Sometimes later.
Archangel Graviel stood closest, wings folded tightly behind him, his expression calm but strained, the kind of calm that came from holding something together by force alone. North stood beside him, silent and alert, eyes fixed on Erdaline as if he could will her to wake through sheer focus.
Senna broke the silence first, her voice low and steady.
"You said you could reach her."
All eyes turned toward Cedar.
Cedar smiled lightly, the kind of smile that usually put others at ease, though here it only made the tension sharper.
"I said I could try," she replied. "Dreams listen to me, but this one is… complicated."
Raka crossed his arms and leaned back slightly. "That's a polite way of saying something will go horribly wrong."
Cedar glanced at him. "I prefer 'unpredictable.'"
Sol studied her carefully, his gaze sharp but not unkind. "If you do this, there is no interruption."
Cedar nodded. "Once I enter, I either return on my own, or I don't return at all or I may overthrow by the dream itself."
Graviel's jaw tightened. "If there is even the smallest risk—"
"There is always risk," Cedar interrupted gently, stepping closer to the bed. "Especially when someone has been dreaming for so long just to fullfill one wish."
The air shifted as Cedar raised her hand.
Light gathered, not bright and blinding, but warm and inward, folding into itself like silk being drawn through a narrow ring. The seals around Erdaline trembled, reacting not with resistance but with recognition, as if they knew this power yet feared it all the same.
Raka took a step back, squinting. "I don't like that feeling. Feels like reality just leaned in too close."
Senna's expression sharpened. "She isn't casting a spell."
Sol finished quietly. "She's opening her divinity."
Cedar placed her hand gently on Erdaline's forehead.
The world bent.
Not violently, not loudly, but unmistakably, as Cedar's presence collapsed inward and vanished from the room, leaving behind a faint distortion in the air that smoothed itself out moments later, like water after a stone sinks beneath the surface.
North exhaled slowly. "She's inside."
Inside the dream, the world was white and endless.
Erdaline stood there, barefoot, her long hair drifting as if touched by an unseen breeze, her expression brightening the moment she saw Cedar.
"Oh," Erdaline said cheerfully. "You're new."
Cedar looked around, her warmth fading as understanding settled in.
"This place isn't stable," she murmured. "It's layered… fractured… and far too quiet."
Erdaline tilted her head. "Is that bad?"
"Yes," Cedar replied softly, kneeling to meet her eyes. "Very."
Erdaline smiled anyway. "You look worried. Visitors usually don't worry."
Cedar hesitated before asking, choosing her words carefully. "Do you know where you are?"
"In my room," Erdaline said confidently. "Sometimes it's bigger, Sometimes it breaks But it's still my room."
Cedar felt something tighten in her chest. "And how long have you been here?"
Erdaline paused, thinking hard. "Not very long," she answered, then added more quietly, "…I think."
Cedar reached out, intending to touch her shoulder.
Something pushed back.
Not a wall, not a force, but a refusal, gentle yet absolute.
Cedar withdrew her hand, her smile faltering. "Who comes to see you here?"
Erdaline brightened. "Lots of people, Mama and Papa, A kind man with wings and A lady who smells like trees. They all tell me to rest."
Cedar's breath caught.
"And recently?" she asked.
Erdaline hesitated, her gaze drifting toward the endless white distance. "Someone else."
The dream shifted.
Distance folded strangely, bending in ways that made Cedar's divinity recoil instinctively as a vast presence brushed against her awareness, cold, distant, and utterly uninterested.
Space.
"No," Cedar whispered. "That shouldn't be here."
The dream tilted violently as the presence noticed her, not with anger or curiosity, but with acknowledgment, as if a trespasser had finally been spotted.
The connection broke without warning.
Not fading, not retreating, but cut, clean and absolute, like a thread snapped by something that never bothered to pull.
Ceder gasped as the warmth vanished and the vines froze mid-bloom, petals turning pale and brittle before shattering into drifting motes of light. Her knees buckled, strength draining in an instant, and she would have collapsed if Raka hadn't caught her, his arm firm around her waist as instinctive frost crept up his skin before he forced it down.
"…Okay," Raka muttered, glancing around with a crooked grin that didn't quite hide his tension, "either that was divine backlash, or the universe just told you to mind your own roots."
Ceder laughed weakly, then pressed her fingers to her temple, eyes unfocused. "Something noticed me."
The air changed.
North lifted his gaze at once, not releasing power, not showing intent, yet the entire sanctuary stilled as if reality itself had paused to listen.
Graviel stepped forward, voice sharp despite his control. "Noticed you how."
Ceder straightened slowly, stepping out of Raka's arms though she stayed close enough that he could steady her again if needed. Her usual warmth was gone, replaced by something grave and unfamiliar.
