The chamber was dark.

But alive...

The occasional pulse from the blood coloured veins shimmered, shades danced and passed over the walls.

Hallucinations one might say, a person can never tell.

Beating...

A noise...

Thumping like a heart as the crystal hovered within the machine. Made out of flesh, wood, and metal.

What a horrifying design, and for most, they will assume Cahaya was behind it's creation.

In truth, this was created under Harapan's ideas.

The two main materials, wood and metal were easy to get.

But the third...

The flesh...

With the constant growth of the population, all types of people came. Kind, caring, lovable...

And the opposite...

Thieves, bandits, murderers...

A prison was there, built to keep the wrongdoers. But from time to time, Harapan required a batch of... 'test subjects'

Which then allowed him to create many wonderful 'inventions'

Then, the scene zoomed in.

Focusing on the lone figure in her dark dress.

Hair pitch black like the night sky.

Blood coloured eyes, deeper than her creator's hue.

And finally, the face that portrayed the level of beauty beyond mortal's limitations.

“The glance that I felt…” Cahaya began, her voice unsteady, betraying the turmoil beneath her composed exterior.

The words slipped out before she could stop them, carrying more weight than she intended.

Her expression shifted uneasily, her tone tangled with worry. “The main body… has awakened?”

She muttered the question almost to herself, unsure how to process the possibility.

It left her caught between two edges: one side pulled by a rising sense of excitement at the thought that her creator.

The one who shaped her very being, might finally have awoken from her long slumber.

The other side pulled by fear.

Suffocating, reminding her of every deliberate deviation she had made from the path laid out for her.

"I... I've betrayed the fate that was given for me... "

"An-and I... I tricked Angela to steal Klein from Lyshell's hand"

Then she said no more...

The realization pressed down on her like a weight.

If the creator had truly awoken, then all that Cahaya had done, her small rebellions, her decisions that drifted from the design meant for her, would come into question.

She doesn't know how Mize's thoughts operated. In truth, nobody would be able to know.

The unpredictability of a Goddess, a divine being that literally shaped a world size dungeon casually.

How would she be able to guess just how severe the consequences might be?

"I should've controlled myself before. The addictiveness to the luxury of self blinded me, and now I am in trouble"

Her chest tightened at the thought of this.

At that moment, it felt as though Mize could appear at any time, descending upon her like judgment itself.

The thought alone sent tremors through her heart.

Terror spread in her like cold water, filling every space inside her soul.

It stripped away her confidence, eroded the fragile balance she had been clinging to.

For a moment she doubted everything, her existence, her choices, even the beliefs she had once held firm.

Was she nothing more than a loyal hound, trained to follow the words of her creator without question?

Or was she now something else, something astray, a disobedient creature that had tasted freedom and, in that taste, betrayed the design of fate itself?

The questions burned, but the answers offered no relief.

She knew, with a clarity that cut deep, that she could never run.

There was no path of escape for her.

Even if she tried, it would be meaningless.

Mize’s reach extended farther than distance, farther than walls, farther than anything mortal or divine could withstand.

With a thought, Mize can easily kill her if she wanted to, and Cahaya knew this from the beginning of her 'life'

If Mize wanted her dead, a thought would be enough. A thousand miles would make no difference.

And that knowledge hollowed her, leaving her helpless in the truest sense.

Her fingers curled unconsciously against the air before her chest, as if she could seize something invisible and hold onto it.

"There goes my master plan"

Her eyes lowered, her thoughts circling the same line over and over again.

“Am I a loyal dog to Mother,” she whispered, her voice small, “or am I the one who betrayed fate?”

The words lingered.

Her gaze sank deep, her thoughts running darker, but the moment broke as the sound of footsteps echoed into the chamber.

Steps…

Steps…

Steps…

The sound pulled her back.

“I thought you said you would be at the laboratory,” came a voice.

Cahaya turned, her expression shifting instantly, masking the unease that had gnawed at her moments earlier.

She glanced at the opened gate and saw Harapan there, casually walking in.

His footsteps echoing.

The first half of the path leading up to the crystal was filled with an inch deep water.

Her eyes flicked to him once before she returned her gaze forward.

“Whenever or wherever I want to be,” she replied, her tone sharp distant, her volume lifted as if to bury the cracks from earlier, “is that something for you to question?”

Her voice carried arrogantly, not the troubled whisper it had been only breaths before.

Harapan didn’t flinch, 'Keeping up the tough act as always'

He mused.

Her tone rolled off him as though he had expected it.

Without comment, he crossed the room with casual deliberate steps until he stood at her side.

His chin tilted up slightly, his gaze fixed on the crystal suspended within the machine before them, its surface pulsing faintly as if alive.

“I figured something was troubling you,” he said, calm but direct. “So I came.”

"So I should be all cozy and comfortable now?"

"I suppose so"

Cahaya snorted lightly, dismissive, though the sharp edge in her voice softened. “Whatever you say, Child.”

She turned on her heel, her robe shifting with her motion, as though she intended to leave the matter there.

But before her steps could carry her further, another voice entered the chamber.

“Then, Child…”

The tone was different.

It did not belong to Harapan.

It was neither his calm certainty nor Cahaya’s restless sharpness.

It was something else, something that froze the air itself, as Cahaya's pupils dilated in horror.

“…Stay around for a bit, won’t you?”

Time itself seemed to hesitate.

Cahaya’s movement faltered, her body stiffening in place.

It felt as though her heart plummeted, falling from her chest into a pit she couldn’t see the bottom of.

A coldness swept her spine, hollowing her breath.

Harapan, however, did not stir.

His posture remained the same, his composure untouched, though his silence stretched longer than before.

Cahaya’s eyes flicked back to the front.

Slowly, cautiously, she sought the source of the voice.

When she found it, her throat tightened.

“C… creator…” she breathed.

“Mother…” Harapan’s tone carried the same.

The two of them saluted almost in unison, bowing deeply, the reverence ingrained in them from birth.

And there she was.

Floating above the ground, Mize appeared before them.

Her form carried a quiet touch of beauty and innocence: hair flowing freely in a mixture of black and white, and eyes, deep, ruby red, that gazed down at them and at the chamber.

“Quite the experiment you’ve put together here,” Mize said, her gaze sliding toward the crystal beating faintly within the machine.

Her voice was calm. “Quite the hideous path you’ve taken, Cahaya" Mize tilted her head as she spoke, her gaze fixed on the panicked Cahaya down below.

“C–creator!” Cahaya’s head lifted sharply from her bow, words spilling out before she could think them through.

But the sight that met her eyes was not anger.

Nor was it approval.

Instead, it was a smile.

A simple, almost gentle smile that seemed to eclipse everything else in the room, a smile that neither reassured nor condemned, but simply was.

Slowly, with unhurried grace, Mize drifted down from her place in the air, her descent as light as a feather.

And Cahaya, caught in that presence, could do nothing but watch.

Will Mother be mad at me?

Death even?

She considered all in a split moment...