Vex woke up leaning against a door.

It was a nice door, at least. There were no splinters digging into the scales on his back or the leather on his armor, which was a nice step up compared to some of the doors he'd had the misfortune of sleeping against in the past. Those doors had all been old, decrepit doors in ruins he'd been investigating, though, so the bar wasn't exactly set high on him for the 'sleeping against a door' category.

Part of that, to be fair, was because every time he fell asleep in an unusual or uncomfortable position, Derivan took the time to move him somewhere more comfortable—

It was that thought that jolted him properly awake. Vex snapped to his feet, his dagger held out in front of him to ward off attack; his breathing came quick and fast, and his eyes darted around, trying to pick out attackers in the darkness.

But there was nothing there. Only the flickering of firelight greeted him, magical flames slowly licking away against wood without consuming it.

The space around him ached with a strange sense of familiarity. Vex knew, almost instinctively, what he would find if he turned around.

He turned around anyway.

His back had been pressed against the door that was a replica of the front doors of the mansion that House Ashion lived in. A shining emblem sat embedded in the stone just above that door, the logo of the House — a slightly abstract depiction of a lizardkin mage glowing with internal mana, represented by light-blue flames lit around the mage.

It was a reference to the pain they went through for their power, too.

Vex had never been here before. He knew where this was — it wasn't the true entrance to his home. The air around him was too heavy with strange mana, and the door to the Ashion mansion was certainly not located in the middle of a dimly-lit room with no apparent entrance besides the door he'd been found sleeping against.

Which meant that this had to be the Ashion tower of the dungeon. Alternatively, it could be a very elaborate trap... But somehow he doubted that was the case.

Vex brought up the system interface, scanning through it for any messages left by his friends — but something in his mind buzzed painfully when he tried. He could see that they'd left something for him, but his connection with the system seemed... strange. Fuzzier than normal. Some result of his magic trying to interface directly with the system, maybe.

He couldn't contact his friends.

The thought was less worrying than it should have been. Vex trusted them, and this was where they said they'd meet up anyway — he could stay exactly where he was, and they would no doubt come and find him with time.

And yet... he felt a pull towards the door. Something inside him, telling him to open it and go through it; telling him that he would be home, if he only took a step through.

Vex paused, reaching for the door handle...

...then sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Really? That's not going to work," he said, speaking to the air and yet somehow confident he would be heard. "This place isn't my fucking home. Don't even try it."

With that, he sat on the floor, and pulled open his notebook.

If the dungeon wanted to confront him, it was going to have to come to him. He was just going to periodically check his system interface to see if he could contact his friends yet, and in the meantime, study the system of glyphs. He was pretty sure he was on the verge of some kind of breakthrough.

It took about fifteen minutes before whatever dungeon presence had brought him here to begin with showed itself. It almost startled Vex, who had just started to really get into his research — he was several pages deep into his notes by the time the door slammed open, and he was so flustered by how sudden it was that his immediate reaction was less combat and more "damnit, my notes!"

Which was about the moment he recognized that there was, in fact, a legitimate threat in front of him — because the man glowering in front of him was his father.

Not his real father. He was too large to be his real father, besides the base impossibility of the idea that Karix had somehow managed to make his way into the dungeon, compromise its spawning mechanisms, and sit in wait behind a large ornate door just to discipline him, or something. This was a dungeon creation, and it wasn't completely unheard of for the Elyran dungeon in particular to do something like this; it seemed particularly in tune with the peoples of Elyra.

But to find his father, and use it against him? That seemed almost too personlike to be an act of the dungeon.

"What do you want?" Vex said. He tried to keep his tone measured and controlled. If someone was doing this, like he suspected, then giving them a reaction was the last thing he wanted; they no doubt knew exactly what they were doing.

"You should rejoin our house," the false-Karix said. His tone was almost kind. "We've missed you."

"No thank you," Vex said politely. His faux father narrowed his eyes, then, and Vex felt a gathering of power —

— Fifteen minutes was a lot of time. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to practice some of the magic he'd just recently acquired.

Karix was gathering fire magic. Vex spun the paintbrush he'd been given, imbuing it with [Splash of Mana] and letting colored mana stream out of its bristles; he didn't paint his response on any particular surface, just in the air, the same way Derivan had before.

The glyph for Water spiralled into existence just a second after he thought of it, the mana spreading through his brush; it channeled his thought, it didn't require physical movement. And then he added in a touch of Light — because light represented expansion and growth, in some manner, the idea of something that could be lit and touch every corner.

Glyph of Watermist

This glyph represents the first depiction of the Great Waterfall, in the continent of Hureat, where magic has carved a hole into the earth so deep that the bottom cannot be seen from the top. At the bottom of the caverns, though, light magic shines from a guild of mages that have established a presence there — and the glittering sight of their light reflecting and refracting through the mist at the bottom of that waterfall created the Watermist, a prismatic fog that extends for miles around the Hole.