"It wasn't just a dream," she said quietly, choosing her words with care, "and it wasn't bound to only space."
Sol frowned. "Everything is bound to somthing more sinister, am I right?"
She shook her head. "No you aren't ."
Silence spread, thick and heavy.
Raka scratched his cheek. "That's unsettling On a scale from one to 'we should leave immediately,' where are we?"
Ceder didn't answer him. She looked at North instead. "It didn't push me out."
North's eyes narrowed slightly. "Then what did it do."
"It cut the connection," she replied. "As if my presence violated a rule that existed long before me."
Senna's gaze sharpened. "A rule."
Graviel stiffened.
North nodded as understanding it all.
He turned slowly toward the archangel. "You knew."
Graviel didn't reply at once. His hands clenched at his sides, wings kept hidden not by calm but by force of will.
"I thought," he said at last, voice rough, "That what I did would be enough."
Raka let out a slow breath. "That sentence has never ended well, in any realm."
Ceder back to her formal self, "Graviel… what did you do."
The archangel closed his eyes.
"When Erdaline was born," he began quietly, "the healers said her soul was wrong , Not broken, not poisoned, but misaligned, as if two truths were trying to exist in the same place."
North felt it then, faint but unmistakable, a wrongness in the air that prickled against his senses.
"They told me she would not reach maturity," Graviel continued. "That her consciousness would eventually tear itself apart as dream and space rejected one another."
Sol's jaw tightened. "So you sought help."
"I begged," Graviel admitted. "I pleaded with powers that measured eras instead of lives, I was given patience, observation, delay, but never a solution."
His voice darkened. "Hope was never offered."
Ceder whispered, "So you made another choice."
Graviel opened his eyes. "Yes."
The Worldstone beneath the sanctuary pulsed faintly, not approving, not condemning, only remembering.
"I found an existence," Graviel said slowly, "that listened when others would not. It did not demand worship, faith, or obedience."
Raka's humor faded. "That's like a scam."
"It asked only one thing," Graviel continued, " what is my wish."
North's voice was calm, edged with ice. "Say its name."
Graviel hesitated, then spoke. " I don't know but he told me that he is known as 'The One Who Grants Wishes'."
The words didn't echo. They settled, heavy and quiet.
Ceder shuddered. "That isn't a god."
"No," Graviel said softly. "It said so itself."
Sol folded his arms. "Then what did it offer you."
"A delay i didn't accepted the contract right away," Graviel replied,"A way to bind her fracture so it would not spread, so she could continue to exist."
North's gaze sharpened. "At what cost."
Graviel laughed, low and bitter, "That was the clever part."
He looked at Erdaline's sleeping form. "It only took a fragment of soul and nothing else."
Raka stared. "Impossible."
"Yes," Graviel said. "That's whet I have know."
Ceder's voice was calm, "Then who paid."
Graviel swallowed," Erdaline did."
The sanctuary seemed to tilt, seals humming uneasily.
"The wish was not for power," Graviel continued. "Not for healing. It was for permission."
"Permission for what," Senna asked quietly.
"To let her exist," he replied. "Even if existence meant dreaming forever."
Ceder clenched her fists. "That isn't salvation."
"I know," Graviel said. "But I was her father."
Raka exhaled slowly. "So that thing bound her to an unfinished state, and you thought divine authority would override it."
"Yes," Graviel admitted. "I believed my rank, my oaths, my authority would supersede the contract."
North spoke, voice cold and precise. "But the contract never recognized you."
Graviel froze. "What."
"It wasn't a divine contract," North said. "It was existential."
Sol's eyes widened slightly. "Wish-based covenants don't obey hierarchy."
"They obey desire," Ceder whispered.
North nodded. "Which means your authority never applied."
Graviel staggered back a step, horror finally breaking through. "Then I never had control."
"No," North replied softly. "You had time."
Raka muttered, "And time always collects interest."
Ceder hugged herself. "When I entered her dream, something was already watching."
North's gaze hardened. "It knows we're involved."
"And it knows Erdaline is no longer alone," Sol added.
The seals around the bed flickered violently, then steadied.
Somewhere beyond dream and space, something smiled, not cruelly, not kindly, but patiently.
North looked down at Erdaline, voice low and steady. "If this is a wish, then it can be rewritten."
Graviel stared at him. "You can't mean that."
"I don't accept contracts written in desperation," North replied.
Raka grinned thinly,"Especially not ones signed over a child."
The air grew heavier, colder.
And far beyond gods and guardians alike, the One Who Grants Wishes adjusted an invisible ledger and waited, amused and curious, very interested in what North Frozenlight would dare to wish for.
Archangel Graviel oped his mouth.
" I also mad a contract with same person 'the one who grants wishes' yesterday."
Only one sentence was enough to silance the whole room.