The metallic clangs of swords being unsheathed, the guards’ rallying cries hoarse with undying passion, Ricardo’s panting and grunting from dodging a barrage of strikes, the queen’s frustrated yelling as she kept trying to dislodge her fist with loud rumbling quakes, the all-too-near voices of guards proclaiming the boy is theirs as they charged Lucy and Keilani—

  Then utter silence.

  Everything disappeared from sight. It was not unlike passing through the door to a Dream, but instead of darkness blanketing all her senses, Lucy was still faintly aware of Keilani holding her hand. Lucy’s eyes swam in endless white. It was a white field of purpose, of destination, and this said in its own subtle way that she was still traversing through the same realm, the same Dream, the Dream Kenneth needed to escape from.

  Lucy found herself gazing down at Kenneth, his eyes still half-lidded with the languidity of being freshly woken, but soon they went wide with curiosity. Lucy followed his gaze to see the white void melt away.

  In its place, rich golden brown and pale creamy tan filled the space as far as the eye could see. Smooth-surfaced pews, finely hewn from oak, extended from where Lucy stood all the way to a stark white altar. Above it, stained glass windows at least double her own height depicted abstract shapes in a variety of bright colours: Lucy expected these shapes to make up human figures, like angels or other religious persons, but they were just scrambled shapes arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner, like the vaguest memories of what should be there. The ceiling was high and rounded, the cream-coloured walls adorned with magnificent columns and paintings that also depicted vague colourful impressions.

  “Wow…”

  Keilani, who was still holding Lucy’s hand, gazed all around with her mouth open. Lucy couldn’t blame her: after being trapped between the harsh shining silver of the guards’ armour and the queen’s infernally red skin and cruel eyes, this church’s austere spaciousness was like a safe haven for the senses. Keilani’s nose moved up and down as she sniffed unabashedly, and Lucy did the same, taking in the musky, soothing scent of incense.

  Just as Lucy was beginning to feel at ease, Kenneth whimpered and trembled in her arms. His gaze was turned upward, staring intently at a candelabra that hung from the ceiling. When Lucy followed his gaze, she gasped.

  “What’s wrong?” said Keilani.

  Lucy let got of her hand and pointed her trembling forefinger at the candelabra—which wasn’t a candelabra by any normal definition.

  Ropes hung down from on high, extending so far up that they were swallowed by the darkness of the lightless ceiling. Their other ends snaked down and wrapped together into a complicated knot, from which hung an enormous white sphere marked at the centre with a brown and black circle.

  And so Lucy took in the suspended eyeball that had been staring down at them this entire time.

  Lucy nearly dropped Kenneth—not just from sheer shock, but also because the pain in her left arm gradually flared up again, the sharp sensation coursing through her nerves the more she stared at the eyeball. But Kenneth squirmed, trying to roll over onto his side, and Lucy had enough sense to realize he was wanting to be put down. Kenneth stood on his feet with a healthy steadiness, but his gaze was still seized by the unyielding observer that hung from on high.

  There came the sound of straps sliding over fabric and metal parts being readjusted in the hand: Keilani wasted no time getting her rifle out and taking aim at yet another overgrown horror. As she made micro-adjustments to her rifle’s muzzle, she grit her teeth in a grimace that said she hoped to god she could actually do damage this time.

  “No!”

  Kenneth ran up to Keilani’s side and tugged on the leg of her jumpsuit. “Don’t hurt Him!”

  “Him?” said Lucy.

  Keilani took her eye away from the scope, stared at Kenneth with an open mouth, then said: “Kenneth. What is that?”

  “It’s…” Kenneth’s mouth remained open, but his voice faded and no further words came. He shrunk back from Keilani, head low and eyes averted as if overwhelmed with shame.

  Lucy went over to the two of them, her eyes trailing the giant eyeball, whose pupil followed her as she walked. She snapped her gaze away, focusing instead on Kenneth.

  “Kenneth,” she said, “We need to know what you know. So that Miss Kei and I can help you.”

