Chapter 58: The Damn Showcase Mannequin

  “So,” the figure said, its voice resonating directly inside her awareness, “you found me, Lily Carter.”

  The soul that hovered behind Sevrin slowly uncrossed its legs and extended them toward an invisible ground. The mannequin’s body straightened with slowness, the ink stains on its face flowing and rearranging as it stood to its full height. Then it moved, gliding past Sevrin’s suspended form, until it came to a halt directly in front of Lily. It was roughly her height, close enough that she could feel its presence pressing against her senses, and its shifting, painted face stared straight at her, as if it knew exactly where her eyes were.

  “Indeed,” Lily said after a brief pause, forcing her voice to remain steady. “I did find you. And now I would like to know who you are, and how you know my name. My real name.”

  She was keenly aware that this was not how she had imagined this would go. Not that she had ever had a clear idea of what speaking to souls would actually feel like. Reading about it in skill or item descriptions was one thing. Binding physical blood to spiritual essence and forcing perception across that boundary in real life was another entirely.

  She had known this would be strange, but nothing she had imagined came close to this.

  The mannequin twitched, just slightly, and the ink stains on its face pulled together into something resembling a grin.

  “Oh, that part is easy,” it said, its voice carrying a note of amusement. “And I think you have already realized it yourself. I am the one who pulled the strings of fate to bring you here.”

  Lily narrowed her eyes and tried to meet its gaze, or at least what she assumed were its eyes, even though they were nothing more than shifting black ink on a smooth, pale surface.

  Of course you are, she thought dryly. I really should have ignored them all and gone back to sleep. I do not need to be a genius to see that this is not a normal soul, and that whatever this thing is, it is enjoying this far too much.

  Outwardly, she only tilted her head slightly and let an edge of irony slip into her voice.

  “Ah,” she said. “So, you are one of those types. The secretive, mysterious one who expects me to pry every scrap of information out of you with questions.”

  The grin widened, the ink stretching unnaturally.

  “You got me,” the mannequin said, and then it let out a low chuckle that seemed to ripple through the empty space around them. “But even if I wanted to, I could not tell you everything. Still, I am glad we finally meet. So let me explain what I can, while we still have time.”

  Lily resisted the urge to snap back at it, or to immediately unleash the questions that burned at the front of her mind. Why she was here. Why she had died. Why she had been dragged into this world instead of being allowed to stay on Earth. Why she was inside the body of her game avatar.

  Instead, she simply nodded once, slowly, signaling for it to continue.

  The mannequin tilted its head in a jerky, unsettling motion.

  “Oh, where to begin,” it murmured. “Ah, yes. Let us start with something simple. Imagine that every story, every world explored in fiction, in games, in movies from your world, and even everything you merely imagine, exists somewhere out there.”

  It raised one hand and made a broad, sweeping gesture.

  “In your world, this is often called parallel universes. There are infinitely many of them. It is far too complex to fully break down here, but I think you understand the idea. And now you might ask yourself what that has to do with you. The answer is simple. Normally, interaction between parallel worlds is flimsy at best. People dream of other worlds. Minds wander. Déjà vu happens. That is what you call imagination, creativity or inspiration.”

  It paused, watching her closely.

  “I am sure you have heard more than once that a prominent author claimed to have dreamed their story, or that an idea came to them fully formed, and would not let them go. That is not coincidence.”

  Lily remained silent, her expression carefully neutral.

  “But sometimes,” the mannequin continued, “parallel worlds drift too close to one another. And that is what happened with the invention of the VRMMORPG system in your world, and the game called Xantia.”

  It tilted its head again.

  “Are you still following?”

  “Yes,” Lily replied quietly. She already had a sense of where this was heading, but she waited.

  “Good,” the mannequin said. “Because now it becomes more complicated. The game you knew as Xantia was not pure fiction. It was based on a dream, or rather on fragmented perceptions of a real parallel world. This world.”

  It gestured around them, even though there was nothing but void.

  “And the next part only works because of how souls function. When a soul dies, it normally passes into some form of afterlife, shedding its ties to its previous reality, before being reborn elsewhere. The new life may be entirely different from the old one.”

  It raised one hand.

  “This world,” it said, indicating one side.

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  Then the other.

  “And your world, Earth. If they are far enough apart, you can die here and be reborn there, with no conscious connection between the two.”

  Its hands moved as it spoke, illustrating invisible distances.

  “So, when you are reborn on Earth, every other world becomes a dream to you. But the invention of the VRMMORPG gear created something new. Another layer between worlds. A sphere that connected them, briefly and imperfectly.”

  It let out a soft sound that might have been laughter.

  “The odds of that happening were so small that you could stack zeros behind the decimal point until the concept lost all meaning. And yet, it happened. For a moment, the worlds reached a kind of parity.”

  Lily took a slow breath.

  “Because of that,” the mannequin continued, “the game became more than a game. Xantia, the virtual construct, began to heavily influence the real Xantia. Everything players did there became real here. Because every player had already lived a life in this world once before.”

  Lily’s fingers curled slightly at her side.

  “Their souls still resonated with it,” the figure said. “At first, the effect was subtle. But Xantia is a magical world, unlike Earth. And the game existed inside it, not outside of it. The influence grew. Until eventually, everything that happened inside the game became part of this world’s history.”

  It paused, letting that sink in.

  “After the game shut down, centuries ago by this world’s reckoning, things should have returned to normal. The players vanished. The old souls returned to their new worlds. So, the gods chose not to interfere.”

