As they finished their climb up the steps and reached the portico, Masa Ed glanced to his left at Sera, briefly scanning her red dress—which matched her crimson hair—before his gaze dropped to her hands, folded behind her back.

  “Stray, where is your sickle?” he asked.

  In response, Sera turned her face toward him, giving him a brief, expressionless stare before facing forward again, her attention settling on Sugar, who stood at the doorway.

  Masa Ed chuckled. He glanced at Sera’s black sock boots before facing forward as well, scanning and appraising Sugar. She was dressed in a sleek, neat Victorian maid outfit, complemented by lace-up black boots—a style exactly identical to Snow’s, who was walking alongside them on his far left.

  They soon reached the towering doorway—twenty-one meters tall and sixteen meters wide—where a carved wooden sliding door stood half open at the center, unlike the glass door behind it. Standing directly before the entrance, Sugar bowed her head gracefully.

  “Master, welcome,” she said.

  Masa Ed paused just as the others did, but he ignored her obeisance. Instead, he turned his head rightward, his eyes skimming over a cresset at the corner of the portico where it adjoined the building. From there, his gaze wandered across the glossy white marble walls, which reflected moonlight much like the mansion’s parthenon wall—the peristyle columns, their entablature, and the white floor upon which the columns golden bases rested. All the while, he remained unaware that Sera was watching him, alternating glances between him and the quiet twins, analyzing.

  A moment later, he finally turned back to White Sugar and nodded, giving her the signal to proceed.

  “Master, follow me. I will take you to your chamber,” Sugar said.

  After receiving a second nod from Masa Ed, she turned and gently pushed part of the seamless glass door inward, sliding it aside. She entered first, and the group followed, stepping into a foyer illuminated by soft light from several ball flame lamps orbiting beneath its thirty-three-meter-tall ceiling, complemented by the astral flames of wall cressets lining its sides.

  From the thirty-seven-meter-wide foyer, they arrived at the ambulatory that enclosed the building’s grand hall, pausing briefly beneath a ceiling that rose twenty-seven meters high—lower than the foyer’s. At that point, Snow turned right, with Sera following behind her, while Sugar took the left path. The split confused Masa Ed, who paused and looked in their direction.

  Sensing that Masa Ed was no longer following her, Sugar stopped and turned around.

  “Master, your chamber is this way. It’s on the left wing,” she clarified.

  “I see,” Masa Ed replied, nodding.

  Resuming her lead, Sugar guided him forward. Plum remained at his side, her hand held firmly in his. As they walked along the sixteen-meter-wide ambulatory, Masa Ed glanced a couple of times to his right at the neatly trimmed flower shrubs shaped like large spheres, placed close together along the ground. They marked the boundary between the ambulatory and the grand hall beyond.

  As they neared a rounded ninety-degree corner where the ambulatory turned right, Sugar guided them toward a round pillar that shared the corner with the grand hall on their right. She placed her palm against the stone wall of the pillar for about two seconds before retracting it. A door-cut groove appeared, and the massive stone slab buoyed upward, gliding soundlessly through the air before disappearing behind the wall, leaving an entrance that reveal a softly lit interior where it had once protected.

  With Sugar leading the way, they entered the interior of the pillar—clearly a three-meter-wide elevator. Walking across its floor, which was etched with exotic patterns, Masa Ed led Plum to the one-and-a-half-meter-wide round seat at the center that looked exactly like a footless ottoman. He sat down with her, positioning her to his right.

  Meanwhile, Sugar approached a slender cylindrical apparatus levitating just above the floor. She pressed a button, and the floating stone slab at the entrance descended silently, sealing the opening before seamlessly recessing back into the wall. Sugar then sat on the seat beside Masa Ed, occupying the space to his left.

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  The elevator floor began to rise, ascending toward the skylight of the one-hundred-and-twenty-meter-tall building. Three floating ball flame lamps orbited in concentric circles above, casting soft illumination throughout the elevator, mirrored by three similar lamps rolling gently across its floor.

  Less than a minute later, the rising floor came to a stop. Sugar pressed another button on the cylindrical apparatus, and a door-cut segment of the wall bulged outward before buoying up soundlessly, revealing an exit onto a snow-white marble floor that seemed to glow faintly.

  “Master,” Sugar urged.

  Masa Ed held Plum’s hand and helped her up. Sugar then led them out of the elevator and into a corridor that curved ninety degrees.