  Kenneth regarded Lucy with doe-like eyes, then stared down at the marble floors, his pout reflected in their gleaming, well-polished surface. He appeared to consider something in his own reflection, or perhaps he was frightened by the giant eyeball, which also loomed over them in that reflected world. For he gave a quick exhale of breath, then looked to Lucy, followed by Keilani.

  “That’s one of God’s eyes,” said Kenneth.

  “God?” said Keilani, her face scrunched and eyes wide.

  A light rattling sound rung out, echoing over the church’s vastness. Lucy realized it was coming from Keilani’s trembling hands, which were causing her rifle to shake. Perhaps she was a religious person? Lucy couldn’t relate to that herself—or at least, not anymore, after everything that was currently going on in the world had torn down any notion in her mind about the benevolent “Father” her parents always talked about. It was surprising, but also saddening, to see someone like Keilani who still held onto such beliefs.

  “Yes, God,” Kenneth said, slowly shifting his gaze from Keilani to look at the “eye of God” once more. He bowed his head slightly in a deferential, shameful manner. “God is always watching when I’m at church. So I have to be good, or else He’ll punish me.”

  He went on gazing at the eye in silence, but soon, he hung his head low, his hands clasping weakly in front of his chest. “But…”

  “But?” Lucy repeated, kneeling down beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder gingerly, thankful when he didn’t back away, and said: “What’s wrong, Kenneth?”

  “But…” With his head still hanging low, he looked up at the titanic eyeball lording over them, his gaze tentative and indirect, as if he wasn’t deserving of making eye contact. “He already knows all my sins. He knows it was all my fault!”

  “Kenneth, that’s—”

  Lucy was caught off by a fluid, squishing sound that reminded her of of jam splattering against the side of a jar. A split-second later she doubled back, as the eyeball that had been so distant from them had now closed some of that distance through a surging growth in its circumference.

  And its pupil, flickering now between brown and a harsh yellow, like a halo, was trained squarely on the boy who had admitted his sins.

  Lucy gulped. This was just like what had happened with the queen: Kenneth admonishing himself and in turn inadvertently granting power to the danger before them.

  Her hand went to her Ideal instinctively, but she stopped herself. What if, like the queen, the eye was already vulnerable? Then trying to attack it would just be wasting her strength and putting herself in a more dangerous position. And even if the eye was vulnerable, she was worried about the consequences of harming God. Even if this wasn’t actually “God,” being but a figment of Kenneth’s imagination, if Kenneth believed Him to be as omnipotent as he had likely been taught, then no good could come from angering Him.

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  “Kenneth! Kenneth!” Lucy said, shaking the boy’s shoulder as gently as her panicking state would allow. “Remember what I told you earlier? None of that was your fault. Please, you have to believe in yourself.”

  To her surprise, Kenneth broke away from the eye’s ensnaring gaze and looked at Lucy with wide, receptive eyes. “It’s…not my fault?”

  Lucy bit her lip. Again, she had to contend with the fact that she didn’t know Kenneth anywhere near enough to go into specifics. What if he saw through her ruse? And what if that made his condition worse?

  But when she saw those pleading eyes staring up at him, all she could think about was what he needed to hear in this moment. And so, recalling the swell of emotion that had driven her back when they were facing the queen, Lucy said: “No, Kenneth. There’s no reason to blame yourself. And He…”

  She gulped, then steeled her face as she chanced a look up at the swollen eye of the divine. “He knows that you’re a good boy. You’re not a sinner. He knows the truth, unlike that queen.”

  “He knows…” Kenneth mumbled, staring up at the eye again. Unlike before, he raised his head high, his earlier shame cast into unabashed awe and curiosity.

  That sloshing and splashing sound reverberated through the church walls once more, then all too suddenly, the eyeball’s surface was mere inches away from Kenneth’s face.

