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And Serrik had hidden this from her. Kept her in the dark. Made her care about figments of their imagination. Made her believe she was still somewhat human, still somewhat real.

No wonder the truth was something the Morrigan had warned her might make her choose oblivion.

The silvery webs beneath her shifted, responding to her anguish. Threads unwound, rewove themselves, creating a path. A doorway.

To Serrik.

Her despair twisted, hardened into rage. With a thought, she propelled herself through the door, the vast webwork unraveling and re-forming behind her. The world shifted, blurred, and then solidified into Serrik's library.

He stood by the fireplace, his back to her, tall and elegant as always in his human guise—the form he had created for her to interact with. The form that wasn't real, had never been real.

Betrayal and pain burned in her, thick and horrible.

“Hello, Weaver,” he said without turning. “Welcome home. ”

Her laugh was bitter, broken. Empty. “Home? Is that what you call it? This—this fiction? This lie ?” Her voice rose until she was nearly screaming. “I should have known. I should have fucking known!”

The library walls trembled with her fury. Books fell from shelves, the tree groaned and twisted. Serrik turned to face her, his expression unreadable.

“Careful. You are a…what was the word? Bazooka?” He glanced up at the walls. “And at this moment in time, I fear I have become the fly.”

“Shut the fuck up. When were you going to tell me? How long were you going to let me just—” She broke off, choking on a sob.

“You have no body. This is all just a fucking dream. They’re all dead.

I’m dead. Half of them never even existed!

I’ve been talking to no one this entire time!

No one but you, Nos, and figments of my own fucking imagination! ”

She advanced on him, power crackling around her.

“Define reality, Ava,” Serrik said, his voice strangely gentle. “Do you control them? Do you command their actions? Bitty and Lysander are your dreams, not mine. Do they feel real to you? They know not what they are.”

“Don’t,” she snarled. “Don't you dare try to make this okay. You let me care about them. You let me think I had friends here.”

“And what would you have preferred?” A flash of his old coldness returned.

“To know from the beginning that you were alone here with me and echoes of formers prisoners, poor destitute fragments burning bright before they fade away like so many candles? To understand immediately that you had no body, that you were never going to return to Earth?”

“Yes!” she shouted. “Yes! At least it would have been the truth!”

Serrik shook his head. “You would have gone mad. As I nearly did, in the beginning.”

“So you just let me wander around with puppets for me to play with? To keep me sane while you worked your plan? While you— what—what am I? Your key to taking the show on the road? You finally get to go outdoors?”

“Yes. You have the ability to make dreams real, Ava. With you, I can finally escape this…endless imprisonment. All those who have clung to their minds in the Web might know a facsimile of freedom.”

“But only the ones who had a soul to begin with!” She laughed again, the sound raw and hysterical.

The library's walls buckled, the ceiling cracking above them. The entire structure of Serrik's dream was responding to her emotions, to her newfound power. She couldn’t control it. She didn’t give a fuck enough to even try.

“Everything I've done,” she continued, her voice dropping to a whisper, “everything I've felt, everyone I've cared about… it's all been a lie.”

“Not all,” Serrik took a step toward her. “Not what is between us.”

“How can I believe that?” she demanded. “How can I believe anything you say? You've been manipulating me from the start, Serrik!” Tears stung her eyes. “Am I even really in Tir n’Aill? Is Valroy even real? Is Abigail?”

“They are…real, as you are choosing to define it. And you are where you are.” He sighed. “And yes. I have been manipulating you. I shall not deny it.”

“Then what's the point?” She gestured wildly around them. “What's the point of any of this? If I choose to remain conscious, to control this power instead of letting it consume me—what am I even staying for? What do I have left?”

“Yourself,” he answered simply.

“Myself?” she echoed, incredulous. “I don't even know who that is anymore!

I don't know what's real and what isn't. And you said it yourself when I showed up here. My life was meaningless! I was already as good as dead! Ava Cole had no meaning, no life, no value.” Tears were now starting to flow down her cheeks.

“You—you said the words, yourself. Why am I even worth keeping?”

The rage drained out of her suddenly, leaving only devastation.

She sank to her knees on the library floor.

“Maybe I should choose oblivion. Maybe I should make it all go away. Then you and your younger brother can just fight over your new shiny action figure. It wouldn’t be my fucking problem anymore. ”

Serrik was silent for a long moment, watching her. “I was wrong to hide the truth from you. I thought I was protecting you. Perhaps I was only protecting myself.”

She looked up at him, not even bothering to wipe away her tears. “From what?”

“From losing you. From your hatred. From your rejection.” He reached for her hand, hesitating just before touching her. “I told you I love you, Ava. That was not a lie.”

“But you're not even real,” she whispered.

“Perhaps not.” He smiled sadly. “But I have found the line between real and unreal is meaningless.”

She shook her head. “I had a body. A life.”

