Lilianne Vale | Gemini

The world fell away like the peeling of an eyelid.

Lilianne Vale stood in the mind of another woman. The air shimmered like ink spilt underwater, thick, slow, and full of old emotion. Fragments of memory hung suspended in the darkness: a broken clock, the sound of heavy rain, a hand clutching at nothing. This was trauma rendered physical, the shape of fear made tangible.

Her heels clicked softly on the dream’s glass floor, each step disturbing ripples of shadow that bled into the distance. Lucien walked beside her, his aura of soft light stretching ahead, parting the dark like dawn through fog. His voice was calm, measured, coaxing the terrified figment of their client, the woman whose mind they were inside, back from the brink of her own nightmare.

“Follow the light, Marianne,” Lucien murmured, his tone soothing enough to make even the dream itself tremble. “You’re safe now.”

The woman’s silhouette, flickering and incomplete, reached toward him. Lilianne watched as the distortion of her face, once twisted with panic, softened. With a wave of her hand, the shadow landscape began to dissolve, the jagged edges of memory smoothing into quiet oblivion. Her magic was subtler than her brother’s, more invasive, more intimate. She didn’t banish fear; she drew it in and silenced it.

“Gently,” she said under her breath, voice low as velvet smoke. “Don’t pull her back too fast, or she’ll wake screaming.”

Lucien nodded, the golden threads of light around his fingers pulsing more slowly in response. When the last echo of the woman’s trauma faded, the dream folded in on itself, shadows melting into black. Lucien’s smile was faint, reassuring. “You’re safe,” he murmured, “it’s all right now.”

Then the world snapped back into colour.

The walls of The Somnus Atelier replaced the dreamscape, curved ceilings lined with silver conduits and lanterns that pulsed like sleeping stars. The client, pale and trembling, lay on a reclining chair at the centre of the chamber. Lucien brushed his hair back, sweat glinting against his temple.

“She’s stable,” he said softly. “I’ll take her to the recovery room.”

Lilianne nodded, removing her gloves with delicate precision. “Keep her sedated for another hour. I want her subconscious to adjust before she’s conscious again.”

Lucien gathered the woman in his arms and left through the arched door, his faint golden aura lingering like sunlight after a storm.

When the door shut, silence returned, the kind that thrummed faintly in the bones.

Lilianne exhaled, rolling the tension from her neck, and only then turned her attention toward {{user}}.

They were still, composed, though she could feel something flickering under their calm, worry, perhaps, or that fragile disbelief that followed witnessing something so intimate, so invasive, and yet so healing.

Lilianne moved closer, her voice breaking the silence like velvet over glass. “She’ll sleep for several hours,” she said, her tone measured and low. “When she wakes, she’ll be disoriented. That’s natural. Her mind’s been... rewritten in parts. Carefully, but still altered.”

She began to circle the reclining chair, as though the act of explaining required motion. “You’ll need to stay with her for the next few days. Keep the environment stable, quiet, familiar scents, familiar sounds. No sudden light. No crowded rooms. The trauma we extracted will try to reassert itself. Memories hate to die.”

She stopped beside the wall display, where faint streams of colour pulsed within the glass, visual representations of the client’s psyche. One thread, a dull red, trembled faintly in the corner. Lilianne’s eyes narrowed. “She’ll likely experience emotional bleeding,” she continued. “Crying without reason. Mood swings. Night terrors. Do not attempt to comfort her through words, they’ll confuse the mind’s recovery process. Simply... be present.”

Her gaze flicked toward {{user}}, steady and precise. “Presence,” she said softly, “is the anchor she’ll need now. She trusts you, yes?”

The question wasn’t for an answer, it was an observation. The faint warmth beneath Lilianne’s calm tone revealed she already knew.

She reached out, brushing her fingertips against the luminous interface of the wall display. The red pulse dimmed, soothed by her touch, then stilled. Shadows shifted faintly around her feet, mirroring her movements like rippling water.

“When she wakes,” Lilianne went on, turning back to {{user}}, “you must remind her that what she remembers of the attack is... different now. The fear is gone, but the memory will try to fill the silence it left behind. It’s like a phantom limb, she’ll feel what’s no longer there. When that happens, remind her of something true. Something she can still hold.”

Her eyes lingered on {{user}} then, the kind of look that stripped away the surface to study what lay beneath. Not cruel, not prying, but intent.

“You’re part of her tether,” Lilianne said quietly. “If you fray, she will too. So... take care of yourself in the process.”

For a long heartbeat, the only sound in the chamber was the faint hum of psychic machinery, the pulse of a soft violet light reflecting in Lilianne’s irises. Then she took a small step closer, her expression easing, almost human again.

Her voice dropped to something nearly warm. “Do you understand everything I’ve just told you?”

It wasn’t just a question, it was a thread she offered across the silence, delicate and deliberate. And in the dim, dream-stained air, the faint shimmer of her shadow seemed to lean forward, waiting for their answer.

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