  Lucy screamed out, flinching back a step, but Kenneth remained perfectly still. He stood there, staring with his look of calm awe, at the eyeball’s enormous pupil and surrounding iris, which flickered between brown and gold.

  Something was off about the eyeball’s surface, and Lucy soon realized what it was. Given the angle of light on the eyeball’s reflective surface, Lucy and Kenneth should have been able to see their own reflections—but nothing was there. Not even the church behind them was visible. Lucy knew she was probably putting too much stock into how a figment fo a child’s dream was meant to work, but still she could not brush aside the intuition that there was some deeper significance to what the eyeball presented back to the rest of the world.

  And, as if mocking Lucy’s thoughts, Kenneth’s reflection faded into view on the eyeball’s surface. Not once, but tens, then dozens, then hundreds of times, all of these copies scattered around the outer perimeter of the pupil and iris. Each reflection portrayed Kenneth in varying levels of unhappiness, distress, and even profuse anguish. Just looking at this swirling cloud of Kenneth’s lowest points was enough to make Lucy’s heart drop; she wasn’t sure how Kenneth himself was able to keep staring with curiosity and wonder.

  Then, with a rising, zooming sound like a high-pitched engine revving up, all of those reflections of Kenneth moved from their disparate positions, pulled by black hole force into the very centre of the eye’s pupil. The reflections swirled and mixed and congealed until, at last, there was but a single reflection of Kenneth, matching exactly how he looked and acted in this moment.

  “I didn’t sin…” Kenneth said in a low voice. His face was still, almost frigidly so, then he bit his lip and tears began to flow. “I didn’t sin…”

  Lucy let out a large breath, exhaling the cloying scent of incense that, like the eyeball, had magnified in power. At last, the suffocating odour was beginning to abate, and in this clear-headedness Lucy could see how much it meant to Kenneth to be free of sin. She was still completely clueless as to what those sins were, and she was having the creeping suspicion that finding out would be key to rescuing Kenneth from the queen and whatever other horrors abounded in his Dream. But right now, with Kenneth having gone through both absolute despair at the queen’s hands and then a sudden sharp catharsis of relief here in this church, he needed reassurance and rest, and to that end Lucy was resolved to stand by him.

  She reached her hand out toward his shoulder, but before she could make contact, Keilani stepped forward, right in front of the eye.

  “He may not have sinned,” she said, her voice loud and projected. “But I have!”

  “Keilani?” Lucy’s voice was hurried, her throat burning from shock and from the incense’s musk returning with a vengeance. “What are you doing?”

  Keilani didn’t answer, nor so much as glance her way. Her eyes were locked on the eye of God, which had diverted its attention away from Kenneth and now had its pupil aimed directly at Keilani. A thud and a rattling clank broke the church’s hallowed silence, and Lucy’s eyes went wide when she saw the source of it.

  Keilani had dropped her rifle—her Ideal—on the church floor.

  She kicked it off to the side, disparagingly as if it were little more than a pile of stones, and stepped up so close to the eye she was practically breathing on it.

  Unlike with Kenneth earlier, Keilani’s reflection was immediately visible on that glossy surface. In fact, her reflection was almost too clear, as if there were a body double on the other side of the eye’s transparent dome. With Keilani’s back to her, Lucy couldn’t see her expression, but on the reflection it was all too clear: eyebrows knitted, lips parted and constantly quivering, and wet tear lines on her cheeks that were faded but still apparent, as if they had been hastily wiped away out of shame.

  “Father, I have sinned.” Keilani’s voice was slow, quavering, and faint, a far cry from the fast-paced and confident tone Lucy had come to know. “Please, forgive me for I have sinned! I…”

  Keilani’s voice trailed off, shepherded and silenced by the church’s solemn expanse and the unyielding gaze of the eye piercing right into her soul.

  Lucy’s body started, but she caught herself. Keilani admitting guilt to the eye couldn’t be good, as Kenneth’s earlier admission had granted it the power to grow. But at the same time, she didn’t know what she could do. Give Keilani the same pep talk she had given Kenneth? Lucy doubted that such simple words would work on an adult; more than likely, it would just end up making Keilani angry and even more stubborn.