“As did I, once. But where are our bodies now? Dreams or not, we exist. We think. We feel.” His eyes met hers, golden and intense. “Are those feelings any less real for being experienced in a reality different from the one you were born into?”

“I don't know what to believe anymore!” She pressed her hands to her temples, feeling as though her head might split open from the pressure of the truth inside it.

“How can I trust anything? Anything at all?

The whole world around me is a lie. A construct.

A dream. And I'm supposed to, what? Just accept that?

Live in this—this nightmare and pretend it's fine?”

“It does not have to be a nightmare,” he said, stepping away from the fireplace toward her. “It can be whatever you wish it to be. That is the nature of dreams.”

She laughed, the sound brittle and broken. “Right. Sure. I'll just wish up some new friends. Some new companions. Ones who aren't actually real, who don't actually exist, who only like me because I make them. I’m no better than Rig.”

“They were not—” He stopped, seeming to struggle with himself. “They are…independent constructs, to a degree. With their own thoughts. Their own feelings. ”

“But not real,” she insisted, needing him to admit it. Needing to hear the truth from his own lips. “Not actual, separate beings. Just figments. Just dreams. Stories.”

His silence was answer enough.

“What's the point?" She looked up at him, tears blurring her vision. “Why should I continue? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just let go. Let the Web take me completely. Become something that doesn't have to feel this—this emptiness .”

He was silent for a long moment, watching her with those ancient, unknowable eyes. His voice was soft. “Because you are real, Ava Cole. Your thoughts. Your feelings. Your determination. Your fire. Those are yours.”

She shook her head, unwilling to accept such a simple answer. "That's not enough. Not for eternity. Not for—for whatever this is.” She gestured around them, at the library, at the Web beyond its walls. “I can't do this alone. I can’t .”

“You are not alone.”

“No? Yeah. You’re right. I owe Nos a fucking apology.

” She laughed bitterly. “Oh, right. I have you, is that it? The creature who orchestrated all of this? Who lied to me from the very beginning? Who let me wander around in a fake nightmare world, caring about fake friends, thinking I was in real danger from fake monsters, dreaming that you might actually care about me?”

Something changed in his expression then—a crack in the mask he always wore. Pain, raw and ancient, flashed across his features. “You have me,” he agreed, his voice barely above a whisper. “For whatever that is worth to you now.”

And then, before her eyes, he began to change.

The handsome, elegant form she had come to know—the form she had touched, had kissed, had made love to—shimmered and dissolved like mist. In its place rose something…else.

His torso remained roughly humanoid, though his skin took on a chitinous sheen close to his hips, dark green and black. His face retained its features, though his golden eyes multiplied until there were eight of them, arranged in an arc across his forehead. His green hair became wilder, longer.

But below the waist, his body transformed completely.

Where legs should be, he transitioned into the body of a spider, covered in dark green and black fur.

Gold patterns decorated his back, matching the tattoos that marked his skin.

But where there should have been eight legs, there were only seven.

Seven enormous, jointed spider limbs extended, raising him up until he towered over her.

A golden stump remained where the eighth should have been.

And the tips of each of the remaining legs, from the last joint down, were cast of solid gold and etched with more of the First Language.

Golden threads were draped from the joints of his inhuman limbs. Two smaller, feeler-like appendages were at the point where his hips should have transitioned to his thighs. They fidgeted, almost nervously.

He was beautiful. Terrifying.

She could feel the horror of him seep into the air around her.

Like an oppressive wall of fear. But it simply passed around her, like the mist—refusing to touch her.

He hadn’t been lying. She knew he was likely to send even the strongest-willed creatures running in some kind of primally-induced panic.

But she could not help but stare at him in awe.

This was Serrik. The true Serrik. The exile. The spider. The creature that had been known and feared by the fae for millennia.

“This is what I am,” he said, his voice deeper, more resonant in this form. His expression twisted in a mask of pain and grief as he looked away. “This is what I have always been, beneath the glamour. What I have hidden from you. What I was ashamed to show you.”

She stared up at him, speechless.

“If you choose nothingness, that is your right,” he continued, each word careful, measured.

The two feelers in front of him continued to twitch, endlessly moving.

“If you wish to surrender your consciousness to the Web, to cease to be Ava Cole and become only power, I will not stop you. I—I cannot, even if I wished to impose my will upon that which is your choice to make.”

He extended a hand toward her, not touching her, just…offering. His hands were still his own, but given the context, his sharp golden nails had new meaning for her.

“But if you continue, you have yourself to live for. Your own thoughts. Your own feelings. Your own desires." His many eyes fixed on her, unblinking. “And if you desire it...you will have me, as well.”

The choice hung before her like a precipice. Oblivion or continuation. Surrender or persistence. The empty peace of nonexistence or the painful reality of consciousness.

And at the center of it all, the creature before her. Serrik. The spider. The exile. The being who had both destroyed her world and offered her a new one.

Terrible. Beautiful. Horrifying. Grotesque. And a work of art.

The decision was hers alone to make.