  Turning right, they followed the corridor, which was lit by wall cressets spaced at intervals along the left side, while a marble balustrade ran along the right. After a short distance, Sugar paused and turned toward a section of the white marble wall on the left, outlined in gold. She pushed it gently, causing it to recede along its outline by about nine inches—a door groove formed, and the stone panel slid aside, hiding behind the adjacent wall and revealing the entrance to a chamber.

  “Master, this is your chamber—the second chamber,” Sugar said, turning to him.

  Masa Ed nodded with pursed lips, and she led him and Plum inside. The chamber was softly lit by ball lamps, hanging lanterns, and picture frames lining the upper portion of the long wall that housed the entrance. The frames resembled windows spaced at intervals, each displaying images that looked like views of the outside.

  “Master, there are two beds, depending on your preference,” Sugar said, turning to him.

  He could clearly see a large canopy bed to the right of the entrance behind him, and farther inside the room, close to the curtain wall, a round platform bed.

  “Master, everything you need has been sorted out. If there is any problem, there is this…” Sugar paused.

  She walked to the center of the room, where four white pillars enclosed a circular zone and supported a low circular wall projecting from the ceiling. From a large, round table at the center, she retrieved a device and returned to Masa Ed, stopping him mid-step.

  “Master, this is a communicator. You can dial me or my sister with it.”

  She unfolded the golden device, making it resemble a telephone handle, and turned the dial at one rounded end.

  “You just turn it in any direction. It will automatically connect to me or my sister.”

  She raised the device to her ear. “Snow, I’ve shown Master his chamber. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  As she lowered the device, Masa Ed placed a hand on her shoulder, his gaze stern.

  “Sugar, I want to sleep. No one should wake me,” he said firmly.

  She nodded. He smiled faintly, released her shoulder, and walked past her toward the platform bed draped in white sheets.

  Reaching it, he climbed up immediately and slumped face-down, utterly unconcerned with anything else happening in the room. He closed his eyes, shutting down his thoughts as he surrendered to exhaustion.

  Moments later, Masa Ed’s drifting awareness was swallowed by a vacuum.

  As the last time, when he opened his eyes, he found himself on a vacant plain stretching as far as he could see—a barren land despite the rich, fertile soil visible at first glance.

  “I’m here again,” he muttered.

  He looked up at countless twinkling white stars filling the infinite heavens, his vision unhindered by a magical drizzle that seemed to originate from nowhere. Though the rain wet the black ground beneath him, it never touched him.

  Lowering his head, he scanned the plain and soon noticed a familiar shallow but conspicuous depression—the spot where he had planted the ancient golden seed banded with black, given to him earlier.

  Curious, he walked closer and crouched before the meter-wide depression. Scooping up a handful of soil, he brought it to his nose and smelled it.

  “Mmm-mm.” He shook his head faintly and let the soil fall. His hypothesis was invalid after all.

  With nothing more to do with the depression, he stood up. Seeing nothing else across the empty plain, he chose a random direction and set off, hoping for some change beyond the horizon.

  After a substantial amount of time, the horizon remained just as devoid of structure as before. Saddened and disappointed, he came to a halt.

  “I guess this is it?” he muttered. “How do I even leave here?”

  Confusion set in. With no idea how to escape the dull, annoying place, he began searching for some kind of clue—an intangible exit.

  “I hope I’m not stuck,” he said quietly, then paused.

  “Maybe I have to die to leave here… but how?” he concluded, glancing around in search of anything that could aid such an act.

  Finding nothing—as expected, given the utter emptiness of the plain—he stopped again.

  “Should I bury myself?” he proposed aloud.

  Ignoring the thought, he resumed walking in another random direction, clinging to the hope that something—anything—would change. Yet after several thousand more meters, he stopped once more.

  Totally frustrated and annoyed, he pursed his lips, opening his mouth as if to yell—then stopped himself.

  “I’m really stuck,” he chuckled.

  At a loss, he lay down on the wet soil, face up, staring at the twinkling white stars scattered across the vast, dark sky of the tree realm.

  “What are these white stars, anyway?” he mumbled, puzzled by their uniform color.

  Focusing on one star in particular, he noticed it blinking in and out of existence, flickering like a lantern flame running out of fuel.

  “Maybe it’s the other way around… maybe they’re not—”