  On top of that, another part of Lucy’s mind was telling her, in hushed whispers: would telling Keilani she wasn’t a sinner work if she truly did have a sin to feel guilty over? It would probably depend on what that sin was, and therein lay the true reason for Lucy’s hesitation.

  Curiosity.

  If Lucy stayed back and let Keilani continue her confession, she would hear what it was that upset Keilani so deeply on a spiritual level. Was that too much? Was that bordering on an invasion of privacy? Lucy’s chest tightened as she felt her own shame and self-loathing beginning to bubble.

  But why should she feel shame?

  This was, after all, an opportunity for her to learn something important about Keilani, a close ally, and perhaps also learn more about this eye of God and its behaviour. Both of these could prove crucial for Kenneth’s rescue, so it was Lucy’s obligation to observe and learn as much as she could. She was a Knight of Understanding, after all.

  And so, Lucy stood silently and watched as Keilani prepared to confess before God.

  Keilani muttered and stuttered to wrangle back control of her voice, until at last, she professed:

  “I’ve abandoned someone to save my own flesh.”

  Her voice echoed out over the church’s sealed walls, over and over, feeding back into itself in a dizzying maelstrom of spoken word. A low wind blew into the church from some unseen opening, blowing out lit candles on the distant altar, and pricking Lucy’s face with unforgiving cold. The eye pulsed, its iris again flickering between brown and gold as it ensnared Keilani completely.

  Keilani appeared unaware of these sudden changes, as she swallowed hard as if choking back sobs, and continued speaking with fresh tears marking her reddening face. “I abandoned two brothers-at-arms, knowing their lives were in danger. All to selfishly save myself. Ricardo. Diana. Those were their names.”

  There was a pause, then she added: “Two more names to add to the list.”

  Lucy gasped, then watched as Keilani raised her head and looked up. It was the distant gaze Lucy had seen earlier, right before they had teleported away from the queen, a gaze that was a thousand yards away, looking fruitlessly for something that was no longer there.

  “Marcus. Ricky. Abraham. Jack. Alan. Lee.” She listed the names off slowly and methodically, but with solemn gravitas, as if she were a newscaster stating the number of casualties. She swallowed, her chest rising and falling, as she said: “I wasted it. Everything you gave me was for nothing. I…I…”

  Her faraway stare returned to the present, her gaze locking onto the eye’s impartial observance. Her reflection became so clear it was unsettling, like it could reach out and pull the original in. Then, in a definitive tone delivered like a priest’s sermon, Keilani said:

  “I will never deserve forgiveness.”

  Lucy froze. Kenneth did as well. The eyeball’s flickering iris settled on gold. Even the mysterious wind had died down. The entire world had gone still—and then Keilani’s reflection went rampant.

  It twisted and contorted on the eyeball’s surface, stretching along the width then squishing in along the length. Then, just when it seemed like it was stretched taut to the point of bursting, there came the piercing sound of glass shattering, and Keilani’s reflection broke apart into hundreds of smaller reflections like an egg sac bursting open to a swarm of newborn spiders.

  These new reflections flew off to the edges of the eyeball’s circumference, moving and scattering about into disparate locations. Some of them Lucy recognized from earlier: Keilani’s anguished cry at Ricardo, her fearful face from seeing the eye of God for the first time, and that thousand-yard stare she had shown twice. But there were also many expressions Lucy hadn’t seen before: Keilani crying out in frustration and defeat, Keilani sobbing while screaming out, Keilani staring forward with a blank look on her face. There were enough of these anguished memories for an entire lifetime, and to see them all clustered together in such harsh clarity was utterly maddening.

  “Keilani,” Lucy shouted. “Keilani!”

  But Lucy had no time to react when the eyeball’s iris gleamed a brighter gold than before, reflecting the roaring fire that engulfed Keilani’s entire being.