Chapter 99: Not empty

Stefan's POV

The heavy door groaned open and torchlight spilled into the cell.

Dove stepped in first, followed by two Flowers. Her expression was the same cold, satisfied mask she had worn when she ordered me thrown down here. She didn't waste time on greetings.

"Chain him to the wall. Flog him until he explains what he was truly doing in Her Majesty's private quarters." she ordered effortlessly like she was always in charge and had no fault doing it.

Well, I wasn't going to allow myself be punish easily.

I pushed myself off the stone bench and raised both hands in a placating gesture, already shifting into the voice that had talked me out of worse situations than this.

"Before we get to the part with the whip," I said, keeping my tone reasonable, very conversational, "has it occurred to you that Her Majesty might not be pleased to return and find that one of her attendants had an innocent man beaten half to death on incomplete information?"

Dove's eyes narrowed.

"It would be far worse, if she returned and discovered I had done nothing while a trespasser who may have intended her harm walked free." she replied sharply.

I let out a short, dry breath. "You're stretching that a bit, don't you think? Has anything actually gone missing from her rooms? Was anything disturbed? Or are we just skipping straight to the torture because it's more convenient?"

"That is not how things work in this palace," Dove said flatly. "You were seen fleeing from the Queen's quarters. That is sufficient." She turned her head slightly toward the Flowers. "Make him stop producing more words."

"Fuck!"

Disappointment settled hard in my chest. The con hadn't even slowed her down.

One of the Flowers stepped forward but I wasn't going to give up yet. I tried one last angle, my voice sharpening.

"You're making a mistake. When the Queen-"

Apparently, Dove's commands ran very deep more than I imagined. A rough hand clamped over my mouth. The second Flower grabbed my arms and wrenched them behind my back. Cold iron cuffs snapped around my wrists and were locked high against the wall, forcing me onto the balls of my feet. The position stretched my shoulders uncomfortably. I tested the chains once. They didn't give.

That was when I knew I had reached my limits. I snapped inwardly at the System;

'Do something. You created this mess with that mission. Help me get out of it.'

[Host may endure the punishment and later use healing items from the inventory,] [An Incubus should be capable of withstanding physical hardship.] the System replied, calm and clinical.

I gritted my teeth, ready to throw the dirtiest curses the system had ever heard from me at it but the system chimed in, as if suddenly became afraid of what I could do next;

[However, If Host does not wish to experience the full pain, Dreamwalking remains available. While the connection is active, physical sensations in the waking world will be significantly dulled.]

I hissed under my breath. Not ideal. But better than nothing.

I hung there for a moment longer as I thought of what to do between the solutions the system had provided. The chains were biting into my wrists, my shoulders already starting to burn from the forced angle. The torchlight from the corridor threw long, distorted shadows across the cell floor.

I could hear one of the Flowers shifting her weight, ready to start hitting me.

I hated the idea of just taking the beating. It felt like admitting the planet had finally cornered me. At the same time, the math was simple: if I stayed fully present for every lash, I would be in no condition to do anything useful when the Queen eventually returned. Healing items could fix flesh. They couldn't fix a public record of me screaming and breaking in front of Dove and her Flowers.

Dreamwalking it was, then.

I drew a slow breath through my nose, tasting damp stone and the faint edge of old blood that seemed to live in the walls. I tried to let my body go slack against the chains, tried to ignore the way my pulse hammered in my ears. Sleep had always come easily to me but I wasn't sure if it would work now that I needed it as an escape.

"Please..." Yes, I was begging sleep to visit me immediately.

Somewhere behind my ribs, a small, bitter part of me noted that this was the second time in two days I had been forced to run from pain into unconsciousness. The System's path was starting to look less like power and more like a series of increasingly expensive survival mechanisms.

I pushed the thought aside and focused on the gray space I had seen earlier, on the memory of Jonquil's face, on the single useful door the System had left open for me.

The first real crack of the whip would come any second.

I closed my eyes and let myself fall toward it.

The first lash cracked across my back.

Pain tore through me. My body jerked hard against the chains and a raw sound escaped my throat before I could stop it. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to force my mind toward sleep the way I had done earlier, focusing on the gray space, on Jonquil, on anything except the fire spreading across my skin.

The second lash landed lower. My knees almost buckled.

The third struck diagonally and forced another grunt out of me. My breathing had gone ragged. I clung to the idea of the dream the way a drowning man clings to driftwood, pushing every thought toward that formless gray place.

Sleep, stubborn and late, finally took me on the fourth or fifth strike. The pain didn't vanish completely, but it became distant, muffled, as if it belonged to someone else.

I opened my eyes to the same endless, shifting gray I had seen before.

No Jonquil.

Only empty space stretching in every direction, the same colorless void that had greeted me the first time. I stood still for a moment, listening to the faint, ghostly echo of another lash landing on my body far away, then started walking.

There was nothing to mark distance here. No landmarks. No sound except my own footsteps, which somehow still existed even though the ground didn't feel entirely real. I walked until my thoughts started to loop...

Then something changed.

A shape appeared ahead of me where nothing had been before - a single, low house sitting alone in the middle of the vast emptiness. It looked completely out of place, like someone had dropped an ordinary cottage into a dream and forgotten to add the rest of the world around it. The walls were plain. The roof was dark. A single door faced me.

I slowed, frowning.

There was no reason for a house to exist here. The System had never mentioned anything like this when it explained Dreamwalking. Yet the longer I stared at it, the more solid it seemed.

I moved closer.

The door opened by itself before I reached it, swinging inward in perfect silence. Warm light spilled out onto the gray ground. I stopped at the threshold, one hand resting against the frame, and peered inside.

Whatever waited beyond that door was not Jonquil.

And it was definitely not empty.