal.
"But some endure," Zhang continued.
"Some ascend."
Orion felt a chill crawl up his spine.
"The masters of this place," Zhang said, spreading his hands, "are reality benders of the highest order. They do not shape illusion into matter."
The air shimmered.
"They rewrite the fabric itself."
Glyphs flared into existence around him—vast, radiant symbols drawn from the embroidery of his robes, now projected into the air like living constellations. The chandeliers flickered in response, as though intimidated.
"One bends gravity with a glance," Zhang said, voice smooth and merciless. "Mountains collapse like sandcastles. Entire realms are lifted into the void and set adrift."
The glyphs shifted.
A towering silhouette appeared—colossal beyond reason—standing amid a shattered sky, stars orbiting it like frightened birds.
"Another twists time," Zhang went on. "A heartbeat stretched into an eternity of suffering. Eons compressed into a blink."
The image dissolved, replaced by a figure cloaked in shadow, grasping radiant threads that writhed like serpents—fate, Orion realized dimly.
"Some reach beyond the physical," Zhang murmured, voice lowering to something almost reverent. "They devour possibilities. Erase paths not taken until only their chosen outcome remains. Others bind destiny itself—looping souls through endless cycles… or unraveling them thread by thread."
Orion's breath came shallow.
The library suddenly felt microscopic—an antechamber before a cosmos of clashing gods. His mind filled with visions of infinite realms colliding, of beings sculpting existence with careless cruelty, discarding worlds like flawed drafts.
"And you?" Orion whispered.
Zhang turned.
For the first time, something close to satisfaction glimmered in his eyes.
"Devourer of Fate," he said. "It means I have tasted the lives that never were. I consume alternate threads—the choices souls might have made—and claim their unrealized strength. What you have witnessed is merely the shadow of that hunger."
The air thickened.
The mist leaned inward, listening.
Orion felt impossibly small—a flickering spark before a supernova.
Questions spilled out of him in a rush.
"How do you get there? Is there a system? Levels? Skills? Some kind of progression? If imagination is everything, then what's stopping me from—"
Zhang laughed.
The sound echoed unnaturally, folding back on itself.
"Ambition already?" he said, amused. "Admirable. Foolish—but admirable."
He stepped closer.
Or perhaps the space simply collapsed to accommodate him.
"There is no gentle ladder," Zhang said quietly. "No benevolent system to cradle you with measured rewards. Only survival. You endure the trials of this realm. You outimagine your rivals. You devour—or you are devoured."
Each word struck like a nail driven into stone.
"The path to mastery," Zhang finished, "is paved with shattered wills."
Orion leaned back, heart pounding—not just with fear, but with something dangerous.
Determination.
The scale of it all was terrifying. Worlds beyond counting. Power beyond comprehension. And he stood at the very bottom, armed with nothing but imagination and fragile resolve.
"Survive first," Zhang advised, voice soft but inexorable. "Dream of bending reality later. Many have aspired to greatness here."
He turned away, robes swirling, and resumed his seat at the table's end.
"Most feed the mist now."
The chandeliers dimmed a fraction. Shadows stretched long and thin across the floor.
Orion sat in silence, pulse roaring in his ears.
Fear coiled in his gut—but beneath it burned something fiercer. A stubborn refusal to vanish. A hunger to understand. To grow.
Beyond the clearing, the mist crept closer.
Patient.
Hungry.
And somewhere in the vast, unseen multiverse, predators like Zhang Han Lu waited—eternal, watchful, amused.
Orion clenched his fist.
If this place devoured the weak…
Then he would learn how to bite back.