The music was still playing.
Soft. Repetitive. Innocent.
Renya's warmth lingered on my hands long after I loosened my grip. My fingers tingled faintly, like they didn't want to let go yet—like my body hadn't caught up to the decision my mind had already made.
I stood slowly.
Every movement felt deliberate, restrained. As if something inside me was watching, waiting to see whether I would break again.
I stepped away from Renya.
I didn't look back.
If I did, I wouldn't leave.
"I want to go outside," I said.
The words surprised me with how flat they sounded.
Not desperate.
Not pleading.
Just… empty.
I didn't want fresh air. I didn't want peace. I didn't even want answers.
I wanted to see something unchanged or not.
My voice sounded distant to my own ears—hoarse, flattened, scraped raw by grief and exhaustion.
"I need to see… something familiar."
Leon didn't answer immediately.
I felt his gaze settle on my back, not heavy, not sharp—measured.
"Not safe," he replied at last.
"You're still a target."
The words barely registered.
Safe didn't mean anything to me right now.
Yuna shifted beside me.
"Director," she said calmly, "I'll go with him."
Leon closed his eyes for half a second.
The kind of pause that came from long experience, not hesitation.
"…You're stubborn."
Yuna smiled faintly. Not playful. Not defiant.
"Occupational hazard."
Leon opened his eyes and looked at her.
Then nodded.
"For a while."
Relief passed through me—subtle, restrained. I hadn't realized how much I'd needed that until it was granted.
"Director Leon," I said quietly, turning back toward him. My throat tightened around the words. "Can you… take care of him for a while?"
Leon didn't hesitate.
"Of course."
That single word held weight.
Not obligation. Not protocol.
Certainty.
I knelt once more in front of Renya.
He looked up at me immediately, eyes bright beneath the oversized headphones.
"I'll be back," I told him gently. "I need to check something. I won't be long."
Renya reached out and clutched my sleeve.
"Don't go…"
The plea was soft. Simple. Terrifying.
I forced a smile.
"I'll come back."
I turned away before he could see my face break again.
Before my chest collapsed inward.
A soft chime echoed through the chamber.
Precise. Controlled.
Footsteps followed—quick but light, efficient without urgency.
A woman entered quietly.
Her presence was different from Leon's or Yuna's—not commanding, not heavy. Focused. Trimmed of excess.
Her green hair was tied back neatly, a few strands escaping at the temples. She held a tablet close to her chest, fingers moving in short, precise motions. A subtle mechanical sheen ran along her right arm—not bulky, not hidden—an artificial limb built for precision rather than strength.
Her black eyes scanned the room in an instant.
Satina.
Director Croz's aide.
"Director," she said. "We've detected another instability."
Leon didn't turn.
"Satina. Schedule it," he replied evenly. "Call Support unit—for taking care of this child."
She nodded once.
No questions. No reaction.
And left just as silently as she had arrived.
The door sealed behind her without a sound.
Something twisted in my chest.
Not fear.
Unease.
The word surfaced before I could stop it.
"…Instability?" I asked.
The word echoed unpleasantly in my head.
Instability wasn't an event.
It wasn't an accident.
It was a condition.
Something ongoing. Something unresolved.
The kind of word doctors used when they didn't know how to fix something—but knew it was going to get worse.
Leon exhaled slowly.
He turned to face me—not fully, but enough that I knew this wasn't going to be dismissed.
He looked at me like someone deciding how much truth another person could survive.
He spread one hand.
"Once again," he said, "welcome to Galactors."
The lights dimmed.
Not suddenly—gradually, like the facility itself was transitioning into a different state.
The air in front of us rippled.
Holograms bloomed into existence.
Not charts.
Not text.
Worlds.
Countless spheres filled the space around us, layered atop one another like translucent glass orbs. Some were small, faintly glowing. Others massive, rotating slowly. They drifted in silent patterns, overlapping, colliding, pulling apart.
Each pulsed with its own color.
Each felt… alive.
"Our reality," Leon said, gesturing gently, "exists here."
He didn't say this universe.
He didn't say this world.
He said our reality.
Like it was one option among many.
Like it could be replaced.
The thought made my skin prickle.
I had spent my whole life believing reality was fixed—something you adapted to, trained within, competed inside.
Not something that could drift.
Not something that could misalign.
One sphere brightened.
Blue-white.
"At the Axis of Dimensions."
The phrase didn't sound scientific.
It sounded… religious.
Like a place you weren't meant to stand near.
Like a point every story eventually curved toward whether it wanted to or not.
The words hit me harder than they should have.
Axis.
Center.
Intersection.
"So many…" I whispered.
Leon waved his hand again.
The spheres shifted.
Two brushed against each other—
And cracked.
A soundless fracture spread across their surfaces, lines racing outward like shattered mirrors. Red warning glyphs flared around them, unreadable but unmistakable.
Darkness leaked through the cracks.
Not shadow.
Void.
Something hollow and wrong.
The pressure behind my eyes bloomed instantly.
My vision blurred—not from fear, but recognition.
This wasn't unfamiliar.
It was the same wrongness I felt when the world skipped around me.
The same invisible resistance that tore at my skull every time space folded instead of moved.
I hadn't discovered something new.
I had stumbled into something that had already been there.
The same sensation I felt when space folded.
When reality… bent around me.
"When worlds intersect incorrectly," Leon continued, "they fracture."
The cracks widened.
The void expanded.
Inside it, silhouettes flickered.
Wrong shapes.
Unfinished things.
"Left unchecked," he said, "fractures cause dimensional collapse."
Another gesture.
Figures appeared.
Teams deploying through gates. Containment fields activating. Structures stabilizing rifts. Combat footage—clean, controlled, devastating.
"Galactors exists to repair fractures, eliminate spillovers, and prevent total collapse."
My stomach tightened.
"…So monsters," I muttered.
Leon nodded.
"They are symptoms."
The hologram shifted again.
Cities in chaos. People running. Governments scrambling. Infrastructure failing—not because of creatures, but fear.
Panic.
"Secrecy matters," Leon said quietly. "Because panic destroys worlds faster than any entity."
The display faded.
The room returned to its normal lighting.
Silence rushed in.
I swallowed hard.
"So we're just…"
"…a dot?"
The thought made my chest feel hollow.
All of this.
All of that effort.
And we're standing on something that fragile?
Leon met my eyes.
"A critical one."
My hands clenched.
"…Is this related to my family?" I asked. "Why did assassins come for us?"
The question felt dangerous the moment I asked it.
Like a door I couldn't close once it opened.
I already knew the answer wasn't going to be simple.
Or comforting.
Or something I could walk away from.
But I needed to hear it anyway—because silence was starting to feel worse than truth.
The room seemed to contract.
Leon looked away.
Just enough to confirm my fear.
Not coincidence.
Not random.
Something had reached across worlds.
And touched us.
Touched me.
Whatever lie I'd lived in—
It was already broken.
And Galactors now occupied the space where certainty used to exist.
✦ END OF CHAPTER 23 — THE AXIS AND THE LIE I LIVED IN ✦