The tall man's screams echoed off the stone walls, his voice raw with agony. He clutched his head, fingers digging into his scalp as if trying to tear something out. His body convulsed, knees buckling beneath him.
The shifty man stumbled backward, horror twisting his features. "What's happening to him?!"
Lucian, still bound within the bottle, watched with satisfaction.
The wish had been granted. The price was being paid.
The tall man had wanted knowledge. He had asked to understand the power that lurked within the bottle, to unravel its secrets. And so, the truth was being poured into him, flooding his mind like a dam bursting open.
His screams turned hoarse, his body twitching uncontrollably.
Lucian's whisper curled through the chamber.
"You wished to know how my power works. Now, you will."
The tall man gasped, his breath ragged, sweat pouring down his face. His eyes, once sharp and cautious, had gone glassy. Empty.
He stared at the ceiling, lips trembling, whispers spilling from his mouth like a madman reciting forbidden scripture.
The shifty man grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "What did you see?! Snap out of it!"
But the tall man was lost—trapped in the labyrinth of knowledge he had never been meant to have.
Because the truth was never meant for mortal minds.
Lucian could see it happening—the unraveling. The man's consciousness was trying to process what he had been shown, but it was too much.
The bottle's power was ancient, rooted in laws beyond the comprehension of those bound by flesh and time. The knowledge warped his thoughts, each revelation twisting into something darker, something inhuman.
He began laughing.
Not the laugh of a man relieved or amused, but the broken, hollow sound of someone who had glimpsed the abyss and realized he would never escape it.
The shifty man recoiled. "T-The hell is wrong with you?!"
The tall man slowly turned his head, his gaze locking onto his companion. His lips curled into a grin—wide, too wide.
"Do you know," he whispered, voice unnervingly calm, "why we suffer?"
The shifty man swallowed. "W-What?"
The tall man chuckled, his shoulders trembling. "Because we are nothing. Specks of dust, insignificant, believing we have meaning, that we are in control." He let out another broken laugh. "But we are not. We are pawns. Pieces on a board we cannot even see."
His grin widened, eyes burning with something not human.
Lucian observed with interest. The tall man was breaking, his mind bending beneath the weight of what he had learned.
The shifty man backed away, panic overtaking his greed. "No. No, you're just—just losing it! I—I didn't sign up for this!"
Lucian whispered again.
"Three wishes. One remains."
The shifty man flinched, his breath hitching. His gaze darted between the bottle and his now-mad companion. Sweat dripped down his forehead.
His instincts screamed at him to run, to abandon the gold, to flee before the same fate consumed him.
But greed is a powerful thing.
Despite the horror before him, despite the aging that had stolen years from his body and the madness that had taken his friend, he hesitated.
One wish remained.
A wish could change everything.
A wish could fix this.
His fingers twitched. His mind raced.
One last chance. One final gamble.
Lucian waited. He had seen this countless times before. The moment where desperation battled with reason. Where men stood at the crossroads of their own destruction, torn between wisdom and desire.
The shifty man licked his dry lips. "I… I can still fix this."
Lucian's amusement deepened. Of course he would try.
The shifty man took a shaky breath, stepping closer to the bottle. He ignored the tall man, whose laughter had turned into whispering—words of things unseen, of truths that did not belong in the mortal realm.
He swallowed hard. "I wish… I wish to go back."
Lucian stilled.
A rare wish. But not an impossible one.
The bottle trembled, dark tendrils of energy snaking through the chamber. The torches flickered, their flames warping into unnatural shapes. The air itself grew heavier, pressing down like an unseen weight.
Lucian felt the magic stirring, weaving reality into something new.
The shifty man's body lifted off the ground, his feet leaving the stone floor. A violent wind howled through the chamber, though no doors or windows existed.
The wish was taking effect.
And with it—the price.
The shifty man's triumph turned to terror. "W-Wait—what's happening?!"
Lucian whispered.
"Your wish has been granted."
The wind roared, the magic crackling like thunder. The shifty man vanished, his body dissolving into the air like sand swept away by an unseen tide.
For a long moment, only silence remained.
Lucian felt it—the exchange. The reshaping of fate. The rewriting of reality.
The shifty man had gone back.
But not in the way he had intended.
Somewhere, in a past he no longer recognized, he existed as something else.
Perhaps a worm writhing in the dirt.
Perhaps a bird, soaring under an alien sky.
Perhaps nothing at all.
The universe had taken his wish literally—he had returned to before his own existence had meaning.
A fitting fate.
The bottle pulsed once, sealing itself once more.
Lucian sighed within his prison. Three wishes had been made. Three prices had been paid.
The game was over.
For now.
He turned his attention to the tall man—the last remnant of this night's entertainment.
The man still sat on the floor, rocking slightly, his grin frozen in place. He whispered to himself, speaking secrets that no human should ever know.
Lucian listened.
After a while, he grew bored.
The torches burned lower. The stone chamber stood empty, save for the glimmering piles of untouched gold, the softly muttering man, and a single bottle resting on a wooden table.
Waiting.
For the next fool to find it.
For the next game to begin.
— End of Chapter 2 —