Watermist is a magical counter effect that has exceptional power against fire magics, completely suppressing any attempt to cast fire within its radius. It also induces a mild hypnotic effect with its prismatic rays, though this hypnotic effect largely serves as a mild tranquilizer; it cannot be used for mind control, or even for suggestions.

The mist exploded from his glyph. He'd tested it in smaller quantities before, channeling only a small amount of mana into the Watermist and observing what would happen; the tiny, prismatic cloud that emerged reminded him almost of rainclouds. He remembered back when he was a child, when the only phenomenons of nature he could observe from his room were the things that happened with the weather...

The clouds he liked the most were the clouds that came after the rain, when they would shine brightly as the sun shone off its edges.

Now the mist that emerged from his glyph was thick and dense; Vex didn't hold back. For all that this glyph claimed to suppress all fire magic, Karix was a powerful mage — and the dungeon's interpretation of him was even more powerful. The amount of mana being used to fuel the spell was phenomenal. It was enough to almost make him take a step back.

But he didn't. He was confident in his magic.

Karix's spell formed, a runic circle appearing in the air blazing with fire magic.

Just as quickly as it spawned, the mist consumed it. There was barely a sound beyond a quiet 'whff', rather like the sound of a candle being snuffed out.

Vex took the opportunity to take a step back and close his eyes; Watermist did not discriminate with its so-called hypnotic properties. The mist absorbed the sound of his footsteps.

"Vex?" Karix's voice was suddenly kind again; no doubt an effect of the mist. "What was that? That was incredible. You didn't... you did discover a new magic on your own, didn't you?"

Vex didn't respond. This wasn't his real father. This was the dungeon, pretending to be his father; creating an iteration of him based on —

— creating an iteration of him based on Shift. Based on what they knew of the system.

Which meant that on some level, this was still real. Shift didn't create things from nothing; it plucked ideas from different timelines, different interpretations of current reality.

"You should've told me," Karix continued. "That was incredible. You have to come back to the House, Vex. I was wrong when I said you couldn't discover magic on your own."

How many times had he thought about his father saying 'I was wrong'?

Except his father was still wrong, even now.

"I didn't discover it on my own," he said. "I had help from my friends. We found out about this together. I wouldn't have gotten this far without Derivan, either."

"Is that the armored fellow that was hanging around you?" Karix asked him curiously. His voice still hadn't moved — he was still speaking from the same position. Vex held no illusions about responding; every time he spoke, he was revealing to Karix where he was. He'd given in once, but...

...actually, he had a solution for this.

Communication and Water. The glyph of the Bubbling Stream.

It created a small river in the ground near him, and he took several steps away from it; the idea behind it was simple. It was like a sound illusion — it was something he could speak through.

"And my boyfriend, yes," Vex said, speaking through the stream. He didn't know how his father was going to react to hearing that he'd chosen a partner. His fake father, he reminded himself.

"You know you could've found even more if you'd had our resources," Karix told him, speaking through the fog. This time Vex saw that he was moving — he saw a vague shape shifting through the fog, and could trace Karix's voice moving with it, towards the stream. "Imagine how much you could've found if you were doing it with us."

Vex almost reacted. Because that was his father dismissing what he'd done on his own, in a way — that was Karix saying that he was still right. That what he'd set out to prove — that Elyra's system was broken, that his brother didn't need to be treated this way — was wrong.

But this wasn't his father.

He had to tell himself that again. He could have responded — the words sat in his throat, ready for him to speak them — but he found that they stuck there, unable to come out; his mind was a whirlwind of thoughts.

"Vex?" Karix prompted. "I'm not trying to hurt you. I feel like you're hiding from me. I'm just... look, we miss having you around in the house. We want you back."

Because he'd been their chance at additional glory. Because they'd pinned so many of their hopes on him, the child that had taken to magic like windbeaks to elemental storms.

Because they missed him?

There was a genuine sort of hurt in Karix's voice. If it had been anyone else saying those words to him, he would have taken them at face value; it was only his history with his father that told him otherwise. His father would say these things, and he would mean them.

"No you don't," he said quietly, through the stream. "You miss what I could have been for you. For the house."

"I—"

And for the first time, Karix paused.

"Is that what you think?" he said quietly.

"You've never given me reason to think otherwise." The stream burbled. "You won't even listen to me about Riss. I've been telling you for years that we don't need this stupid Principle. All it does is hurt our family. Lyssa flinches whenever she's wearing anything remotely tight. Helix likes pretending he's in charge all the time. Varon spends mana like it's water, until he passes out. Xirra lashes out in anger at anyone that looks at her the wrong way."

"That isn't my fault—"

"You don't think so?" Vex asked. He didn't yell the question — he said the words softly, almost dangerously.

And his response was silence.

The mist receded. Karix stood there, in front of the door, looking somehow smaller.

And then Vex watched as a dagger stabbed through that door, right through the center of Karix's chest.