The nausea went as suddenly as it had come and left me in the corner of a small room. Before me sat a simple coffee table, with a couch on either side. On the far wall, a small window led out into a dark, starless night, and multiple paintings were leaned against the furniture. However, the quaint atmosphere had gone through unnatural destruction.

Large chunks of the wallpaper were missing, ripped off in a haphazard manner, while the wall itself seemed to have suffered under a hammer. Several hairs and tables had been destroyed and their leftovers were strewn across the room. The paintings had been sliced apart with knives and splashed with dark paints. To me, it was an image of absolute chaos. In spite of the room's sorry state, its chaotic nature wasn't its strangest feature. Everything around me seemed blurry and unreal somehow. Sharp, overlapping angles and dark colors made it hard to pick out details.

At first I rubbed my eyes to get out whatever dirt had blocked my vision, but as I looked around some more, a feeling of familiarity began to creep in. I had been here before. Finally, my sluggish brain connected the pieces. This was the old painter's room, the home of Carlos Oraya, my first ward! To be more precise, it was the painting I had seen in Mr. Oraya's hallway on my first visit, the one which had almost sucked me in, the gateway. Although I had been careful to avoid contact with it ever since, I still remembered all the details. The dark colors, the chaotic room, all of this was just the same as in the painting. Confused, I looked around.

“Ah, you're here already. Please, have a seat.”

A voice from my left made me jerk around in shock. There stood the mad painter, Carlos Oraya, and painted one of his pictures, unchanged from the time I had last seen him. Almost on reflex, my body followed his words and took place on one of the couches. Beneath my fingers, the upholstery felt firm, yet brittle, with a rough texture, as if it had been made out of dried paint.

“Coffee?” the painter asked after he had picked a pot off his old stove. With raised brows, the old man shook the pot and caused the liquid inside to slosh around. Of course, I was in no mood for coffee.

“What is this, where am I?” I asked instead

“Here, you might need this.”

Unperturbed by my question, the painter took his seat opposite me and put a cup of steaming coffee in my front, just as he had done on my previous visits. Unlike the rest of the room, he and the coffee seemed just as real as I remembered. Somehow, this made sense to me. After all, they hadn't been part of the original painting.

“Where do you think you are?” the painter asked with a bemused smile.

“Is this some kind of hallucination? Am I dreaming?” All by itself, my hands grasped for the familiar warmth of the coffee.

“If I was simply the result of your dreams, would I know the answer to those questions? In truth, it doesn’t matter whether or not this room is real. All that matters is the reason you are here.”

“The reason?” I parroted like an idiot, while I blew away the steam from the coffee.

“You seem awfully confused. Torn between two choices, each one as bad as the other.”

“So my brain built this hallucination for me to find an answer?”

My fingers tightened further around the ceramic cup.

“Again, you shouldn't ask a hallucination so many questions. At least not metaphysical ones.”

“So what should I ask then?”

“How about your real question? The one you cannot answer by yourself?”

“...the council people are right. I can't jeopardize the entire human race just because they were mean to me. Very, very mean. But that doesn't change the fact that they're right. Still, there's also many people I am indebted to. Sophie, the Mystic... Eileen. Many people I need to do right by. If I back off now and work with the Council, I will betray them. If I go against the Council, I kill the entire city. I can't make that choice.”

Again, my eyes returned down to my coffee.

“So that's what you believe your choice to be? Your duty towards your friends and family on one side, and your duty towards all humans on the other?”

“That's right.” I took a small sip, and the familiar bitterness of Mr. Oraya's coffee spread a cozy warmth throughout my body. “Who could ever make a decision like that?”

“Although this is not my war to fight, I think you could do with some advice. First you should think through the consequences of your choices a bit more. Does humanity's fate really rest on your shoulders? Are there no places left besides the city? Will our future be hopeless unless you submit to the council?”

“It won't be?” I looked up.

“Who knows? The world is a large place.” After a shrug, the painter turned to the window of pure blackness. “How do you know anything they've said is true? That any of their promises are real? Weren’t you worried about illusions before?”

“But it all makes sense, doesn't it?” Another sip of coffee entered my body and cleared my mind.

“Well, at least their stories sound mighty strange once you think about it, don't they? If they've kept the descendants of the Archmages alive for sentimental reasons, wouldn't that be a large waste of mana in such trying times? Though even if everything they say is true, who is to say that you and your sisters being mages isn't just a coincidence? In Astralis, the chance of someone being born a mage is about a thousand to one. With how many people have been born in the city over the millennia, something like this is bound to happen eventually. However, if your family's magic talent is a coincidence, and if the council finds out, what then?”

As I thought about the words of the council some more, I realized that the painter was right. There also was no guarantee this wasn't another bit of deception, just like the fake teachers or the entire outer city had been. I wanted to ask more questions, but the painter wasn't finished yet.

“That's not all though. These guys keep talking about the future, but what future do they really want? Think about it. Don't they just want to reverse the mana blight, turn back the clock to a time long past? How would they return to the past in a world that has already changed its fundamental nature, irreversibly so? Who can claim true perfection, who can retain a stiff system without true progress? They can hold on to the status quo for a while, but stiff and unchanging as it is, Astralis will fail. Maybe they will cure the symptoms, maybe the city will linger on for some time longer, but the rot has set in. Nothing can turn back time, not even magic. Yet all these Grand Mages want to do is return to the old days, hold on to their fantasies for just a bit longer.”

More and more, the painter's questions bombarded my mind. As my confusion cleared, a deep dread filled me, dread about the unknowable days ahead.

“Now then, rather than the fake choice presented by these mages, here is your true choice: Flee into the past, known and terrible, or step into the future, unknown and terrifying. Though if I may be so selfish and make my own request: If you choose the future and destroy the city in all of its pompous order and rules, the chaos ensued would surely be glorious. I would like to paint it. It may just be my masterpiece.”

“How do I make a choice like that? I don't even know what's real anymore.”

“The least you can do is look behind the final, hidden curtain and learn the last truth. After all, that's what your teacher would have wanted.”

“But I can’t tell real from fake, not anymore. I don't know how.”

“You do. It's all in your head. You just haven't noticed yet.”

A mysterious smile concluded the painter's speech. With a clink, the coffee cup landed back on the table. Now blessed with direction, I no longer needed its warmth. For no reason I could discern, my eyes were drawn to the window over Oraya's shoulder, darkness itself. In front of my eyes, the black frame grew and began to engulf my vision. Before I could make my choice or ask any more questions, the night outside had swallowed the entire room, and me with it.