  Its voice darkened slightly.

  “But something went wrong. Some souls had become too anchored. Too aligned with their old Xantia lives. They could not simply return to Earth. And one of the gods noticed.”

  The mannequin leaned closer.

  “That god used this flaw. It pulled a few so called heroes back into this world. Just like the isekai stories you know. To tip the balance. To drag the world out of equilibrium.”

  The ink on its face shifted again, forming something that might have been anticipation.

  “And that,” it said softly, “is where you come in.”

  The silence that followed felt heavy, as if the frozen world beyond the void was pressing in on them, and the unseen timer of the potion continued to tick, second by second.

  “After the world became more and more out of balance over the last five hundred years,” the figure continued, “we decided to tip the scale again and make things even. The problem was that we can only bring souls into this world who are deeply connected to the game and to their old lives already, so the pool is not made up of millions of players, but only a few hundred.”

  It let out a dramatic sigh, the sound oddly theatrical.

  “You are not reborn into your game avatar, at least not in the way you might think. You are in your old body from your previous life here in Xantia. And yet you are not. Because everything you achieved inside the game became real. Skills, growth, power, identity. All of it.”

  It tilted its head slightly.

  “And since I know this question will come, we don’t kill people indiscriminately in your world just to drag their souls over. Your fate was to die inside that shop at that moment. I simply adjusted things so that your soul would not vanish, but return here instead.”

  The mannequin cackled softly.

  “Especially since the original Princess of the Abyss, which was also you a very long time ago, had already been dead inside the Abyss for several millennia anyway.”

  Lily had far more questions than she could ever ask in the little time she had left, and she could feel the pressure building as the potion’s effect slowly began to fray. So, she forced herself to ask the one question that mattered most.

  “And why am I here,” she asked quietly. “What do you want from me.”

  The mannequin’s head turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees, while the ink face slid across its surface so that it still looked directly at her.

  “Oh, you are just the spark,” it said. “The one that will ignite the rest.”

  The ink shifted again.

  “I can’t really talk about it right now. You should just know one thing. If we don’t tip the scale back into balance, there will be real consequences. Not only for this world, but also for your world, Earth. And not good ones. But you will have to figure it out by yourself. I am not allowed to interfere too much.”

  “Of course you are not,” Lily said, rolling her eyes.

  The mannequin laughed.

  “Ohhh, our time is almost up, and all I did was give you a short history lecture,” it said. “Do not think I pulled you over here without helping you. Honestly, you are already doing great. I love the chaos of the last few days. You can’t imagine how boring it was to sit inside this guy’s head.”

  It pointed vaguely toward Sevrin’s suspended form.

  “All the time, nothing but complaints about how bad his life is.”

  Then it straightened slightly.

  “But luckily, I can leave now after our little talk. Which reminds me.”

  Something appeared in its hand out of nothing. An old phone, bulky and outdated, far older than Lily herself. The mannequin held it out toward her.

  “Listen closely,” it said. “That’s my gift to you. I already told you that we didn’t kill you to pull you over, since your time was already over. But the others are maaaybe not so voluntary…”

  Lily slowly took the phone, staring down at it.

  “If you press the green call button, once and only once, it will help you arrange a meeting with your friends. So, they do not end up scattered across the world.” It explained.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” the figure added casually. “You are the first. Not the last. Some of the others you will know. Some are friends. And some will arrive from the other side.”

  Confusion flooded her as the mannequin turned away.

  “Wait,” Lily said sharply. “What do you mean? Am I right about what I think you are saying? Don’t you dare do this! Do not pull them into this mess! They have their own lives!”

  The mannequin spoke over its shoulder as it walked away. “As I said, their souls are already too detached from your world anyway.” It did not look back, only lifting a hand in a casual wave as it passed Sevrin, before cutting through an invisible connection between them with a smooth, effortless motion.

  At the same time, Lily felt herself being violently pulled away as the potion’s effect collapsed, dragging her back toward reality.

  The blue orb, which was probably Sevrin’s own soul, drifted slowly back into his body, sinking into him as if being pulled home by an invisible current. At the same time, the second presence, the mannequin, began to fade, its pale form dissolving until nothing remained.

  And as the last realization from that conversation finally settled in, Lily snapped.

  “Oh, fuck this,” she snarled at the empty space where it had vanished. “That damn showcase mannequin. If that wanker even thinks about hurting my friends, I will kill him. I swear I will.”

  Her teeth clenched.

  “Sure,” she spat bitterly, “we don’t kill people indiscriminately. My ass.”

  The world around her began to regain color, the deep blue haze peeling away as sound and motion rushed back in all at once. Time lurched forward, snapping into place like a badly fitted mechanism finally forced to move.

  A heartbeat later, Lily was standing in the living room again, directly across from Sevrin. The cultists and Igrath were still there, all of them staring at her wide-eyed as she continued to curse under her breath.

  Sevrin jerked violently. His eyes rolled back, his body going slack as he collapsed forward and hit the floor in a heap.

  That made Lily stop. She exhaled sharply, scanned the room, and visibly forced herself to rein it in. Then she spoke, flat and final.

  “He is fine,” she said. “There is no possession anymore.”

  Without waiting for questions or reactions, she turned on her heel and headed for the stairs. Her steps were hard and angry as she left the room, still gripping the old phone tightly in her hand.

  She did not look back.

  All she wanted now was to get back to her mansion. As soon as possible.