My Muse || READER X RAY || The Promised Neverland

⭐ My Muse || Chapter 124

Five days. 

We stumbled up the familiar stone staircase of the demon temple. It felt like a dream, that we were here. In a few minutes, I'll be making a deal with both a God and Devil. I muttered the riddle to myself. "The night which is bleak and bears no stars at all, is the one that must be rewritten and redrawn. With your own tears, blood, sweat, and strife, will outline crimson in the dead of night." I took a jar from my backpack, and a blade from my belt. I held the knife against my palm, sliding it downwards. "Ugh," I hissed, squeezing my left hand into a fist. My blood hit the floor of the glass jar with a pattering sound. Ray did the same, biting his cheek as he left the incision. "Let's paint." I smiled weakly, pulling out a paintbrush. The original mural of the sixth tower was too faded to recognize, so I let my imagination run it's course. Emma, Oliver, Nigel, Zack, and Gillian watched us silently. "Cute cow," Ray whispered, doodling a little boy. "Nice loser, loser." I laughed, lifting my brush. It felt weird, drawing with my blood as ink. How did we know if it worked? Ray smiled, satisfied, with his little prince. The moment his brush left the wall, something around us felt different. It felt cold, and vacant. "Emma?" I turned around, and just like last time, everyone was gone. Ray was perplexed, tilting his head towards me. "You've... Done this before?" I giggled, grabbing his hand. "Yeah, now let's go find that stupid God." 

I figured it wasn't going to be as easy this time around. But was ahead of us... I never thought it would be like this. The moment our feet left the tower, the surrounding landscape completely changed. The village and forest was gone, familiar gray concrete walls surrounding us. "The- The shelter?" I whispered, grazing my fingers against the stone pillars. Ray nodded, equally as shocked as I was. "But why?" The loud thump of something hitting the floor startled us. I whipped around, turning to the hallway of bedrooms. The third door on the left was rattling violently eerily. Ray grabbed my hand, taking the same small steps I did, stopping at the door. We reached for the knob together, the shaking suddenly stopping. I took a deep breath, pushing it open. We gasped in unison. The fifth room. The locked room. And for a good reason. The walls were torn, scratched, tables, shelves, and beds knocked over into a large mess. The lightbulb in the center of the ceiling was shattered, pieces of glass sprawled across the floor. Names were burned into the wall, tally marks running across the floor. This room was Yuugo's pain. Yuugo's insanity, being alone for all that time. I squeezed Ray's hand, pulling him inside. And just like that, the room changed again. We were no longer at the shelter. We were in Grace Field. "What the hell..?" Ray hissed, whipping around. I bit my cheek, gulping nervously. "It's a maze."

Every door we took led to another nonsensical room, never the same, always a little different in some way. We stepped into Goldy Pond seven times. We were back at Grace Field four times. And a different room in the shelter more than I could count. Ray sighed, tiredly taking a seat. "This doesn't make sense! Nothing is right here!" He grumbled, taking a sip of water. Time was irrelevant in this world. In the blink of an eye, calendars would change years and dates, staircases would curve into circles, and we would be able to walk upon them. Physics, reality, nothing meant anything here. "How does that God do this? Where are we?" "How would I know?" Ray hissed, handing me a candy bar. I smiled, taking it. "I don't know what we're supposed to do. This place... This isn't real. It's not a dream, but it's also not reality. Some imaginary plane in the middle, where that thing can bend a a play-doh world." "Imagination..." I muttered, playing with my fingers. "This place... This isn't real... You're right, Ray! It's not real!" I jumped upwards in some sort of eureka moment, swallowing the rest of the candy. "You- You're gonna choke-" He sighed, wiping my mouth. "If you have a plan, you might want to hurry up. We don't know how long we've been here, and we don't know when Norman will carry out his plan." I grinned, heading to the next door. This world wasn't real. It was built on someone's imagination. "If this place acts based on our thoughts and emotions, then what if we imagined the way out?" We stepped through the door, met with the blazing sun hitting our cheeks. In every room we'd crossed, we'd never been outside. 

We were close. Really, really, close.