"I have already seen this," I said. "You are repeating content."
They lunged.
And passed straight through me.
The entire scene flickered, cracked, and then collapsed back into the unstable darkness.
The figure stood in front of me again, but now its form was less steady than before. Maintaining all of this was clearly not free.
I looked at it and shrugged. "You are wasting energy."
"You… do not… fear."
Its voice sounded different this time. There was a faint distortion in it, like something was slipping.
"I do," I replied. "Just not you."
That answer seemed to matter more than the others.
The space around us pulled inward, tightening instead of spreading, and for the first time since I got here, I felt something shift in its approach.
It stopped trying to confuse me.
And started trying to deal with me.
"Good," I said quietly. "Now we are getting somewhere."
