Chapter 88: Encroachment

When she woke up, curled warmly beneath her blankets, a soft whitish glow helped pull her back to consciousness...

The awakening was slow, hazy, as though her mind were gradually resurfacing after sinking too deeply into sleep. For a few seconds, she remained motionless beneath the covers, still trapped in that delicious warmth that makes returning to reality feel highly questionable.

The fabric retained the reassuring traces of the night, warm around her, while a heavy but pleasant exhaustion still weighed on her limbs. Her body seemed suspended in that fragile in-between where the world has not yet fully returned.

Then came the steady tapping.

Soft.

Quick.

A familiar succession of little clicks cutting through the silence of the room with an almost soothing constancy.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

Blanche slowly cracked her eyes open.

The room was bathed in soft darkness, disturbed only by a pale whitish light spilling from the desk near the window. The computer screen carved a faint halo into the gloom, mingling with the warmer glow of the small lamp beside it.

She slowly rolled over in bed.

Eva was working at her computer, the desk lamp still on.

Sitting cross-legged in her chair, shoulders slightly hunched in concentration, the brunette stared at her screen with a seriousness unusually rare for her at such an hour. Her fingers danced rapidly across the keyboard while several open documents reflected intermittently across her glasses.

Her hastily tied hair still fell around her face in messy strands, one of them swaying slightly each time she sighed at what appeared to be a particularly irritating assignment.

The rest of the room remained silent.

Peaceful.

The outside world still seemed asleep behind the closed curtains, and the simple little scene—Eva working late into the night or early into the morning, surrounded by light and academic chaos—held something strangely comforting.

Something deeply normal.

Blanche spent several seconds simply watching her without speaking.

After everything she was living through now—monsters, powers, battles, gods, lies—moments like this felt almost precious.

Like a quiet reminder that part of her life still existed outside the chaos.

"What time is it?" Blanche yawned, still groggy.

Eva stopped typing, tilted her head, and squinted into the darkness.

"I can't see you, it's too dark. Did I wake you up? Sorry... It's one-thirty. I'm almost done."

"It's fine... what are you doing?" the redhead grumbled while pushing back her blankets.

Three hours had passed here... while she had spent two entire days in the Otherworld.

"The essay due Friday," Eva replied while rereading her text.

Blanche froze.

The essay.

Hell and damnation.

She had completely forgotten about it.

"What day even is it?" she blurted out, completely disoriented.

"Tuesday night. Or Wednesday morning. Your choice."

Eva shifted the computer slightly; her vision adjusted to the darkness again and she finally made out her friend's exhausted features.

Blanche looked drained.

Even in the dim light, it was immediately obvious.

Fatigue had hollowed her delicate features, softening the natural paleness of her face with faint shadows beneath her eyes. Her red hair, still slightly tangled against the pillow, framed unusually relaxed features, stripped of the constant tension she had carried ever since her accident.

She looked... emptied.

As though her body had suddenly demanded payment all at once for every effort accumulated over the past several days.

Eva felt her expression shift despite herself.

Because she knew Blanche.

She knew her absurd habit of pretending everything was fine while she was collapsing internally. The way she minimized pain, exhaustion, emotions, until even her own body eventually betrayed what she refused to admit.

And there, in the quiet darkness of their room, without her usual defenses or her mask of control, she simply looked tired.

Deeply.

Blanche's eyes blinked slowly while she tried to adjust to the remaining light. Her gaze still seemed blurred with sleep, more vulnerable than usual.

For several seconds, Eva even forgot what she had been doing.

The keyboard fell silent beneath her fingers.

She simply watched her best friend curled beneath the blankets, overcome by the strange, slightly painful realization of just how much Blanche had been carrying alone lately.

And suddenly, all her irritation from the previous days seemed far less important.

"You look exhausted... and yet you slept like a log. Don't tell me you still haven't finished your essay? You started it last week!"

"And since then, I've had a billion things to do and think about..."

"Sleep. In your condition, you won't do anything good."

Blanche knew she was right. She immediately slipped back beneath the blankets. All the accumulated exhaustion crashed down on her at once. And apparently, "Rest" did not function between worlds.

Good to know.

As if to prove the point, she fell asleep again almost instantly.

This time, she did not fall headfirst.

Small progress.

Her knees, however, absorbed the impact violently enough to wrench an immediate grimace from her lips as they slammed into the frozen ground. A dull pain shot up her legs while she remained motionless for several seconds, hands pressed into the snow to regain her balance.

Blanche groaned.

At length.

Still short of breath, she finally lifted her head toward the pale sky of the Otherworld and spotted the suns already high above the horizon.

Almost noon.

The two winter stars climbed slowly above the frozen plains, casting that cold white light that made the snow glitter endlessly in every direction. The blizzard had calmed since her arrival, leaving behind an immense silence disturbed only by the wind.

And especially by her immense frustration.

She had forgotten to lie down before falling asleep.

Ridiculous.

After all the times she had sworn not to repeat that stupid mistake, she had once again managed to collapse into sleep carelessly before shifting worlds.

Result: catastrophic arrival.

Again.

Blanche dragged a tired hand across her face before sighing deeply.

Fenrir had left her completely unsettled...

Just thinking about it made her heartbeat quicken slightly despite herself.

That strange closeness between them.

That disturbing feeling of being understood without needing to speak.

The gaze of the gigantic wolf fixed on her in the frozen dawn.

And that absurd warmth in her chest when she realized she genuinely enjoyed his presence.

It was deeply unsettling.

Because she was still talking about a mythological monster capable of devouring people without remorse... not an affectionate puppy.

The few minutes spent with Eva had rapidly turned into several hours here.

As always, the time difference gave her the strange impression of living two entirely separate lives that never truly managed to synchronize. Barely had she closed her eyes for a moment in her bedroom before she now found herself alone in the frozen expanses of Epsilon, with several hours lost between the two worlds.

Or gained.

She was no longer entirely sure which.